Thank you for the question.
There are really two parts to this answer. It was Budget 2009 that first extended across the country an additional five weeks of benefits. We are tracking those numbers. As of this date, over 500,000 workers have benefited from that change. The estimates on the cost of that to the EI program are about $575 million in each of the two years.
Your other reference was, as you said, to Bill C-50, which took another step last fall to allow for longer EI benefits to be collected by long-tenured workers. Depending upon their circumstances, those extensions can range from a further five weeks up to a further twenty weeks. In that case, those changes came into effect in November. Since that time, we estimate that about 46,000 Canadians have benefited from that change.