Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Thank you to the witnesses, and to Mr. Savage for talking about the wait time, because the wait time isn't two weeks. You're absolutely correct.
As someone who's done unemployment insurance in the trade union movement since 1990, I know that if you're lucky you are paid in week five, all things being equal. The 80% rule simply means that your claim is approved. It doesn't mean that it's paid. There's a distinct difference between that statistic and pay. An approved claim simply means that they've checked the box off and have sent it out to pay and someone will have to pay. Someone will have to then move that piece along, which can take you to week six or eight or twelve.
So it isn't an issue of waiting two weeks with nothing and then in week three, miraculously, the money shows up. At the very earliest, it's week five. All things being absolutely 100% accurate, all things going into the exact pigeonholes one after the other, it will be week five before your first cheque arrives in the mail. That's the reality of the system, period. There is no other way to do it.
I commend you for bringing this forward. It's certainly something Ontario, where I'm from, and something the Canadian Auto Workers, who I used to work with and represent, have been calling for, for a long time. So I thank you, Mr. Ouellet, for bringing it forward.
You know, on this whole attitude that the waiting period is somehow a deductible, I would suggest to you that there's already a deductible built into UI.
I prefer UI, unemployment insurance, to EI, to be honest. EI always sounds as if you're paying premiums to keep a job. It's like some sort of protection money rather than unemployment insurance because you're unemployed. Because that's why you got it. But then again, I'm a throwback to the unemployment system.
You get 55% in benefits. That's your deductible. You lose a piece. This insurance—and it is insurance—doesn't replace the way other insurance does. If I happen to have an accident, I get replacement wage insurance. In most cases, it could be 100%, depending on what I choose to buy. If I buy this insurance, the best I can do is 55%, and that is if I earn only the maximum. If I earn beyond the maximum, I could be at 40%; I could be at 35%. Those are actually the earnings I will receive back for this particular insurance, because it has a maximum ceiling to it.
That's the deductible, in my mind, I've already paid. And now it becomes punitive when I have to wait two weeks for my money, because it is mine. Granted, the employer pays as well, but I paid into the system. It belongs to me. I think it ought to come back to me. That's how I see this.
I read with interest the piece on who has these so-called waiting periods and who doesn't and what length and duration we see most. I find it ironic that it's the trade union movement that actually goes out and negotiates supplemental unemployment benefits plans. Their waiting time is one week in nearly all cases. In some cases--very few, mind you, but in some cases--there is no waiting time. They pay from the first day of layoff. But nearly all of them are paid by the seventh day. Yet here we have an insurance program that no one wants to pay out, for at least 14 weeks, which is really punitive.
You've gone through it I think in quite good detail for me so far. I have a question I'd like to turn to, if either one can answer. I went through a training program a number of years ago with unemployment insurance. Their goal was to computerize their system so that you could turn your claim, because it is your claim--it's not theirs, it's yours—on and off by yourself. That's the stated goal the technology would take us to if you had a computer. I'm not arguing about those who don't, who have rotary phones and don't have the ability.
One of the arguments, if you waive the waiting period, besides the cost, is that it's cumbersome to get people in and out of the system quickly if they find a job in two and a half weeks or three weeks. Their stated goal was to actually let you turn it on and off.
The real fact is that this is simply punitive. Folks who are unemployed want pay from day one. That's what they've been telling me for the last 20 years. And the system is actually heading towards a place, by their own admission, where we will turn it on and off by ourselves. Do we see the system being an issue, or is it simply that this is a punitive issue against workers who are laid off?