It would be somewhat minor, because the figure that is always thrown around regarding EI coverage is that 80% of the unemployed workers were covered circa 1990 and now only 40% of them are covered. Most of those people have entered the labour force, but haven't contributed to the regime in the prior 12 months.
I certainly have no problem with reducing the entry requirements. They really should be uniform throughout the land. The preceding witness mentioned that we're the only country that has these geographically variegated program parameters. She was right about that. Just for the sake of simplicity, I'm okay with lowest common denominator, but that's not going to make a major difference with the access.
As far as those splendid performers from your neck of the woods are concerned, do you think they would be willing to...? They are obviously attached to the labour force, right? These are not people who work for two months a year and then take the next 10 months off. These are people who are career performers.
Do you think they would be willing to contribute readily? That's what we would need. We would need people to be able and willing to contribute readily into such a regime for the sake of solvency and efficiency.