In our submission, the system that revolves around employment insurance doesn't touch as many people as the other model that I suggest.
If we want to hit the maximum number of apprentices and the maximum number of folks, my submission would be to go the route of some sort of tweak to the Income Tax Act based on occupation. If we're solely using this as a way to move people off unemployment into the workforce, it might disadvantage some folks who are just switching jobs, let's say from a job in Saskatoon building a waterworks facility to a job in Toronto helping out with the Spadina line.
It depends what the public policy purpose is. If we're going to just help folks who are unemployed move to where the work is, perhaps the EI regs are the way to go. But if we want to do something with more purpose, with longer-lasting implications, we could do something around the ITA, the Income Tax Act, based on occupation.
But we could try it. We could have a pilot both ways or either way and see what happens. I wouldn't want apprentices to be excluded.