Madam Speaker, the crisis we are going through today has hit hard. The numbers speak volumes. In barely three months, at the beginning of the crisis, the unemployment rate hit 13%. In March 2020, 167,000 women were laid off compared to 96,100 men. This crisis has been especially devastating to women, who saw their unemployment rate spike from February 2020 to December 2020, from 37% to 48%. In January, the number of long-term unemployed hit a new record at somewhere around 512,000. Still today, the market is far from being stabilized in a number of sectors including restaurants, hotels, tourism, arts and culture, aerospace, and so on.
At the beginning of the crisis, several emergency measures were adopted. Why? Because the current EI system is not equipped to respond. We are in favour of Bill C-24, which increases the number of weeks of regular EI benefits to 50 weeks. However, do we have a choice? The answer is: not really. The employment insurance system as we know it today failed to protect workers in times of crisis, but also in normal times. The current crisis revealed of the cracks in the employment insurance system.
We know that the coverage rate is just barely 40% and a little less for women. Many workers, including contract workers, part-time and casual workers and self-employed workers, are excluded from the program. Seasonal workers experience long gap periods, or periods between two periods of employment where they are without income. The government also tried to mitigate those impacts with pilot projects that were extended but never improved upon to put an end to the EI spring gap once and for all. There are also women who are on maternity or parental leave who are not eligible for regular benefits if they lose their job after they return to work.
All that to say that there are many examples to show that a comprehensive reform of the employment insurance system is necessary, and soon. On my initiative, the Standing Committee on Human Resources, Skills and Social Development and the Status of Persons with Disabilities, of which I am a member, began work on this necessary review of the EI system. I want to thank my committee colleagues for agreeing to make this study a priority. There was a lot of interest in this study and there are many witnesses who want to share their ideas about changes that should be made and solutions that should be implemented.
Need I remind members that the Minister of Employment, Workforce Development and Disability Inclusion was given the mandate of modernizing the program? Need I remind members that, in the last parliament, the minister was also given the mandate of reforming the EI program? What has been done in the past five years? Nothing. The government, through the President of the Treasury Board, even had to acknowledge last spring that the reform of the program had been put off for too long.
I would say that the time has come. Time is running out because what are we going to do when the temporary measures end? The status quo is not acceptable. The time has come to plan for changes to EI that will be structural, foreseeable and sustainable so that the objective of the program is once again to be a safety net for workers.
Furthermore, I would be remiss if I did not raise the issue of sickness benefits and the injustice that workers are suffering today. Why do we think it is acceptable that a person with cancer has only 15 weeks of sickness benefits? The Bloc Québécois has spoken several times about this issue. A motion was moved in the House and passed unanimously. A bill was also introduced. We are asking for 50 weeks of sickness benefits for sick workers and we are still waiting for the government to take concrete action on this.
The reason the EI system needs to be reformed is that, pandemic aside, the job market has undergone a number of changes in recent years, and these changes make a review of the program necessary. I will talk about a few of these changes.
The fact is that the number of workers earning minimum wage is going up. According to Statistics Canada, the proportion of minimum wage workers grew from 5.2% to 10.4% between 1998 and 2018. One in six workers make minimum wage. According to one study, just 45% of workers earning $15 an hour or less are covered by the EI program. If this trend continues, more and more workers will fall through the cracks. Furthermore, there are many factors that make it hard for workers to find a job after being laid off, such as their age, sex, race and immigration status. These workers therefore need more time to find work. The system must account for this reality and give workers the resources they need to overcome these challenges.
The job market has also seen an increase in the number of self-employed workers in recent years. Statistics Canada reports that approximately 15% of workers in 2019 were self-employed.
At the risk of repeating myself, I would say that solutions are out there, solutions that focus on eligibility criteria, qualifying hours, qualifying weeks, regional unemployment rates and the income replacement rate.
I urge the minister and the government to listen to what various groups are recommending and to start overhauling the system now.
In conclusion, if there is one thing I would like people to take away from my speech, it is this: The government clearly had to take action by means of this bill. That is why we support the bill before us. However, the government also needs to work on a long-term vision, because the crisis has exposed the many flaws in the EI program and the gaps that existed long before the pandemic. Great crisis brings great opportunity. The government should seize this opportunity to reform the system and ensure, once and for all, that all workers have access to a true 21st-century EI system.