The Grinch who stole EI from impoverished students

I got a sternly worded note from someone yesterday who must have heard me say something or read something about my position on the EI for PSE students program. That’s the program that allowed students who were eligible for EI to collect it while going to school and - crucially - not have to work while in school.

The program was cancelled. I read a few numbers but it impact several thousand students - 5,000? 7,000?

This person was not happy to say the least. What right do I have to deprive these students of thousands of dollars they used to help get through university?

I didn’t think it was good policy for a number of reasons. First, this program was only available in NB and PEI. Second, it removed some share of those thousands from working part time jobs. Historically, the student workforce is a vital workforce for part time jobs in retail, food service, etc. It continues to amaze me that Fredericton - the home of the largest share of PSE students - has stores and restaurants that are not opening full hours because of a lack of staff. Third, I think for many a 15-20 hour job during school is part of the experience. Working part time helps prepare young people for the day when they will be in the workforce full time.

But the bigger issue for me is this use of the EI program as a catch all income support program for many different targeted groups. I am quickly getting to the position that we should fully reform EI back to its original conception - a robust and widely available program for people who lose a job and are robustly looking for a new one. In the interim, the program should be there to help them get through a hopefully short period of unemployment.

Think of these data points. In Newfoundland and Labrador, 33% of people over the age of 65 who had employment income in 2019, also received EI income. In non-urban New Brunswick it was 31%. The EI program is an income support program for 24,000+ seniors in Atlantic Canada.

I was told this week that construction is still the largest sector for EI usage in Canada even as we have a recognized and serious shortage of construction workers.

The EI program has drifted so far from its original mandate (or the concept of unemployment insurance in general).

If you want to provide income payments to specific target groups, maybe we should decouple those payments from the EI program. If you want to pay students several thousands bucks to not work, why restrict it to those eligible for EI? How is that fair? Why not give it to all students?

Using the EI program as a vehicle to provide income support has distorted the program, in my opinion. If we had a robust, widely available EI program but that was serious and insistent about the requirement for people to actually look for work, I think it would be a stronger program - provide better support to actual unemployed persons and not be a drag on the labour market.

Back in the late 1980s I knew someone who used to quit and go on EI every couple of years - he called it “unemployment enjoyment”. An immigrant friend of ours lost his job as his employer was downsizing and his colleagues told him to “take the summer off and relax”. He could start looking for work when his EI was closer to running out. Then there was that carpenter who worked at Kings Landing but was grousing because carpenters in northern New Brunswick needed fewer weeks to be eligible for EI. Even as there were dozens and dozens of jobs available for carpenters in central New Brunswick, this guy was entitled to go on EI every year and he didn’t feel it was fair that he had to work more weeks in order to get his EI cheques.

Everyone has stories like this.

In a period of growing labour shortages, this is not the time to have tens of thousands of people across a small province like New Brunswick collecting EI and while collecting this EI not looking for work.