Excellent.
This is my first time appearing before a committee, so I thank you. It's been interesting to watch the last hour.
I'm the CEO of the Atlantic Chamber of Commerce. For those of you who aren't familiar with provincial chambers, I represent Newfoundland and Labrador, Prince Edward Island, Nova Scotia and New Brunswick. My job differs from grassroots chambers. I serve 90 chambers and boards of trade. It's interesting getting to work with all them. We have a reach of over 16,000 businesses within our membership across Atlantic Canada.
I'm not an expert on the employment insurance system. It's a complex system that's been around for a long time. What I do believe I'm an expert in or what I do know is that after working with small to medium-sized businesses over many, many years, they really can't take on any more financial increases. We know that one of our top three policy areas is securing good talent and labour. The employment insurance system is of great importance to the chamber network, the membership and the small businesses they serve.
We are not recommending that any blanket changes be made to the employment insurance system as it pertains to seasonal workers. We really believe that seasonal workers are a special case. They're so, so important to Atlantic Canada and many of our rural and remote areas. I think we really need to look at how we're supporting them, change the narrative and the story on seasonal workers, and find solutions that really help them.
I want to share with you a few other things we've been hearing from employers as it pertains to the EI system and what changes would be made for seasonal workers. As I stated, they're critically important. However, employers would not want to see any increases to premiums, especially the smaller businesses right now that are struggling to even stay alive. As I mentioned, finding that labour is critical. For us, seasonal employees are so important to these small businesses. We're talking fishing, farming and tourism in the Atlantic region. We really need to find a way to continue to link the employees with the employer and come up with some creative solutions on how we can do that.
Again, we need to make sure we're not making blanket changes to the system. We're looking at a small group of people here who are repeat users. We have to figure out what that looks like for seasonal workers and how we talk about their importance and what they mean to the economy.
I have also shared a number of different solutions and ideas that I hope the committee can take a look at as we, again, talk differently about this. I'd also like to offer our network of 90 chambers to be there as a support, as you continue this conversation, in terms of how we can help change this conversation and feed into it in whatever way possible.
Thank you so much. I'll open the floor for questions.