As I was saying, every spring, employers call us. Since we are the Mouvement Action-Chômage de Charlevoix and we have access to workers who are receiving EI benefits, employers call us to get the names of workers. Each time, I tell them that seasonal workers who receive EI benefits are all going back to work. Since they already have jobs, I don't have any names to give those employers.
People often don't understand that seasonal workers who receive EI benefits aren't people who have just lost a full-time job and are available to start working wherever the next day. They already have a job and are already attached to a business. Often, they have been working for the same employer for 20 or 30 years. Employers want to keep them.
However, as our population ages, the workers are gradually retiring. A number of the workers I've met with every year since 2014 no longer receive EI benefits because they have retired. We've lost them.
It is extremely hard to find new people to fill the jobs, because EI benefits are not enough to live on during the winter. They can't just wait for the tourist season to start again. Young people who want to qualify for EI can't. In addition, they don't have access to the five additional weeks of benefits currently available to extend coverage during the winter period. To be eligible, you have to have applied for EI at the same time of the year at least three times in the past so many years. After people have worked for one tourist season, they are entitled to only 14 weeks of EI benefits. In December or January, they no longer receive anything. They are forced to change careers or communities, and businesses can't retain them.
Every November and every spring, there is the Salon Emploi Charlevoix, a job fair where workers can meet employers. Employers are definitely looking for workers for the summer season, but there are fewer and fewer of them, because we're losing them.