Thank you very much for the question.
I think both this question and the question by Monsieur Lessard are really about whether the proposed premium rate is fair. As I said, the rate was chosen for three reasons. Maybe I'll take a moment to explain.
One was the principle of the current system, under which we apply a uniform rate for everyone. You have some people who you know are likely to claim a lot of EI regular benefits and others who will never claim those benefits, but they all pay the same premium rates. It is the same thing for people who claim maternity and parental benefits. Some have a high probability of claiming them, and others will never do so. I've been lucky enough to never have had to claim benefits, but I still pay the same rate. I think that's the one principle the minister really wanted to uphold. If at all possible, we should have a uniform rate, rather than having a different rate for different people. If we could have a uniform rate, that's the principle to uphold.
A second principle was administrative ease. Again, it pointed to having an identical rate. Imagine somebody with mixed income. As we've said in the material provided, in the circumstance in which an individual has mixed income, if the person signs up for the self-employed system and makes a claim, we'll be combining the income of the self-employed and the regular employment income, and that person will also be paying the premiums of both systems. It would be fairly odd to pay one dollar that's earned on the one hand at one rate and then to pay another rate for the self-employment income. Administratively there are a lot of advantages in having one rate for each pair.
The third aspect is one that you spoke to, Mr. Martin. It's about the principle of trying to balance fairness with respect to the individuals who are going to be signing up for this and the general premium ratepayers. There really is a tension between those two. You can imagine having a rate that's extremely high, and then you'd have a system that would make a profit. That would be very good for the general premium payer. Alternatively, you could have a rate that's way too low, and the system would lose a lot of money. That would require a rate increase for other payers.
This system tries to balance all of those. Having a uniform rate meets the first principle in terms of keeping a uniform rate for all payers, it meets the principle of administrative simplicity, and I think it meets the principle of fairness.
I might add that if we go to the information provided here, our principle of fairness was that the average person should more or less receive in benefits what he or she pays in over the long run. That's a typical person. Not everybody will. You'll have some people who claim a lot and you'll have some people who claim a little, but on average they will. If we look at the rate for what Quebec's paying, it's based roughly on our assumption that one in ten people who sign up will make one claim per year. If you look at it another way, if somebody pays into it for ten years, that person will make a claim for one of those ten years. At that point it's actuarially fair.