Good afternoon, Mr. Chair and distinguished members of this committee.
It is a pleasure to be here today to speak to you about Private Member's Bill C-316, An Act to amend the Employment Insurance Act (incarceration), sponsored by Mr. Richard Harris, MP, and to provide you with information on the proposed amendments that the government plans to table at the clause-by-clause analysis.
But first, let me begin by talking about the EI program in general terms.
The EI program is designed to provide temporary income support to replace lost employment income to persons who become unemployed or are off work temporarily because of pregnancy and childbirth, parenting, sickness or compassionate care.
To establish a claim, an individual must have paid EI premiums and meet the eligibility requirements in the region where he or she resides. The number of hours that an individual will require to establish a claim for regular benefits is determined by the variable entrance requirements and is equal to 600 hours for special benefits. Generally, these hours must have been worked in the 52 weeks preceding the interruption of earnings, a period that we refer to as the qualifying period.
If the person meets the entrance requirements, a 52-week benefit period is established, during which that person may collect the benefit for which he or she is entitled. These two 52-week periods, the qualifying and the benefit periods, can be extended under special circumstances, but never beyond a maximum of 104 weeks.
The EI Act contains provisions that outline circumstances under which the extensions are granted. These extensions all have a common policy rationale—they relate to situations where the claimant is not available for work or entitled to benefits “through external circumstances beyond his or her control”. As such, extensions are available to individuals for situations such as being incapable of work because of illness, injury, or pregnancy; receiving assistance under EI benefits; receiving payments under a provincial law on the basis that continuing to work would have resulted in danger to them, their unborn child, or a child whom they are breastfeeding; or receiving worker's compensation payments for an illness or injury.
Under the current legislation, claimants may also have their qualifying or benefit period extended, beyond the usual 52 weeks, for each week they are confined in a jail, penitentiary or similar institution. This extension of the qualifying period for inmates has been in force since 1959, while the extension of the benefit period has been in force since 1977, and both apply to regular and special benefits.
Bill C-316, sponsored by Mr. Harris, proposes to remove the extension of the qualifying and benefit periods for inmates, regardless of the reason for their incarceration. The bill as proposed would mean that any period of time that a person is detained, whether in remand, waiting for his/her trial or sentence, or after being convicted of an offence, could no longer be considered to extend either the qualifying and/or benefit period.
To ensure that those who ultimately are not found guilty of the offence for which they are being charged can still benefit from the extension currently in the EI Act, amendments will be proposed during the clause-by-clause stage. These amendments seek to ensure that the repeal of the extensions only targets those who were convicted. In other words, the proposed amendments limit the extension provisions for inmates to claimants who have been detained and are later not found guilty on all counts, including for any other charges arising out of the same incident for which they had been held.
This means that by default, any person spending time in jail or in other similar institutions would not receive any extensions. The extension of the qualifying or benefit period for a claimant who has been detained would be granted only when the person made a request to Service Canada, supported by evidence that he or she was detained or incarcerated and was later not found guilty.
Two additional clauses are also being proposed. The inclusion of a coming-into-force clause will ensure that the amendments to the act will come into force on the first Sunday following royal assent, while a transitional clause will provide for greater certainty as to how the change will be applied.
Let me describe concretely the application of these clauses. The amendments will apply to any qualifying or benefit periods established on or after the day the act comes into force. This means that only claimants whose claims are established after the coming into force and who are not found guilty of an offence or offences for which they were detained will be eligible for an extension of the qualifying and/or benefit period.
When a claim has been established before the coming into force, current provisions will apply. Therefore, claimants, regardless of their culpability, would continue to be eligible for an extension of their qualifying and/or benefit periods. However, for claimants who have been found guilty, extensions would be provided only for the weeks that fall before the date the act came into force, but not for the weeks after that date.
Given that qualifying and benefit periods can only be extended up to a maximum of 104 weeks, only those who are incarcerated for less than two years can currently benefit from these extensions. Claimants who have been incarcerated more than a year cannot have an extension equivalent to their full period of detention.
Adult criminal court statistics collected by Statistics Canada show that, in 2008-2009, 66% of accused individuals were found guilty, a proportion that has been stable over the last few years. The remaining one third of persons being charged, and possibly being detained, were not found guilty due to their acquittal (3%) or because the cases were resolved by being stayed, withdrawn or dismissed (30%).
Out of those 260,000 individuals who were found guilty, around 90,000 received some form of prison sentence, which means that custodial sentences were imposed in 34% of the cases of guilty verdicts. Approximately 96% of these custodial sentences were imposed for periods under two years: 55% were one month or less; 31% were greater than one month, up to six months; 6% were greater than six months but less than a year; and 4% were greater than a year, up to two years.
With respect to the number of inmates expected to be impacted by this new measure, it is important to note that not everyone who is eligible for an extension of his or her qualifying or benefit period does benefit from it. As an example, an inmate who lost his job when he was arrested and has been incarcerated for 30 weeks could, under the current legislation, extend his benefit period to 82 weeks. However, he may find work 10 weeks after being released from jail and be able to collect his EI benefits within the usual 52-week benefit period.
The department does not collect information on the number of people who receive and benefit from such extensions. To assess the impact of this bill and amendments, an extensive manual review of past EI claims and an analysis of extensions to the EI qualification and/or benefit periods granted to individuals who were incarcerated was performed.
Based on this review, it is estimated that approximately 1,500 EI claimants benefited from a qualifying and/or benefit period extension as a result of being incarcerated, which means that these claimants were entitled to additional EI benefits that they would not otherwise have been entitled to receive. It was further estimated that repealing the current provision for anyone who is detained would have impacted about 700 of those claimants, of which 10% would have been significantly impacted, as they would no longer have been able to establish a claim.
Based on this estimate of 700 claimants who would have been affected, the proposed changes under Bill C-316 would result in estimated annual savings of approximately $3 million to the EI operating account.
Let me conclude by thanking you again for the opportunity to contribute to your study. Bill C-316 would eliminate inmates' extensions of qualifying and benefit periods that are not available to most claimants while ensuring that those who are detained but have done nothing wrong will not be penalized, as this would be considered as circumstances over which they had no control.
