There was an excellent study done by a guy at Queen's and a guy at a California university comparing the effect on the economy of EI between New Brunswick and Maine. They talked about many of these issues of using the employees from the seasonal work environment in other jobs versus not.
In Maine, where they don't have the EI program, they found high levels of re-employment in the off-season, and substantial GDP gains for the state generally. So at AIMS we have argued that this in essence is a subsidy to the fishing industry and that many of these people can in fact find work in the second half of the season. Certainly that has been the case in Maine; the data are very convincing. I can provide the study to the committee, if you'd like.