It's a good question. I think for the most part yes.
The paper focused on variable entrance requirements and discussed in great detail the variable entrance requirements and the challenges in variable entrance requirements as a macroeconomic tool, but also as a tool continuing and supporting what we see as persistent pockets of high unemployment in some areas of the country.
I think there's probably some broad consensus on a harmonized rate, but you can do all the econometrics studies you want and I don't think you'll ever come to a reasonably good conclusion as to what it should be, because there's always going to be some kind of worker who will be affected in a negative way as a consequence of it. What's nice about the 360-hour proposal is that it refers to part-time workers. It would be a nice thing to capture part-time workers, but if we go that low, then the problem is that you get an extreme risk of creating a large level of dependency and encouragement of seasonal work.
There will, then, be winners and losers. I think it speaks to the challenges of having a national program in a country with so many different regional economies and with so many different regional needs. It really speaks to the impossibility of having one set of rules to fit everyone's needs. I think that's probably what you'll find in the end.
The idea of perhaps setting the provincial base line and having provinces top up or tag on to provincial benefits is one that has occurred to me since then as being perhaps a solution around the fact that you're never going to get a one-size-fits-all program coming out of Ottawa for all the different economies in Canada.