Women and the Employment Insurance Program : Femmes et le programme d'assurance-emploi

The final document expresses the views of the authors and does not necessarily represent the official policy of Status of Women Canada or the Government of Canada. [...] The length of a UI claim or the entitlement duration for regular unemployment benefits varied from 14 to 50 weeks and depended on both the number of weeks of previous employment and the unemployment rate of the region. [...] To convert to an hours-based system, the government assumed the number of weeks required under the old program would translate into hours for the new pro- gram at a rate of 35 hours a week, instead of the minimum of 15 hours a week under the old program. [...] In other words, by excluding all those workers who do not qualify for benefits, the government is able to claim the program is reaching the “target population.” In one report on maternity and parental benefits, for example, the government claimed that “approximately 80% of those who had insurable employment in the year prior to childbirth received benefits.” The author of the report took the calcu [...] As for the Monitoring and Assessment Reports from the Employment Insurance Commission, she said, “While the information reported is factually correct, in many cases the Commission did not report all the key findings and emphasized positive findings.” calculating the weekly benefit payment Even when a claimant qualifies for EI benefits, the way in which the amount of the weekly benefit is calculate