Thank you.
Employers and workers and other stakeholders have a real stake in how the EI program works. I spent a lot of time with a variety of stakeholders and experts, getting their input and learning and hearing their priorities and their concerns. We heard from labour organizations and employer groups, and maybe I could just share a couple.
We met with the Canadian Federation of Independent Business, the Fédération des travailleurs et travailleuses du Québec, the Confédération des syndicats nationaux, the Centrale des syndicats du Québec, the Centrale des syndicats démocratiques, the Canadian Labour Congress, the Canadian Cancer Society, the MS Society of Canada and, of course, Pierre Laliberté, who's the EI commissioner for workers. We brought together a group with the Canada Labour Congress and a bunch more, such as Canada's Building Trades Unions.
We've been leaning very heavily in because stakeholders want us to consult, but at the same time they want to see action. They expressed approval of an approach where we sequence our improvements such that there's more time to dig in on the most complex and novel ideas, maybe like support for the self-employed, but where we don't delay changes when there's consensus or where we're further along in the discussion.