Mr. Speaker, as I listened to what the hon. member had to say, I would only mention that he needs to put all of this into context. It can hardly be said that we are not devoted to helping those on EI. The fact is that we have done a number of things and they are not just tiny things.
As a government, we are focused on what matters to Canadians: job growth, expanding the economy, investing in skills training and helping those hardest hit by the global recession. We have also worked to ensure that the EI system remains responsive to the needs of Canadians by taking prudent and reasonable action on which, in many cases, the opposition is opposed.
With respect to the EI pilot projects, on October 12, our government announced that it was extending two EI pilot projects for eight months. First, we extended the best 14 weeks pilot project for eight months. Second, we extended the working while on claim pilot project for eight months. We also announced that we were re-introducing the extended EI benefits pilot project for up to two years. That will be available for two years until September 15, 2012 or earlier if we experience sustained economy recovery. The extensions will provide additional information on labour market impacts of those pilot projects through a period of economic recovery.
We have taken many actions to help hundreds of thousands of Canadians through our improvements to the EI system and those were just a few. We have done much more. We have made timely improvements to help Canadians by providing five extra weeks of EI benefits to all Canadians on EI during the global recession. Over one million Canadians have received additional weeks of benefits, thanks to those five extra weeks of benefits included in our economic action plan.
The jobs of more than 260,000 Canadians have been protected by expanded work-sharing agreements all across Canada. These workers are being retained by companies and their skills are staying up-to-date. This is a big help to businesses across Canada and it is not a small step.
Our government is also focused on helping Canadians get back to work so they can provide for their families. We made unprecedented investments in training to this end and they were made available whether people qualified for EI or not. In 2009-10, we invested more than $4 billion in training, helping over 1.2 million Canadians. We also froze EI premium rates for 2009-10 and kept the rate increase for 2011 to help employers maintain and create jobs so that many Canadians could keep more of their hard-earned money. This can hardly be called tinkering.
Career transition assistance is helping tens of thousands of long tenured workers who need additional support for retraining to find a new job. We passed Bill C-50 which is helping approximately 190,000 long tenured workers to receive between 5 to 20 extra weeks of EI while they search for new employment. We also introduced access to EI benefits for approximately 2.6 million self-employed Canadians on a voluntary basis. This was a first for Canada.
All of this is to say that we have done our part. We have acted strongly to help Canadians through the global recession and we have done so in a responsible and reasonable way.