'Disappointed and concerned' Alberta Labour minister seeks EI clarity from Ottawa
Alberta's Labour Minister is calling on the federal government to review the enhanced Employment Insurance benefits outlined in last week's federal budget to make sure they go towards the regions that are most in need of them.
"This arbitrary cut-off that they've imposed has left us with the situation where Edmonton actually has higher unemployment than some of the regions that were included elsewhere," Christina Gray told CBC Radio's The House.
The federal government selected 12 hard hit regions that would get help with extra weeks of EI benefits for jobless workers, including parts of Alberta as well as Newfoundland and Labrador, northern British Columbia, northern Ontario, northern Saskatchewan and Saskatoon, Whitehorse and Nunavut.
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has maintained the decision to target those 12 specific regions was based on "cold, hard mathematics" and not a political choice to cut out other areas suffering from the downturn in the oil sector, such as Edmonton, or Atlantic Canada.
"The fact is we can be reassured that we are making decisions based on evidence and not on popularity or political convenience," Trudeau said in Edmonton earlier this week while also promising that Ottawa would monitor the situation.
The 12 regions share what Finance Minister Bill Morneau called "sharp increases in unemployment that have been sustained," or what the budget describes as a two per cent increase in unemployment rates over a three-month period over the last year "without showing significant signs of recovery."
Gray told The House she and Alberta Premier Rachel Notley have tried, unsuccessfully, to get more information from the federal government about how the changes to the program will be assessed and reviewed.
"It's been a little frustrating because the clarity as to when this will be re-evaluated hasn't come through. Because if it's re-evaluated a year from now that's not going to work. I'd really like to see that clarity right away," she said.
Gray said she plans to continue to press her federal counterpart, because she was 'disappointed and concerned' to see Edmonton excluded in the first place.
"We've been asking. If they are going to re-evaluate, is that something that will happen in real time, month-by-month as unemployment numbers come in? Or is that something happening a year from now?"
The new system, designed to last about a year, begins in July and is retroactive to January 2015.