I completely agree.
What I'd like to add, though, is that we should think of the Canada workers benefit as an important complement to EI for people with part-time work for partial hours, who don't otherwise qualify. We would catch them through the Canada workers benefit and then convert that income—whatever they earned—into eligible hours. Right now there is no discussion or integration between these two programs. You can easily solve the problem of the 60% of the unemployed who are not eligible for EI by offering this complementary program.
At the same time, right now what you have is a situation in which the eligibility rules vary according to each percentage change in the unemployment rate. If a region moves from 8.9% to 9%, that changes eligibility rules. A one-tenth of a percentage point change is just statistical fog. It has really no meaning, so why should it play a role in determining eligibility?
I suggest using just three bands: if the unemployment rate is less than 6%, if it varies between 6% and 10%, and if it's greater than 10%. Leave it at that.
To cover off the many people who don't qualify, that's where you would use the Canada workers benefit—which now makes automatic quarterly payments to a whole host of people—and just convert their income into hours so that they can then graduate, if you will, to the EI system.