Thank you, Mr. Chair.
I think the member raises two issues. One is the incidence and nature of seasonal work in the Canadian economy in reference to Nordic countries. Certainly while Canada has still a fair bit of seasonal work, it clearly does relate to our northern geography, our climate. It also relates to the continued importance of natural resources extraction in the economy, and it does relate to rural and remote populations. So I essentially agree with that.
You'll note in the deck, however--and it's actually quite important to remind ourselves of this--on page 5, that over half of seasonal workers are in fact in the service industry, and some of these as well, if you think of things like tourism, also have a summer coincidence. There is perhaps a broader set of seasonal work than is often thought to be the case, and it's important to remember as well that a large number of these people are students, although different data sets have given different estimates there.
On the second point regarding the two-week waiting period, it would seem to be a policy issue that the member is raising. He's made reference to a private member's bill, and so I assume our members of Parliament will debate that and will put their arguments accordingly.
In the term “employment insurance program”, the second word I would focus on is “insurance”. We tried to preserve some of its insurance features. It's not inconsistent with an insurance program to have a short waiting period. It does then presumably protect the program against very short-term churn, where you might have people trying to apply and going through the administration, for periods that were shorter than that. One should remember as well that in those circumstances, depending upon the nature of the employment, sometimes severance is available for the individuals themselves, although this is probably less likely with respect to seasonal work.
So this is something that obviously we will be looking at insofar as it arises in your private member's bill.