Madam Speaker, I have a well-prepared petition from residents of York South—Weston entitled, “Fix Employment Insurance Now”.
The petitioners state that a healthy unemployment system is the most powerful of all economic stabilizers and that we have entered this new economic crisis with a much weaker EI system.
Therefore, they urgently petition Parliament to introduce these changes to employment insurance: 360 hours to qualify for EI benefits in all regions of Canada; increase benefit duration to 50 weeks for all workers in all regions; and increase benefits to at least 60% of normal earnings using workers' 12 best weeks.
Since there has been a special committee put together to look at this, I would urge that not only Parliament consider this through the RSD committee, but also that it be referred on to the special committee that will be meeting during the summer to look at fixing employment insurance.