The idea that changes in EI rules would significantly increase the number of claimants is a bit of a folk myth among economists. If you go back to the early 1990s, there was a whole raft of studies commissioned by HRSDC on how the EI system functioned. A few of those studies found that in a few parts of the country there were very small impacts on the numbers of unemployed when access to benefits was made more generous, but there is nothing in those studies that would sustain that kind of conclusion about how it would open up. A number of those studies, in fact, showed that there was almost no impact on the number of recipients arising from EI generosity.
In terms of your proposal, it is really important to underscore that in a time of recession, such as now, there would probably be zero impact, since basically any available job is going to find somebody willing to fill it. At the most, you might say that some people might become unemployed and other people who were unemployed would take the jobs. So I don't think there would be any impact at all, except in an extremely tight job market.
I'll send you a summary that I prepared on this some time ago, but certainly the studies that were done by Lars Osberg, former president of the Canadian Economics Association, and Shelley Phipps, a very well-known economist at Dalhousie, strongly disputed the notion that there would be a significant impact on unemployment from reducing the entrance requirement.