I have these figures which were supplied by the department and again, I will put them in context. Some of my colleagues were present at the time, including Mr. Godin and Mr. Jean-Claude D'Amours for the Liberals. A number of members were on hand and all parties were represented on the committee tasked with examining EI reform. The report contained 28 recommendations, eight of which had been formulated and unanimously endorsed by the Standing Committee on Human Resources.
One of the 28 recommendations called for the creation of an independent account and for the repayment of the money diverted from the EI fund. I will spare you the details of each individual recommendation. Suffice to say that we asked the department to do some evaluations for us.
There was more cooperation on the part of officials at the time, because they had the minister's authorization. Since you were asking, they came up with the following figures. The cost of increasing the benefit level from 55% to 60% of insurable earnings would be $1.2 billion and the measure would apply universally. The cost of setting a 360-hour threshold for EI benefit qualification was $390 million, with that measure affecting 90,000 unemployed workers. Introducing a measure based on the 12 best weeks would cost $320 million, with 470,000 unemployed workers targeted.
I could give you additional figures, because we have all of that information. It was provided to us by Mr. Michael Bron, Assistant Deputy Minister at Human Resources and Social Development on December 7, 2005.