This amendment helps to ensure that there will be no debate to grant rights other than those set out by the bill. So the amendment anchors the dispute in time, because it is the dispute that determines when people are no longer entitled to receive EI.
Witnesses pointed to the fact that when you do not specify when the person's entitlement to receive benefits begins, it can be open to interpretation. So we are saying that during the 52 weeks preceding the dispute, the worker must have been employed by the company in order to be considered to have been laid off when the employer shut down. It happened three years later, in this case.
I am not sure whether that is clear. At first, we did not think we needed to specify that, but, in light of what some witnesses pointed out, we think it might be open to interpretation otherwise. So we think it should be included in the bill.