Yes. That's a pretty traditional definition of social insurance program premiums or contributions. What's interesting is that often Canadians themselves don't see them as taxes but as contributions or premiums like those to a life insurance program, but in social insurance.
If I can be very specific on the idea of expanding EI sickness benefits from 15 to 26 weeks, we're looking perhaps at a financial cost of somewhere between $50 million a year and $100 million a year. The sickness benefit right now is over $1.5 billion a year. It's part of the larger EI program, which is a magnitude order larger than that. We're looking at an incremental additional cost of perhaps 4% or 5% to the overall budget.
It would also be an investment in early interventions and job retention, so that these people would not be opting out of the labour force. They would be continuing to work and making some premium contributions.
Again, in that analysis, the harder numbers need to be done, but this is actually a sound investment. It's not a big ask in terms of a fiscal hit to the program.