Thank you, Mr. Chairman and members of the committee. I'd like to thank you very much for taking the extra day to hear witnesses.
My name is Bob Blakely. I'm the Canadian director of the building trades. The building trades are the unions that represent construction workers in this country, everyone from the operating engineers Mr. Schumann represents, to refrigeration workers, pipefitters, electricians, and millwrights. We represent 50-odd trades and nearly 500,000 people.
With me today is Mr. Christopher Smillie, who is the policy analyst in our office. I'm introducing him because his dad said that if his name got in Hansard he would buy him dinner.
There is an issue that I believe has a very serious impact, and it is very important to a significant number of our members.
Mr. Schumann talked about a number of things we might want to see in EI. We're disappointed that there isn't a rationalization of the eligibility zones and anything to deal with the qualification period, but the long and the short of it is that we are prepared to support the broad strokes of Bill C-50. We're prepared to support it because it will materially assist a number of our members who are currently unemployed.
A number of people are now unemployed simply because of the meltdown of the markets, and construction workers are the first people off the bus on the downside of the business cycle and the last to get on it. The extended benefits are something that....
There are a number of people who will be disadvantaged. We believe there is a strong possibility of an unintended consequence in respect of the application of extended benefits allowed under Bill C-50 for apprentices and those who are qualified within their trade but in the wording of the Employment Insurance Act are directed to programs to requalify either on new equipment or procedures.
Simply put, apprentices go to trade school. It is part of their work. In Ontario, a number of trades have a five-year apprenticeship: five periods of apprenticeship over five years, each of which extends for eight weeks. That's 40 weeks that they are in school. We expect them to go to school. They must go to school in order to qualify.
In Alberta, in the electrical, the instrumentation, or the refrigeration trades, it's three years at eight weeks and one year at 12 weeks. That's 40 weeks of training. These people are deemed by section 25 of the act to be unemployed and available for work, and there is no assistance in the definition of special benefits for them. It is entirely possible that apprentices who worked every hour they could for the last five years will be disentitled from the extended benefits because they got EI when they went to trade school.
It may seem that all you have to do is fish through the act to find a fix for this. Well, we tried very hard to talk to a significant number of people, in government, in opposition, and in the bureaucracy, and we ended up getting a number of people saying don't worry, be happy, and other people saying that maybe we are right and there is a possibility that something bad could happen.
I don't have a fix on the number of journeymen this could affect, but there are 400,000 apprentices in Canada, and 60% of them are in construction. They ought not to be disentitled because they went to trade school.
I am asking that with respect to the in-school portion of the training that people access EI to get--those are programs they are directed to by EI or that are approved by EI in accordance with the act--you not disentitle them either by a minor amendment in subsection 12(3) or by regulation. The negative impact of taking training and then finding out it disentitles you from getting EI for a significant period of years will work against what we're trying to do.
If you look at the demographics, construction, like many other industries, is a baby boom industry, with 70% of people being grey-hairs or no-hairs. They are going to retire shortly, and we need to replace them. This is the wrong time to discourage people from taking training.
We ask that you not lose sight of what could be an unintended consequence and make it clear that people who access training will not be disentitled from extended benefits in the event they become unemployed. After all, employment insurance is a contract of indemnity against a foreseeable event, that being losing your job.
I look forward to your questions.
Thank you very much for your patience in listening.