First of all, I'd like to start by saying that 99% of people who are on EI regular benefits do not want to be on EI. Special benefits, absolutely, but in the case of regular benefits, they don't want to be there. There's a very small percentage of people, I believe—and I hear from EI recipients every single day—who don't want to be working or looking for work.
The 910-hour threshold was so difficult. Part-time people could never meet that threshold of 910 hours. It was too unrealistic. Not enough people who were paying into the fund were able to access it.
You're right, Mr. Zimmer. The Canadian Labour Congress is one of my biggest stakeholders, of course, and their position is that 360 hours be used as a threshold. In calculating that, what they have done is look at part-time workers. They've based it on a formula of work, so that those people, when they were laid off—and we know that part-time workers are our most vulnerable workers and those are the ones who are going to be laid off, mostly, before a full-time worker.... Those are the ones who really need to be able to access EI when they're looking for a job.
That is their recommendation. Many of my stakeholders support it. I have not put a number on it. I think that 360 is very reasonable. Right now the variable entrance requirement is anywhere from 420 to 700 hours. That's separate from the 910 hours. The 420-hour threshold is very difficult for many people.
I think this is an opportunity to look at the economic regions that we have developed across the country. In 2014, when the economic regions were changed yet again and four more were added to the territories and Prince Edward Island was split up into two different economic regions, it was very difficult on all of those residents, both in the north, and I'm still hearing from them, and in Prince Edward Island.
The fact is that if you lose your job, you lose your job. You have to be looking for work, and it doesn't make it any easier once you've lost your job. It may take you only two weeks, if you're living in a region that doesn't have as high an unemployment rate, to find a job, but in that interim, within those two weeks, you have a little bit of income.
I think this is an opportunity for us to look at those economic regions to see what we can do and to make it uniform across the country, rather than have so many differences in so many places.