This week, Canada’s Minister of Employment, Workforce Development and Labour, the Honourable MaryAnn Mihychuk, announced a number of improvements to Canada’s Employment Insurance program at an announcement held in Winnipeg – program improvements include:

• eliminating barriers that prevented Canadians, especially youth and newcomers, from accessing EI;
• reducing the EI waiting period from two weeks to one week, effective January 1, 2017;
• extending and expanding the current EI Working While on Claim pilot project until August 2018. This will help EI claimants stay connected to the labour market and ensure that they benefit from accepting work;
• reversing the 2012 EI changes that forced workers to travel far from home for lower-paying jobs;
• doubling the length of Work-Sharing agreements from 38 weeks to 76 weeks across Canada to help businesses retain skilled employees. This measure will help employers retain skilled employees and avoid the cost of recruitment and training. Employees can continue to work and maintain their skills while supplementing their wages with EI benefits for the days they are not working;
• improving service quality by investing $92 million over two years. This will help hire more EI call centre agents, improve employment searches and lead to other service enhancements; and
• reducing EI premiums for workers and businesses to an expected $1.61 by 2017. Premiums are currently set at $1.88.

According to the federal governmnet, these changes will mean:

• The elimination of the new entrant and re-entrant rules is expected to benefit approximately 50,000 EI claimants across Canada.
• Reducing the waiting period will provide a larger first EI payment and ease the financial pressure on Canadians when they need it most.
• To help claimants return to work, the Government will also continue to strengthen and integrate online tools such as Job Bank and Job Match.
• Extending the duration of EI benefits within the identified regions will help provide approximately 170,000 workers with financial stability until they find new employment.
• Nationally, some 33,000 claimants could benefit by the extension of the Work-Sharing agreements.

March 30, 2016, Employment Insurance Announcement