Thank you, Chair.
I want to thank the witnesses for coming here today. We appreciate your assistance as we sort through this new policy directive of the government.
Employment insurance has become a very important part of the social fabric of Canada. When I read the budget and came to page 71 about this new crown corporation, it made me and a lot of other Canadians a little bit nervous, frankly. That's not to say there isn't good cause and that there haven't been many cases made that there should be a more independent administration of employment insurance—I think there's a case to be made for that—but the idea of a totally separate, arm's-length crown corporation for EI causes people some concern.
That's why this committee has taken the step of doing a brief study on this to find answers to some of the key questions and provide Canadians more information. We appreciate that we may be at an early stage in terms of the mechanism of creating this new crown corporation, but there are some very important questions that need to be asked.
This committee is well aware that employment insurance is an issue that we've dealt with at this table; we have more private members' bills on employment insurance than we do on anything else. They tend to be on the benefits side as opposed to the premium side, I think, in part because the premium rates for EI per $100 of insurable earnings have dropped since 1993 from $3 to $1.73 on the employee side, and from $4.20 to $2.42 on the employer side. So premium rates have dropped significantly in the last decade or so, and benefit levels have also dropped.
There have been some good pilot projects brought in by the previous government, which I think took some steps in balancing that. And we all want to make sure that employment insurance works for employers and employees, both on the premium side and benefit side. But there are parts of this country that are hugely reliant on employment insurance, so we need to make sure that we get this right. So I think it's an important study that this committee is doing.
Beyond this study, could I ask either Monsieur Beauséjour or Monsieur Giroux or anybody else, what consultation is the government planning as it formulates the plan for this new crown corporation? What public opportunities will there be for people to provide input into the makeup of this new crown corporation?