Thank you. That's a great question.
Many employers offer short- and long-term disability coverage to their employees. Approximately eight million workers in Canada are covered by such benefits, and those are the ones we know are covered and registered through the premium-reduction program that the EI program offers.
For most of these eight million workers, those benefits are far more generous than the EI program. They include paid sick days, paid sick leave, for example. That's one type of those benefits. They often provide coverage for up to 100% of that employee's salary.
Those are often the first line of resort for employees who have to take time away from work because they're sick. After that, they can access EI sickness benefits for up to 15 weeks—soon to be 26 weeks—and if they're still sick beyond that, a lot of these workers have access as well to long-term disability benefits or Canada pension plan disability benefits. If they are unable to work for a very long period of time and they're unable to return to the labour market, they can then access, as I said, the Canada pension plan disability benefits.