Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Thank you all.
Certain measures in the budget document relate to employment insurance, and I am prepared to address all aspects of that subject that may interest you. With that said, I'm here to speak more specifically about division 32 of the Budget Implementation Act bill, which deals with appeal boards. These are not the most eye-catching provisions of the budget document, or the most spectacular, but they are important for employment insurance claimants and people who appeal decisions of the Canada Employment Insurance Commission.
Before getting to the heart of the matter, I would like to mention that I am not speaking only for myself; I am also speaking for my colleague who represents employers on the Commission, Nancy Healey.
After the budget implementation bill was introduced, we signed a joint letter to the minister that I will send you, expressing our concerns about division 32 concerning the Employment Insurance Board of Appeal and asking that the provisions be removed from the bill and examined in greater depth. Those provisions, which are not very well known, echo an announcement made by the government on August 15, 2019, concerning the return of appeal boards, a tripartite body under the aegis of the Employment Insurance Commission. Since then, implementation of the new structure had been put on ice, largely because of COVID-19, which explains why we are talking to you about it today.
The introduction of the bill therefore shows us certain details of the proposed structure for the first time.
Before diving in, it is worth remembering that the proposed structure is meant to replace the general division of the Social Security Tribunal, a tribunal that was created back in 2012 to replace the board of referees that had successfully administered appeals for the EI program since the 1940s.
It is also worth remembering that this 2012 reform was done with no proper and prior assessment or consultations at the time. For the most part, it seemed to have been driven, ultimately, by cost considerations. My predecessor in this position was informed of the change by senior officials while she was in a budget lock-up. That's just to say that this was not a topic of public discussion. As the disposition of the new SST was included in the Budget Implementation Act in 2012, the reform was essentially imposed with no public discussion whatsoever. This is a mistake we would not like to see repeated in this year's budget.
Over the following years, there was much public outcry over the dysfunction of the SST. This led the minister responsible for the program, Jean-Yves Duclos, to call for a third party review.
The finding of the review bore out the criticism levelled at the SST. It also established that the SST was more costly than the board of referees. The minister then set up a co-development working group with stakeholders from both the labour and the business communities with the objective of re-creating a light in-community road and structure that would deliver justice by peers in an efficient manner. This was done in a tripartite manner under the stewardship of the commission.
I would like to offer that what we have in front of us in division 32 is not what was discussed back in 2018, nor does it reflect, I believe, the vision the government had when it went forward. It seems that along the way, that vision was translated in a different manner.
For those reasons, we'd like to basically call a time out on those dispositions and ask that division 32 be removed from the budget bill and studied separately. The whole world does not hinge on that being included in the budget bill. We believe, given that the intentions of the government don't seem to be fully reflected in the current language, that it would be appropriate and time well spent to sit down and study this aspect with all the parties concerned.
I don't know if I have much time left.