No, that wouldn't be my view.
Let me perhaps rephrase this. When the 1971 legislation was written, for every dollar that an employee contributed to unemployment insurance, as it was then called, the employer contributed $1.40. The reason was that, for every person who quit, there were 1.4 people who were laid off, so we were trying to tie contribution rates to who caused the separation, the employer or the worker.
Since that time, we've removed quitters from the program, but people are still paying their dollar. What has happened is that special benefits have risen in importance. All I want to do is take that dollar and give people ownership over it and let them use it in the way that's best for them. The program would still function as it is. We would just simplify and reorganize the special benefits side.
It's very good what we've done with special benefits. We never know when a child will fall ill. We never know when an elderly mother or father will fall ill. However, we never know when a teenage child will be diagnosed with schizophrenia. Are you going to start another program for that? We never know all sorts of other contingencies. Because we don't know, just give people agency over the use of their funds.
Obviously I'm also calling for a bit of a return to tripartite financing. In 1971, the federal government was a contributor to the EI fund because there was a collective risk and it should be faced collectively, just like in the pandemic it was a collective risk and the federal government had to step up to pay. Therefore, some of these special benefits need to be funded collectively as well, some fraction of them.
The program stays intact. It's just simplifying and redesigning special benefits.