Madam Speaker, the third petition is from all across Canada and it is with regard to unemployment insurance.
The petitioners note that the so-called recovery still means that a large number of people are unemployed. It is important to have a social safety net to help regular Canadians through tough times and therefore reforms to the EI rules need to be made.
The petitioners suggest eliminating the two week waiting period, reducing the qualifying period to a minimum of 360 hours of work, allowing self-employed workers to participate in the plan, raising the rate of benefits of 60%, basing benefits on the best 12 weeks in the qualifying period and encouraging training and retraining.