Mr. Speaker, we made a lot of effort and took a lot of time in the past six weeks telling Canadians what the plan was to transition from the CERB to EI, what the new benefits would look like, and I would say “retroactive or not”. A lot of women out there, because of the credit of EI hours, will be able to get retroactive maternity leave and parental leave. That is not just a thing one says, it is an important aspect of this transition.
We all know that the EI system was clunky and unable to serve us well when the pandemic hit. People have been working flat out to make changes and fix the system so we can now offer these better situations for Canadians. It is incredibly unfair to the people who have worked so hard to get us here to say that somehow they were not working hard enough.