That's right. The employment insurance system, as it is called today, was reshaped through austerity measures in the 1990s under the Mulroney government until the Axworthy reform, which reduced the protections of the employment insurance program. The program was literally put in a straitjacket and has never been released, except during the current crisis.
However, the temporary measures that are being put in place and partly renewed starting in September leave two major blind spots: the benefit period is too short, which is one of the devastating effects of the Axworthy reform, and the calculation of the benefit rate is based on a variable divisor based on the unemployment rate, which was inspired by a study done by the Forget commission in the 1980s, which wanted to annualize the system to lower the benefit rate in the calculation.
In the budget implementation bill, the government is announcing that it will return to the status quo in September. This is clearly unacceptable in the current crisis. Hundreds of thousands of people across Canada will suffer.