A logging clearcut several hours outside of Burns Lake B.C. [Photo © Andre Charbonneau]
By Andre Charbonneau
Seasonal work has a long history in Canada as major industries like fishing, farming and forestry have had to learn to adapt to the peculiarities of our climate. Domestic seasonal work, where work is only available for part of the year, is a reality that these industries have had to accept.
Since its inception in 1941, Employment Insurance (EI) was designed to help Canadians who find themselves unexpectedly unemployed, have a little more time to get back in the workforce.
Canada’s seasonal workers have had to adapt to changing conditions surrounding their work. As income from temporary employment became often not enough to properly sustain a family, seasonal workers have looked to EI to supplement their salaries in the off-season. Recent reforms attempting to limit the reliance of repeat EI users on these benefits has enraged seasonal workers who feel wrongfully targeted.
However, opinions of experts across the political spectrum agree that this method of income substitution is not an acceptable way of dealing with the problem. They also agree reforms attempting to address seasonal workers’ EI use have failed to fix the problem while only intensifying the debate.
Opposition to seasonal work
To Canadians outside the seasonal system this consistent reliance on EI benefits is often seen as a blatant and unfair abuse of security measures not designed for reliant use. Government action to prevent repeating EI applicants in 2012 attempted to force workers with EI to take jobs at down to 70 per cent of the seasonal pay.
“I think that an unduly high share of unemployment insurance benefits goes to frequent users and seasonal users,” says David Gray, a professor of economics at the University of Ottawa. “The way they are collecting their benefits is not an insurance program… They are promising to collect their payments every year without fail and for every dollar that they pay in premiums they collect something like $30 or $40 of them in benefits.”
This strong sense of opposition to seasonal workers’ use of EI, in conjunction with reports from the auditor general highlighting a $300 million overpayment in benefits, were the grounds on which the federal government justified its reforms.
According to data from Statistics Canada, three years after the reforms were initially put in place, there has been just under a 15 per cent reduction in the number of Canadians currently using EI benefits generally. The number of unemployed people that are granted EI benefits has also fallen to around 38 per cent.
Economist Erin Weir from the Canadian branch of the United Steelworkers union, says limiting how many people can receive EI is not the right approach.
“To me this concern about EI being overused is really overblown in a context where there are still 1.3 million officially unemployed Canadians,” says Weir. “If there were jobs available and people were instead choosing EI that might be a problem, but in fact there are far fewer available jobs than workers.”
Weir says that creating more jobs is the best solution for the government to address the current issues surrounding the potential for EI abuse.
However, according to recent numbers, it would seem the reforms have been almost too effective in preventing the over payment of EI benefits.
A report last fall from the Office of the Superintendent of Financial Institutions Canada, estimates that in 2015 the government will receive $3.5 billion surplus in premiums from EI contributors. This dramatic switch in the financial state of EI benefits compared to two years ago, as well as the growing decline in the number of Canadians receiving the benefits, would seem to show that the reforms have been effective.
The seasonal worker’s perspective
To people working in seasonal industries, having their jobs targeted is often viewed as an unfair and ineffective tool to address the issue. For Mary Jane Rodger, who has worked seasonally in the reforestation industry for the past five years, EI benefits were something that she and many of her colleagues relied on in order to sustain themselves between employment.
Rodger is currently the General Manager of the Medway Community Forest Cooperative but she received a limited form of EI benefits earlier this winter before getting her new job. “Take this winter for example.” she says. “By the time I got a job, I was over halfway done my EI claim, and that would not have lasted until planting started again.”
“There are people who will work the amount of time they need to and figure out how to get laid off to go back on EI, but seasonal workers are not those people,” says Rodger.
Even Gray, who views seasonal workers’ use of EI as being unsustainable, says he does not think that the current reforms are an adequate response.
“For probably 30 years or so most analysts, certainly economists, suggest the creation of a special regime for seasonal workers that would be apart from the unemployment insurance regime,” says Gray.
Rodger agrees, saying that a new system designed for seasonal workers would be an improvement from the current method of using EI benefits.
“If there was a system for seasonal workers that could guarantee some sort of income throughout the whole duration of the off-season then I would support it,” she says.
While there are conflicting opinions over what needs to be done with domestic seasonal workers, the consensus seems to be that any attempts to reform the current situation are not properly addressing the issue. With a projected $3.5 billion surplus in the EI budget, the government has the funding to explore alternative options that may actually be more than a temporary solution.
