As for whether it would be unfair to the employer, I would say, first of all, that these employees still have a job attachment. As long as a labour dispute, a lockout or a strike is underway, employees retain their job attachment. They are not working anywhere else and they are caught up in this dispute, in a single-industry town where the only available jobs in the municipality happen to be with a company that has locked out its workers.
Consequently, I do not see why they should not be entitled to Employment Insurance benefits. Whatever the qualifying period, they contributed to the Employment Insurance fund. As I say, this does not penalize the employers. When employers lay off workers who end up with no financial resources, those employers are generally not very proud of that outcome.
A social program, such as Employment Insurance, has to be there to help workers who end up in this kind of situation. That is what we are trying to do through this bill.