Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.
Thank you all for taking the time to come out and help us on our study on this bill. It's a difficult bill to deal with. This is a bill that divides Canadians, as a number of you have pointed out, into those who are deserving and hardworking and those who the government seems to think aren't. The minister refers to hardworking Canadians, deserving Canadians, which by implication means that others aren't.
It further complicates, as Monsieur Céré pointed out, the EI system, which isn't simple to begin with. There's nothing here for many long-tenured workers. There's nothing here for people who lost their jobs last fall. They're out of luck. There's nothing for seasonal workers, part-time workers, those who have frequent interruptions in their work. It does help, on the positive side, some long-tenured workers who need help, like everyone else does. But we have a range of opinion here, and I think it's consistent with the other hearings we've had. We have some people who are saying that this is a bad bill and has to be defeated. Others are saying that it's an imperfect bill, but that you have to take what you can get. It's hardly an endorsement. We have other witnesses here today who presented on EI without really putting forward a position on this specific bill.
That's what we are faced with. We're faced with looking at a bill that will help some people but that is discriminatory and seems to ignore the real needs for reform in the EI system. For a number of years we've had private members' bills and opposition day motions that address the EI issue. We all, on the opposition, supported an NDP opposition day motion on EI on March 5, which called for the elimination of the two-week waiting period, a national standard of 360 hours for eligibility, raising the benefits from 55% to 60%, using the best 12 weeks. It talked about training. It talked about the self-employed. It didn't talk about an extension of benefits. It wasn't one of the priorities in March to further extend the benefits. I think we had 11 recommendations from CFIB today, none of which refer to an extension of benefits.
So we have a bill that seems to have the support of those who say that it is better than nothing and they'll take it and keep going, but does anybody really think that we're going to get more from this government on EI? That's the difficult question we have to face.
My question is to any one of you, perhaps starting with Ms. Yalnizyan and working across. Is this the best way we can reform EI? Is this what the system needs more than anything else?