Human Resources committee  It's a word of caution that these continual drips in the bucket will continue to burden the system. I would look to that larger EI consultation process as an opportunity to truly reform and bring us forward for the rest of this century and into others. Thank you.

Human Resources committee  I welcome the opportunity to clarify that. Skills training, upskilling and re-skilling are definitely the way of the future. There were so many trends before the pandemic and the pandemic accelerated a number of them, this included. The point is that I think, through an EI reform-modernization process, we should take a look at this.

Human Resources committee  I can. I'm not sure it's my place to, but the EI program is funded separately. It's funded by employers and employees. Employers pay seven-twelfths into the system. The employee community pays five-twelfths. It is a separately funded program.

Human Resources committee  Yes. It is also my understanding that within the current debt structure those rates were frozen for all contributors during the pandemic. We are grateful for this, but that is set to lapse this September 2022. The concern is that you can actually legislatively only increase the rates over a seven-year period by a certain amount.

Human Resources committee  Thank you. I believe your comments are very astute. Where we're talking about the budget and certain divisions and implementation, they are in the bigger EI comprehensive review. On that point, I would say I think it is worth taking these pieces out and not nibbling at the edges anymore—looking at it as a whole.

Human Resources committee  I just want to make a comment that the first four questions have come from four female MPs and I think that's wonderful. As far as the impact of its remaining versus of the impact of its being pulled is concerned, I'll leave it to my labour members because it's their members who are directly impacted.

Human Resources committee  Those principles were part of the framework of that codevelopment discussion. Again, this was all on paper and in my office, and I haven't been able to access them. They were things like client approach being first, simplicity, regionalism, in person. It was a really good process, because we would always go back to those principles as we led the development.

Human Resources committee  Thank you for the question. What we as the Canadian Chamber of Commerce have argued for and very much encouraged, even long before the pandemic, is a comprehensive review. EI is a complex and expensive system. There's part I, which we're more familiar with, but there's also part II.

Human Resources committee  Yes, that is our recommendation, one of those coming out of our response to Bill C-19 that I reiterated today for reasons that I can repeat. The changes that are proposed in division 32, part 5, of Bill C-19 are not what we expected. There is reference to the KPMG evaluation. There was also a 2018 codevelopment process that was truly tripartite.

Human Resources committee  No, I am reflecting the views of our members. When it comes to the appeals process, I will say that it is the members of our labour colleagues who are more impacted. It's their members that it focuses on. From the business community, our concerns were—and they've been discussed here by others as well—around the accountability piece and the way that it's structured.

Human Resources committee  That's correct. It was in the fall of 2018; I believe it was October 2018. There was a framework developed to modernize the SST process. It did look very much like the previous one, to be honest. A lot of the ways did lead to that previous structure. Again, in 2019, through announcements, we were led to believe that framework was going ahead, and this is not what we're seeing in its entirety within division 32 of Bill C-19.

Human Resources committee  I don't think we need to revisit, consult or return to another consultation process. I believe, to be honest, that those consultation processes were well done. They were tripartite, and agreements were received together. Those recommendations that came into that framework in 2018 were by all three parties that are part of the EI Commission.

Human Resources committee  Good morning and thank you, Mr. Chair, vice-chairs and committee members. It's a pleasure to be here this morning to make an appearance regarding certain divisions of part 5 of Bill C-19. I'm speaking today from Ottawa, the traditional unceded territory of the Algonquin Anishinabe peoples.

Human Resources committee  Thank you, MP, for that question. It is an excellent question. We can talk about temporary foreign workers specifically, but writ large, I think this comes back to the importance of labour market information. When you talk about immigration levels in the country, about how many immigrants we should let in and in what professions, we need that information to drive this, not only from a professional point of view but also from a regional or geographical point of view as well.

Human Resources committee  There are a number of those. What I would argue around the continued devolution is that you can't have a pilot project in every riding in this country, so then we have to start looking at going from the pilot to incorporating it into the larger stream as well. Again, COVID did throw a wrench into the role of northern pilot programs, so the data is a little delayed there.