That is absolutely the issue: getting in the door. The government's latest monitoring and assessment report on EI, looking at the year 2005, under II, says—and again it's part of the document that was provided, and hopefully it's translated--that lower access to EI among women reflects their different work patterns, as women are more likely than men to work part-time. Of unemployed people who had worked full-time, 87.6% were eligible for EI, compared to 42.8% of those who had worked part-time before becoming unemployed.
In this document there are some studies that look at employment in the last couple of decades, and in particular some numbers from Stats Canada that were put together by Professor Leah Vosko from York University.
It is quite startling to step back and see how large the drop has been in full-time permanent positions, and for that matter, part-time permanent positions. What is replacing them very quickly, and in fact has more than doubled since the beginning of the 1990s, is full-time temporary and part-time temporary jobs.
I can only assume that some of the people who have asked questions today don't have a real-life experience of what it's like in certain sectors and the kind of employment available in them.