Mr. Speaker, I pleased to respond to the contention of the member for Acadie—Bathurst that access to employment insurance is severely restricted.
Access is an issue the Government of Canada closely monitors through the EI Commission's annual monitoring and assessment report. However, unlike what the member opposite would contend, successive reports have clearly shown that EI is meeting its objectives. For example, the 2005 report demonstrated that EI was sufficiently assisting Canadians experiencing temporary unemployment in terms of both the amount and duration of benefits. Indeed, over 80% of unemployed Canadians who pay into the program and had recent qualified job separation were eligible for benefits.
The story is similar when looking at EI special benefits with 90% of employees qualifying should they be unable to work for reasons of sickness, childbirth, parenting or because they are providing care to a gravely ill family member.
I should note that the member opposite when raising the topic of EI will often reference a figure known as the beneficiary to unemployment ratio or B/U ratio to suggest between 62% to 68% of Canadians are denied EI benefits. This is a flawed measure, presenting a distorted picture of access to EI.
First, it includes those unemployed individuals who have not paid premiums like the self-employed and those who have never worked or who have not worked in the past year.
Second, this measure includes those who paid premiums but are ineligible for EI because they voluntarily quit their job or were unemployed for less than two weeks.
As I indicated earlier, if we look at those for which the program is actually designed, people who have lost a job through no fault of their own, perhaps due to restructuring or a shortage of work, access is very high at over 80%. Moreover, evidence also indicates that access is at least as high in areas of relatively high unemployment as it is in other areas.
If we were, as the member opposite has suggested, to significantly reduce entrance requirements, this would have a marginal impact on the number of additional people qualifying for benefits and would disproportionately benefit those living in regions with low unemployment rates. Moreover, reducing entrance requirements may create disincentives to work as research has shown a significant number of individuals may choose not to work beyond the minimum entrance requirements.
Nevertheless, to reflect differences in unemployment rates across regions, the EI program uses a variable entrance requirement for eligibility, adjusted monthly in each region based on the latest unemployment statistics. Accordingly, when a region's unemployment rate rises, the entrance requirement lowers and the benefit duration increases, allowing for an extended job search period. This measure helps provide consistently high program access. For example, as a result of the variable entrance requirement, individuals with the equivalent of 12 weeks work in a high unemployment zone can access between 31 and 37 weeks of benefits.
Therefore, I would like to again suggest that the member needs to understand the framework of employment insurance and why it has been set up as it is.
