My name is John Lewis. I'm an international vice-president in charge of Canada for the IA. We're a union that works in the entertainment industry, both in live performance and in motion picture and television production. We're one of the oldest and one of the largest unions in the entertainment industry. We have 127,000 members. We've been around since 1893.
We'd like to thank you for the opportunity to present our views surrounding EI.
Our position is a simple one. The entertainment industry is quite successful in Canada, and it creates good Canadian jobs, but it needs a stable, secure safety net.
Workers in the entertainment industry face unique challenges. They are by necessity a transient workforce, moving from one project to the next. These workers therefore need legislative solutions to support this unique situation and to ensure that young workers in particular are able to choose this industry as a relatively stable provider of good middle-class jobs.
It's a large industry. In 2010 the cultural industries accumulated $53.2 billion in economic generation that translated into 703,000 jobs.
The federal government has taken an active approach to nurture and grow the industry. The government is open to working with our industry, and we can see that through the temporary foreign worker program, where we had a special result for our industry, through the continued support of various tax incentive programs, and, most recently, with the restoring of funding for the CBC and other iconic institutions.
We are thankful for your assistance and your willingness to listen to and work with us.
The IA has a few issues that we would like to raise regarding EI. We are generally pleased with the changes to the EI program that were announced in the federal 2016 budget, in particular the reduction from 920 hours for new entrants and re-entrants. As well, we are pleased with the reduction of the waiting period to one week and the elimination of requirements for claimants to accept lower pay and longer commuting times in finding suitable employment. We think that these are all important steps towards re-establishing the integrity of the system.
As you're aware, the broader labour community is seeking quick implementation of these changes announced in the budget. In addition, it is seeking to bring in the scope of universality in reducing eligibility requirements to a single 360-hour requirement; to increase benefit levels from 55% to 60% of insurable earnings; to base benefit and duration calculations on a 30-hour work week; and, probably most important, to address rampant problems with EI service delivery and appeals. All of this, we would submit, is attainable if there's an assurance that the EI account remains for EI use and doesn't get used for other purposes.
While it is clear that the government is intending to eliminate the requirements to accept reduced pay and broader travel requirements for job search, it is unclear that the government has committed to also repealing the hiring hall rules introduced by the previous government in 2012. In our industry, like the construction industry, the hiring hall is a cornerstone. The unions use the hiring hall to train, to recruit, and to provide benefits for workers. Many of our members, unfortunately, are frequent claimants under the system. Not all of them get to work at Stratford and in that type of full-time employment. To say that you cannot rely on your hiring hall but that you have to look for alternative work outside of the industry is a disservice.
Right now, we are facing a huge and booming industry, particularly in motion pictures, but one of the handicaps we have in Canada is that we're having a hard time recruiting and maintaining a young workforce for the industry, particularly in Vancouver and Toronto, but also elsewhere. Calgary is having a big year, and it's a big year right across the country. One of the areas we're looking at is EI, in terms of having that support network available to these young workers so they will choose to stick and stay, particularly in the film industry. We would submit that the hiring hall rules that were in place prior to 2012 should be reactivated—that's not clear now—and that would make it easier.
That's my quick submission. Thank you.