Hello. Thank you so much for having me here today. Thank you also for the ongoing commitment from all of the parties in providing support for so many individuals through the course of this challenging past year.
My name is Ken MacKenzie. I’m the president of the Associated Designers of Canada and of IATSE local ADC659.
We represent live performance designers in the field of set, costume, lighting, sound and video design across Canada outside of Quebec. We've also been a part of the Creative Industries Coalition alongside our colleagues at Canadian Actors' Equity Association, the Canadian Federation of Musicians and IATSE, the International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees. This coalition represents upwards of 50,000 arts workers from coast to coast. We've worked shoulder to shoulder with members of this Parliament to mitigate some of the short-term financial devastation of the COVID-19 pandemic on arts sector workers.
As we look to the future and consider how we rebuild into a more resilient sector and how, as gig workers and self-employed artists, we might be able to make ourselves less vulnerable in situations of economic and social disruption, one of the suggestions we offer is a re-examination of the employment insurance program in Canada. As it stands, the overwhelming majority of live performance designers are self-employed contractors and currently employment insurance offers self-employed workers the ability to opt in only to a partial system. Participants can contribute to EI special benefits, maternity, parental, sickness, compassionate care, but are unable to contribute to and therefore are ineligible for EI regular benefits.
Not allowing self-employed workers to participate fully in the EI program puts gig workers at a disadvantage. As gig and self-employed workers become a larger part of the workforce, the EI program must evolve to accommodate them so that they can contribute to and receive the full benefits available to traditional employees through EI regular benefits.
Live performance designers, like many other gig workers, are contracted in unique ways that may not align with the existing EI structure, but which will have to be accommodated for. The existing fisher benefits provide a useful model that could be adapted and expanded to suit the sector. Many gig workers are not contracted on an hourly or weekly basis, but are paid a flat fee per contract, regardless of the length of the contract. These contracts include defined residency periods when the worker is obligated to the employer, so the calculation of EI eligibility should be established based on contract residency duration. The rate of EI benefits should be established based on eligible earnings within a prescribed period or cumulative contract periods.
Designers, like many contract workers, are often contracted months or even years in advance. This does not mean that they begin work immediately and may still encounter significant gaps in employment between contracts. A revised EI system must allow for workers to be eligible for benefits during these gaps in employment, even if they have future work. Equally, workers should not be penalized for small gaps in between contract residencies but which are not sufficient to be unemployment. Arts workers, like fishers, should be eligible to receive up to 26 weeks of EI benefits per period of unemployment.
All self-employed workers are currently responsible to pay both employee and employer CPP contributions and if a revised EI program requires workers to make both the full employee and employer EI contributions, it will be financially debilitating, especially for arts workers who already live so close to the bone and are centred in the more expensive major urban areas across the country. EI premiums must be equitable and affordable. EI reforms should consider contributions from the contractor and the contractee that run parallel to the employee and employer contributions that are standard.
More than ever, the pandemic has underscored the importance of the arts in people's lives. Movies, television series, music are where people have turned to for comfort and laughter and escape. Canadians need the arts and we've been there for Canadians.
I thank all of you for responding so quickly to keep our sector and others alive through the support of the wage subsidy, the CERB and now the CRB. I urge the Canadian government to continue to support arts workers now and to help us to create the resilience that our all-too-vulnerable self-employed arts sector needs in the future.
Merci. Thank you very much for your time.