Good evening.
As you may know, the employment insurance system provides workers who have lost their jobs with temporary income support, known as regular benefits. It also provides special benefits in specific circumstances that can arise during an individual's career.
I am here to talk about the proposed amendments to the Employment Insurance Act, which determine how benefits are adapted when a worker earns income while receiving employment insurance benefits. These are known as working while on claim provisions.
The intent of the provisions is to encourage claimants to accept work while receiving EI benefits.
Each year, about 800,000 EI claimants do some work while receiving EI benefits, with women more likely than men to work at least one week while on claim.
The current legislative provisions have been in place since 1971, and a series of pilot projects over the last 12 years have tested various approaches to adjusting EI benefits when a claimant earns income while receiving EI benefits. Budget 2018 proposed to make one of these approaches permanent.
I'll go through the amendments first. The amendments proposed in the budget would make the default rule of the current pilot project permanent. Under these rules, workers retain all of their employment earnings, and EI benefits are reduced 50 cents for each dollar earned, up to 90% of their pre-claim earnings.
Second, for a limited time three-year period, EI claimants who opted for the alternative treatment of earnings could continue to do so. This three-year period would provide time for this small group of claimants to adapt to the permanent “50 cents on the dollar working while on claim” rule.
Third, working while on claim provisions would be extended to sickness and maternity claimants for the first time. Extending these rules to maternity and sickness claimants is not intended to encourage work, rather this change would allow workers to benefit from the same treatment as other claimants if they choose to stage their return to work, and they would be allowed to retain some additional income.
Finally, there are some technical amendments included to ensure that the changes to the working while on claim rules do not result in unintended consequences on other aspects of the EI program, such as the waiting period and the EI premium reduction program.
As indicated in the budget, these measures should cost $351.9 million over five years and $80.1 million per year after that. According to the Employment Insurance Act, these costs will be charged to the Employment Insurance Operating Account and recovered through employment insurance premiums.
The measures would come into force August 12, 2018, if approved, to ensure there is no interruption between the pilot provisions and the proposed new legislative provisions.
Thank you.