Human Resources committee  No, I don't think this is the best way to reform employment insurance. In fact, as we outlined earlier, our concern is that the costs of this are going to make job creation and getting the economy back on track more difficult by adding additional costs to the system. The changes

Human Resources committee  No, we haven't asked them that question, but I would imagine--

Human Resources committee  Yes, and as you know, many small businesses are struggling in this economy as well. This is small business week--

Human Resources committee  No. In fact our members generally accept the basic tenets of employment insurance; that is, if somebody involuntarily loses their job, there should be a system of fair compensation for those circumstances, but I will say that with the growing shortage of labour that has been expe

Human Resources committee  We did a recent survey and we asked our members that question: Should benefit levels be more generous in employment insurance? Our members, for the most part, said the current level of benefits were appropriate. There wasn't a huge cry for a reduction in the benefits, but I will

Human Resources committee  No. In fact when we made a similar presentation to the Senate committee on the same bill we said that while we're not excited about the changes in this bill, they are less harmful than some of the other proposals for changes to employment insurance that have been proposed. We a

Human Resources committee  Yes, the creation of the CEIFB was a terrific measure, one we had pushed for for years and years. Had it been done a decade ago we would be in much better shape, because the surplus dollars would have been invested in a fund that we could then draw on in this difficult economic t

Human Resources committee  It depends on which aspect you're speaking of. The budget measures that were put in place in January that paid for the additional benefits during the recession out of general revenues we absolutely do support. It was a contribution back from the $57 billion surplus that was taken

Human Resources committee  Yes, in fact--

Human Resources committee  Yes, we do. When we did our survey--and you've got copies of this report--the majority of our members were either in favour of the current system of benefits or perhaps less generous benefits. There was a small sliver that was in favour of increasing EI benefits but by a very sma

Industry committee  Thanks very much. I thought I'd work to put some of the information that Ted shared in context and help you to determine what you, as parliamentarians, can do--and more importantly often not do--in order to help the situation. I wanted to share with you--if you look at the top

Industry committee  Sure, I can start with that. We have mixed views, quite frankly, with respect to the HST. We have members on both sides of that equation. We have surveyed our members repeatedly in different provinces of Canada. We ultimately did support the HST in the three Atlantic provinces t

Industry committee  Yes, in fact you're certainly responding to something we have noticed. The problem in rural communities is often more significant with respect to the shortage of labour than it is in larger cities. One of the reasons behind that, of course, is access to immigration. No look at ou

Industry committee  We recently did a major study on employment insurance, and in that report we did ask that the entire $57 billion be refunded—admittedly over time—back to the employment insurance fund so that we do not see these kinds of dramatic increases in premiums over the next little while.

Finance committee  I'm Dan Kelly from CFIB. I think our members have actually taken a fairly reasonable approach to getting us out of deficit insofar as I don't think there's an expectation that it's going to happen overnight. When we did some earlier surveying of our members in terms of the time