No. In 2005, when the plant closing was announced, the people applied for employment insurance. They were told they could not receive employment insurance benefits because they were locked out. The closing occurred during collective bargaining. Even the employer said it was not a lockout, but a closing for economic reasons.
Three years later, in 2008, when Domtar announced it was closing down permanently, people applied again for employment insurance, believing they were surely no longer locked out. Unfortunately, they weren't eligible, because they had not paid into employment insurance in the previous 104 weeks. Of course we didn't contribute, because we weren't working.
There are a lot of people who, like me, paid into employment insurance all their working lives, and unfortunately were not able to receive that assistance, which would only have been a bandaid, but would have been very useful.