At least in terms of how those changes were motivated and justified in the discourse that accompanied that announcement, they are very much rooted in the assumption that there is some kind of shortage...that jobs are going unfilled, and that some of the measures in the EI reforms, including some that I would say are based on compulsion of the workers to do other things, are aimed at allowing those unfilled jobs to be filled. Frankly, the empirical evidence for that is just not there. You can always find anecdotes from an employer who has a position that he or she is having a hard time filling, but in terms of the overall status of Canada's labour market, it is absolutely a question of excess supply, not excess demand.
I will point out that in the most recent month, only 48% of Canada's unemployed were receiving regular EI benefits at all. That means the majority of unemployed will be completely unaffected by any of these measures. So how they're going to help that majority of the unemployed suddenly find a work ethic or be willing to commute an hour or take a job at a lower wage.... They're not getting benefits anyway. Yet they're not being matched with the so-called vacancies that are there.
I find the starting assumption...the economic evidence to support the idea that we need to be pushing workers to take jobs that they are unwilling to take is not verified by the empirical data. It's all about measures either aimed at reducing the cost of the EI benefits, that is just cutting people off to save the government money, and/or perhaps it's part of a deliberate strategy to actually suppress wage increases in the future through measures like this, which I find very worrisome.