My name is Annette Ryan. I'm director general of employment insurance policy at Employment and Social Development.
I'll speak to the changes to the fishing regulations.
In the 2012 economic action plan, the government introduced a new permanent and legislated approach to the way EI benefits are calculated with respect to variable best weeks. Effective April 7, 2013, all regular claimants now have their weekly EI benefit rate calculated based on the best weeks of insurable earnings during the qualifying period reflective of the local unemployment rate. That was the policy intent of the national variable best weeks change that was made.
Prior to the variable best weeks, however, there were two different methods of calculating how fishing income would be included in the EI benefit rate calculation for regular benefits. There was a technical error in the drafting of those regulations which this legislation aims to adjust. For regular claimants with fishing income, the introduction of the variable best weeks introduced, essentially, a fork in the road in that a common treatment was needed to capture the treatment of fishing income within regular claims.
In drafting the treatment of the regular claimants' fishing income, the fishing income was inadvertently in line with an additional best weeks benefit rate calculation method rather than the previous more inclusive method that included essentially all of the fishing income in the qualification period. This regulatory double correction, if you will, for best weeks was essentially that technical error the budget implementation act aims to correct.
To remedy the situation, the EI fishing regulations are proposed to be amended to allow all regular claimants with fishing income to have their gross fishing earnings over the qualifying period added to their regular employment in the best weeks, as had previously been the case in the best 14 weeks pilot projects. This will allow for more inclusive treatment of fishing income and correct the anomaly created by the technical amendments. The intent is to apply this change retroactive to the time of the regulatory change of April 7, 2013, so that all current claims may be corrected in the most timely manner possible.