Thank you very much.
I'm here today to provide my personal opinion as a municipal leader, the mayor of the city of Elliot Lake. I'm also a member of a local District Services Administration Board and will be dealing with Bill C-280. It's my first time as well, Mr. Chair, to present before a committee. I thank you for the opportunity of doing it. It's a new experience for me.
At the outset, we'd like to state that EI benefits should flow to those who require this assistance while unemployed, and these benefits need to provide a reasonable standard of living at a time when those most affected really do need it. Any increase in the qualification for benefits or in the duration and amount of those benefits has a direct impact on municipalities, as we are the gatekeepers of the social assistance system, particularly here in Ontario, either directly or through the District Services Administration Board, which is the case in my municipality.
The recent downturn in the economy has sent the financial woes of municipalities, especially those in northern Ontario that rely on base resource industries, into a tail-spin. Many of the communities have seen significant plant closures, layoffs, and cutbacks similar to those that were experienced in Elliot Lake in the early 1990s. At that time we lost 4,500 direct mining jobs. It was quite a devastation.
We survived this devastation through a number of means. First, we were provided at that time, twice, with what we called EI requalification programs, to permit many of our laid-off workers to extend benefits, thus preventing a large-scale migration of workers from EI to social assistance benefits at that time. This allowed us to mitigate the devastating impacts and provided a much-needed stimulus to allow us to reinvent and revitalize our local economy from a mining-based theme to a retirement- and tourism-based economy that presently is thriving. This revitalization has been successful for a number of reasons, including EI programs enshrined at the time.
The cost of Ontario Works, or OW, benefits to municipalities, and by extension to the property tax payers, was significant even with this program in place. I would not want to imagine the impacts without enhanced EI benefits at that particular time.
There is a move afoot here in Ontario to upload Ontario Works benefits from municipal tax rolls to the province, but at the same time there will be an offset to some degree from the Ontario municipal partnership fund transfers from the province. This is in early stages, so the impacts on municipalities remain to be seen. Notwithstanding this, the best we can expect would be a zero base from the uploading, so any increase in the Ontario Works caseload would have a negative financial impact on municipalities. We believe that EI benefits are certainly better than having the OW benefits. Again, suffice it to say that EI benefits for laid-off workers would better stimulate an already damaged local economy than would benefits paid under the Ontario Works program.
As I understand, the recent downturn in the economy has affected every municipality to varying degrees. The north remains economically challenged because of this recent economic downturn, as well as the traditional nature of business that resides here in northern Ontario. Northern Ontario is resilient, but not immune to any of these impacts.
So Bill C-280 has a net effect of addressing many of the concerns I have as a municipal leader. First, lowering the threshold to 360 hours and seeking to award benefits based on the best 12 weeks of earnings in a year will go a long way towards ensuring that those benefits flow to my constituents and therefore permit them to survive in a more advantageous financial situation. Failing this, they may not either qualify or receive benefits and may have to rely on the Ontario Works system, which of course is much inferior.
I know that other mayors have raised a red flag on this issue as well. As I understand Mayor Miller from Toronto said, we are quite concerned; the fact that the most vulnerable haven't been protected with appropriate changes to the EI program is very problematic for cities. I personally share this view with Mayor Miller.
In closing, I'm here to speak to the merits of EI changes as outlined in Bill C-280. I thank you very much for the opportunity of addressing the committee today.