Mr. Chair, I would like to thank you for this opportunity to speak with members of the Standing Committee on Finance as part of the pre-budget consultations. I have come to talk to you about the employment insurance program, of course, and I do so as the spokesperson for the Conseil national des chômeurs et chômeuses. We bring together 10 regional organizations in Quebec and New Brunswick.
During the last election, last fall, the Liberal Party of Canada, which forms this government, committed to a number of employment insurance measures: a career insurance benefit for long-tenured workers; an employment insurance disaster benefit to be introduced in 2021; an extension of sickness benefits from 15 to 26 weeks; and the transformation of the pilot project for seasonal employees into an enhanced permanent program. The key measures are the extension of sickness benefits and the permanent program for seasonal workers. It is these measures that I will speak about.
I'll start with sickness benefits. It does not seem to be a given that sickness benefits will be announced in the next budget. We think that would be a serious mistake. The government has made a commitment to the public. The needs are great, and people are waiting. Thousands of people suffer from serious illnesses and, in many cases, have only EI sickness benefits to support them financially. In 2017-18, sickness benefits supported more than 400,000 people in Canada, 36$ of whom have received the maximum 15 weeks of benefits. The rate of exhaustion of these benefits is highest among those aged 55 and over.
I would like to bring the following facts to your attention. Of all the G7 countries, excluding the United States but including Russia, Canada has the worst health benefits coverage of any country in the G7. I did say the worst. France grants 156 weeks; the United Kingdom, 52 weeks; Germany, 78 weeks; and Japan, 72 weeks. I'll let you do the math. In Canada, the sickness benefit component was created in 1971 and has never changed. It is 15 weeks, and it's time for that to change.
The government is proposing to extend it to 26 weeks. We consider that to be a minimum. We believe it should be extended to 50 weeks for those who are seriously ill. That is our proposal. In fact, according to a study by the Parliamentary Budget Officer released in April 2019, the additional cost of extending sickness benefits, if they were increased from 15 to 50 weeks, would be $1.1 billion by 2020. On this subject, the Parliamentary Budget Officer said the following in his study:
Therefore, the increase in the duration of benefits is expected to raise the employee premium rate by a total of 6-cents from the baseline rate ….
There is an urgent need for action, and it is important not to subject this commitment to political calculation.
Let's talk about seasonal workers now. The realities of seasonal work are part of the working world and our economy everywhere. The government understands that seasonal workers, and I quote from a government press release, “are an important part of Canada's continued prosperity”.
These workers often find themselves without any other employment opportunities when the work season is over. Their employment, like the length of the working season, is often subject to the vagaries of the climate, available resources and the market. That is why, in August 2018, the government implemented a pilot project targeting seasonal workers in 13 administrative regions by granting them five additional weeks of benefits. This pilot project will end on May 30. The government's commitment is to improve this program and make it permanent. We believe that it does indeed deserve to be improved by better targeting seasonal employees in these regions, perhaps by identifying seasonal employers to better target seasonal employees. We also believe that an exception eligibility criterion, set at 420 hours of work, should be added for these seasonal workers.
Similarly, we believe that this program should also be offered to indigenous communities that experience high unemployment rates and that, in fact, face the same constraints as seasonal employees. In other words, we believe that we must protect our regions, protect seasonal workers and protect indigenous communities.
The government must move quickly to improve this measure and announce it in the next budget in March of this year. If we are talking about money, I would like to bring to your attention the fact that the cumulative surplus in the employment insurance fund currently exceeds $4 billion. I would also like to point out that, according to an OECD study entitled “Social Protection and Well-being”, in terms of social spending on unemployment, Canada spends 10% less per capita than the OECD average.
We think the role of the employment insurance program is to help people who lose their jobs by providing them with economic security. It is also the role of a responsible government to ensure that the program fulfills that function.
Thank you for your attention.