Thank you for the question.
As I've mentioned, the results from the EI sickness benefit evaluation that was conducted in 2019 and published in 2020 indicated that claimants were much less likely to return to work after taking more than 26 weeks of leave. That included those who exhausted their 15 weeks of benefits. What the evaluation found was that 10 weeks afterwards, claimants were much less likely to return to work, and those who did tended to return within 10 weeks of exhausting their 15 weeks of benefits.
Therefore, extending sickness benefits to 50 or 52 weeks would provide additional income supports to many workers who may not be expected to return to work at all. This—