Wonderful. Thank you very much.
Thank you to our witnesses for coming today.
I want to spend a few moments talking about something that didn't come up in any focused way in the presentations, and that's the changes to EI in Bill C-15. This is obviously something we've heard quite a bit about. While there are some very welcome changes, they don't go far enough in terms of making a difference for many working Canadians.
I'd like to direct my first question to Mr. Battle. I'm familiar with some of Caledon's work around the ineligibility surrounding EI, and the fact that fewer and fewer Canadians are eligible. I'm thinking about the report you put out in December 2011, entitled “Fixing the Hole in EI”. Specific to Bill C-15, the concern has been raised that there are regions that have suffered significant unemployment in the last two years and that are excluded. We hear today that finally the Liberal government is seeing the need to include Edmonton as one of those regions. We're hearing some different reports in terms of southern Saskatchewan, which has also been hit hard by the drop in the extractive sector. But we still know that many regions that depend on seasonal work, including in Quebec and the Atlantic, are still ineligible, and it creates the black hole, or le trou noir, that we know of.
Many Canadians who are hurting have paid into EI and aren't able to access it. In your report you talk about 55% eligibility; I guess that was in 2011. Now we're down to about 40% eligibility. I'm wondering if you could speak to this. Is this a serious issue? Should we be taking it more seriously? Should we be fixing the EI program to make it more responsive to current crises that Canadians are facing but also a shifting job market, particularly the rise of precarious work? Any thoughts on that would be welcome.