Jim Freeman had his fingers crossed Tuesday, hoping the new federal budget would do something to even up how employment insurance (EI) benefits are doled out across Canada.
“It's very, very unfair,” Mr. Freeman said of the system, under which it takes less time for people who lose their jobs in regions where unemployment is especially high to qualify for EI benefits and lets them collect for longer. Critics – and there are many – contend this has put regions where unemployment has traditionally been low, such as southern Ontario, at a grave disadvantage.
Mr. Freeman had especially good reasons to be concerned about the issue.
He is chairman of the Durham Regional Labour Council in Oshawa, and also works for battered General Motors of Canada Ltd., the southern Ontario city's largest employer, which, like the other Detroit-based auto makers, has been bleeding jobs for months.
Figures Statistics Canada released Tuesday morning showed that in November, for the third month in a row Oshawa had the dubious honour of boasting the biggest increase of any Canadian city in the number of residents receiving regular EI payments. The number came in at 4,200, up 99.1 per cent from 2,110 in November, 2007.
In all, more than half a million Canadians received regular employment insurance (EI) benefits in November, up 3.1 per cent from the preceding month and 12.3 per cent from a year earlier, Statscan said.
The sharp increase is perhaps no surprise, since unemployment figures released last month by the federal agency showed 70,600 jobs disappeared across the country in November, the worst monthly loss since 1982.
However, the jump in the EI numbers come at a time when the federal government is under renewed pressure from the provinces and from business and labour to revamp the system and make the benefits it provides uniform across the country.
In particular, the November figures demonstrated the damage done to southern Ontario – where qualification requirements for EI are among the highest in Canada – by the sharp contraction of the North American auto industry.
The second-biggest jump in the number of regular EI beneficiaries in terms of census metropolitan areas in the past year came – again for the third consecutive month – in Windsor, which sits across the Detroit river from Motor City U.S.A. and bills itself as the Automotive Capital of Canada. There, the figure leaped by 57.9 per cent to 5,180.
Windsor Mayor Eddie Francis said he was not surprised. The key reason he said, is that severance payments granted to laid off auto workers in the area have been coming to an end.
“It was just a matter of time until the EI numbers reflected that,” Mr. Francis said, adding that with about 20,000 unemployed, Windsor has a jobless rate of 10.2 per cent, the highest of any city in the country. “We've been warning against that for quite some time.”
The mayor also said that “levelling the playing field” when it comes to access to EI benefits is “a real issue,” especially when it comes to being able to retain a skilled work force.
According to the current rules, in parts of Newfoundland and Labrador, where unemployment is above 13 per cent, a person needs to have worked just 420 hours to qualify and could receive EI payments for as much as 45 weeks.
By contrast, in cities such as Calgary or Toronto, where unemployment is running at less than 6 per cent, workers must put in 700 hours of labour to qualify and can count on being paid benefits for only 36 weeks in all.
Ontario Premier Dalton McGuinty has complained that only 30 per cent of jobless Ontarians receive regular benefits, compared to 58 per cent in other provinces and that this, in turn, means fewer workers in the province are eligible for training programs under the EI scheme.
Statscan's seasonally adjusted figures showed that 506,320 people received regular EI payments in November, an increase of 15,300 from October and of 48,700 from November, 2007.
As a result, the program paid out more than $1.29-billion in benefits, up from $1.03-billion in October and $1.05-billion in November the previous year, Statscan said, while payments for the first 11 months of 2008 totalled $13.7-billion, up 3.4 per cent.
The number of men receiving benefits increased by 17.1 per cent to about 262,900 and the number of women recipients rose by 6.1 per cent to 180,300, the agency said.
The number of regular EI beneficiaries jumped in all provinces and territories, according to the Statscan report.
The biggest jumps came in Ontario, up by 28.2 per cent to 157,910, British Columbia up 24.6 per cent to 46,120, Nunavut up 21.9 per cent to 390, Yukon up 21.3 per cent to 910 and Alberta, up 19 per cent to 18,570.
In absolute numbers, major cities continued to dominate.
Toronto headed the list with 48,130 EI beneficiaries in November, up nearly 25 per cent from 38,540 a year earlier. Montreal ranked second, with 44,230 receiving benefits, compared with 43,250, while Vancouver ranked third, with 16,460, up 25.4 per cent from 13,130.
