Yes. Obviously, unemployment insurance is a system that, again, has not been reformed in nearly 40 years. It continues to reflect a labour market that was built on someone having a full-time job and then losing that job and finding a full-time job. That's not what's happening. People have precarious work situations that lead them to finding part-time work, gig employment or things like delivery driving or something similar, or they're self-employed and they find it hard to access employment insurance.
We see that 20% of food bank users are employed, but we also see only 20% of food bank users having employment as their main source of income. They're accessing provincial social assistance and accessing employment insurance. Fewer food bank users are accessing pensions.
We need to ensure, as we look at precarious employment in this country, especially in light of tariffs, that the support is there. In fact, when the government brings in supports and when they institute tariffs, one of the things they do is waive the EI reporting period. Why don't we just make that permanent if we're understanding that it's a barrier to accessing employment insurance? We need to make sure we have resilient systems if we're going to have a resilient country.
