Of course.
The PEI Coalition For Fair EI would like to thank the members of the committee for hearing from us. I am pleased to be able to appear before you on behalf of the coalition. We formed this coalition with community groups, citizens, and unions as a response to the 2012 changes to the employment insurance program by the previous government.
The 2012 changes were incredibly punitive to workers in the seasonal industries on Prince Edward Island, and largely still remain so after Bill C-15 was introduced. Some improvements were made, but little for seasonal industries.
The PEI Coalition continues to call on the Liberal government to fulfill its election promise to completely reverse all of the 2012 EI changes. This has not yet been done despite the Minister of Labour's comments in the House of Commons.
We welcome the changes to reduce entrance hours and the reduction of one week from the waiting period for some EI recipients, as was announced in Bill C-15, but they do little to help seasonal workers. The reduction of one week from the waiting period will certainly help to get much needed funds into the hands of unemployed workers who do not use their full number of weeks of benefits, but it will not be helpful to the many seasonal workers in Prince Edward Island who do not have enough insurance to last the entire period of unemployment, especially since 2012. This change means that they will run out of benefits one week sooner.
Bill C-15's response to the downturn in the oil industry, in giving an additional five weeks of benefits to regions that have experienced a 2% increase in unemployment in the last year, certainly will help some workers, but definitely not all that are affected. It creates an unfair gap.
The budget completely ignores P.E.I. and our neighbouring provinces, New Brunswick and Nova Scotia, who lost the additional five weeks in 2012. Despite the fact that P.E.I. has an 11.5% unemployment rate—the second highest in the country, and up 1% from last year in April—this budget bill did not return the five weeks lost. Now the many displaced oil workers from Prince Edward Island are returning home without the five additional weeks that their co-workers are receiving, despite the fact they are returning to areas of higher unemployment and access to fewer jobs—unless of course they're returning to Newfoundland.
Just as important as the need to return the five weeks of additional benefit to our province is the need to immediately remove the additional zone for Prince Edward Island. P.E.I. was always considered one economic zone for the purposes of EI for a reason. Despite the fact that P.E.I. has two cities, with our population size of only146,000, we are a rural economy when it comes to jobs.
There is no large industry that gives much more access to jobs in one part of the province than another, but in February 2014 our province was divided into two zones: urban and rural. This meant that those living in the urban zone had far fewer weeks and less benefits than those in the rural zone, despite the fact the folks living in the urban zone do not have access to more jobs.
The map used to divide our island makes absolutely no sense. There are two cities in P.E.I. with federal government jobs in both. One city is considered urban and the other city rural.
I'll use an example of an area our chair knows well. One small fishing community, North Rustico, located close to the tourist area of Cavendish, is located in rural Prince Edward Island. Its neighbour, only four kilometres away, Mayfield, with many workers from the fishing industry and the tourist industry, and farther from the city of Charlottetown, is considered urban. Workers working side by side in jobs, and making the same money for the same number of weeks, are getting treated very differently when it comes to EI benefits.
The new zone on P.E.I. must be removed immediately. It doesn't work, and it pits Islander against Islander.
To conclude my opening remarks, seasonal workers have been unfairly treated by the last government, and Bill C-15 does little to rectify the situation. We need a jobs strategy in this country that recognizes that some industries are seasonal, but that workers want full-time year-round work.
The planned reduction of EI premiums must be stopped. The experience of the sudden downturn in the oil industry, and the natural disaster of the wild fires in Fort McMurray, highlight the extreme importance of a fully funded EI program for our capitalist economy.
I will be happy to answer any questions the committee members might have.
Thank you.