Employment Insurance (EI) is the most important economic stabilizer for workers in times of job loss, training, or transition. But most unemployed people in Canada aren’t eligible for benefits, and the benefits don’t provide enough income.

Workers need EI fixes now to address the mitigate the impacts of tariffs as well as comprehensive improvements to the program.

Our Asks

Unifor’s has proposed temporary EI measures to address the pending tariff threat, including:

Reintroduce special temporary EI qualifying measures, as provided to EI claimants during the pandemic, as an emergency response to U.S.-imposed tariffs. This includes:

• Maximum Regular benefit duration extended to 50 weeks.
• Duration calculated at 13.1% unemployment rate (or higher, if applicable).
• Minimum $500 weekly benefit floor.
• Fixed 14 best weeks of earnings used for benefit calculation.
• Automatically extending benefit duration to claimants in trade-impacted workplaces who are already on an existing EI claim, for 50 additional weeks.

In terms of permanent, long-term structural reform for Canada’s EI program, Unifor proposes the following:

• Lower the variable entrance requirement and eligibility threshold to 360 hours.
• Provide 50 weeks of regular EI benefits in all regions.
• Eliminate the separation/severance payment allocation.
• Eliminate the 50-week limit on combined special benefits, extending the reference period to 104 weeks.
• Increase the income replacement rate to 75% and raise the ceiling on insurable earnings.

In addition, Unifor proposes that the federal government should introduce the following labour adjustment supports:

• Require provinces and territories to negotiate labour adjustment advisory program (AAP) agreements with unions when workers are faced with workplace closures and increase LMDA funding to match.
• Establish the proposed tripartite Employment Insurance Council, with representation from labour, employers and government to ensure proper and consistent utilization of federal funding for adjustment centres.
• Implement a dedicated Transition Fund that enables a range of transition responses to support workers impacted by decarbonization, technological change, protection of wildlife habitats and biodiversity, climate change, and tariff-caused disruptions.