Proceedings on the bill entitled An Act relating to certain measures in response to COVID-19  Mr. Speaker, I understand. I am here today, we will be here tonight and I will be before the Senate in a few days. Frankly, this is an urgent matter. We decided to include these benefits in legislation that will help Canadians much more than the CERB did. It is far better to make

Proceedings on the bill entitled An Act relating to certain measures in response to COVID-19  Mr. Speaker, let me correct the record. I recently had a meeting of all employment ministers in provincial and territorial governments and spoke with them directly about the three new benefits we intended to create. I respectfully requested that they amend their labour codes so t

Proceedings on the bill entitled An Act relating to certain measures in response to COVID-19  Mr. Speaker, we have been working together for a long time to help Canadians during this pandemic. It truly is an emergency. We all agree on that. My government colleagues and I are listening to the opposition parties. We are aware of their concerns about the CERB and we unders

Proceedings on the bill entitled An Act relating to certain measures in response to COVID-19  Mr. Speaker, I certainly can. In fact, I can advise the House that we are working with every employer that has a sub-plan to ensure that it is as seamless as possible, working with individual employees, and that nobody is put in a situation that is untenable, given their individu

Proceedings on the bill entitled An Act relating to certain measures in response to COVID-19  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

Proceedings on the bill entitled An Act relating to certain measures in response to COVID-19  Mr. Speaker, we told Canadians over a month ago of our plan to transition from the CERB to EI. We talked about the changes made to the system that would allow more people to transition to EI. We said we were going to create three new benefits, namely, the Canada recovery benefi

COVID-19 Response Measures Act  moved for leave to introduce Bill C-4, An Act relating to certain measures in response to COVID-19. (Motions deemed adopted, bill read the first time and printed)

Employment Insurance  Mr. Speaker, I can assure every member in this House that we are taking robust steps to make sure that everybody is encouraged to work when it is safe for them to do so, that when they are available to work they take job offers and that they are put in a position to work in healt

COVID-19 Economic Recovery Act  moved for leave to introduce Bill C-2, An Act relating to economic recovery in response to COVID-19. (Motions deemed adopted, bill read the first time and printed)

COVID-19 Pandemic and Other Matters  Mr. Chair, we understand how concerned a number of individuals are with the number of hours they have with respect to EI eligibility. It is definitely one of the issues that has been top of mind for me as we have rebuilt the system to ensure it is ready to ingest the millions of

COVID-19 Pandemic and Other Matters  Mr. Chair, I can assure you that I am working on that. I understand that Service Canada and my officials are working hand in hand to ensure that problem is addressed. Honestly, I want to ensure that everything we do is done well and done properly. I will not do a situation halfwa

COVID-19 Pandemic and Other Matters  Mr. Chair, in some ways the CERB was a very blunt instrument that we had to implement during a time of crisis, and it has benefited over eight million Canadians. I make no apologies for doing that. Transitioning people back to EI allows us to use our more sophisticated system,

COVID-19 Pandemic and Other Matters  Mr. Chair, one of the reasons we put in place the CERB was that the EI system could not ingest the millions of people we knew would need help. We have been working since March 15 to address that and I am confident that, come the beginning of September, people will transition into

COVID-19 Pandemic and Other Matters  Mr. Chair, as I have explained for the member directly on a number of occasions, and I am happy to explain again, the EI account is tabulated based on premiums at the end of each fiscal year. That number is published in mid-fall, I believe. Again, I am happy to give him the same

COVID-19 Pandemic and Other Matters  Mr. Chair, my focus has been on transitioning people to the existing EI system. It is robust. It is ready to ingest the millions of Canadians it needs to. We are going to ensure that no one is left behind. We have started our process by creating a national, uniform unemployment r