Thank you very much.
When I first took over the portfolio in January, one of the opportunities I had was to talk to people associated both with the labour side and with the employment side. There was one thing that everybody had in common. From the CAW, from the Canadian Labour Congress, everybody agreed that the program itself was a huge help to workers and that it came at a very timely point in Canada's economy.
In essence, as I indicated, this program is designed to compensate Canadian workers for wages that are owing to them when their employer unfortunately goes bankrupt or goes into receivership. Just to give you some statistics about it--because I think it helps to give some context around it--since 2008 when it was created, almost 20,000 Canadian workers have received about $40 million in payments for wages owing in the six-month period up to the bankruptcy or receivership.
Prior to this program being put in place, interestingly, workers were rarely reimbursed for wages that were owed to them by bankrupt employers. In fact, studies have shown that payment was received in fewer than 25% of the case. The statistics demonstrate that the average worker received only 13ยข on the dollar, and often these moneys were received after several years of fighting with the employer for compensation. So the program itself has been put in place in a very timely way and has been very beneficial.
We also expanded the program to allow workers to claim both severance and termination pay, in addition to the wages and the vacation pay, up to the equivalency of four weeks for unemployment insurance. The economic action plan invested another $25 million in the program for this fiscal year and that's in addition to the $31 million set aside annually for WEPP payments to support the enhanced program.
It's increased the applicability of the program, obviously, to a larger number of claimants and the average payments increased as workers became eligible for the program. The average WEPP payment in 2009-10 was $2,210, compared to $1,300 in the previous year, but that remains below the current cap of $3,323.
In the end, it's a great example of the good work we're doing to help workers through the economic period we've just endured. Quite frankly, nobody wants to think about their company going bankrupt and workers being left on the street, and we filled the gap that was created. We've helped an awful lot of people. It's been a great program in that sense.