Canada's New Benefit System Leaves A Third Of The Jobless Out In The Cold: Report
MONTREAL ― The federal government should quickly update its plans for emergency unemployment benefits to include a large group of jobless Canadians who have fallen through the cracks of the new system, a report from a progressive think tank says.
The report from the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives says some 862,000 people ― or nearly one-third of the estimated 2.7 million Canadians who were unemployed at the end of March ― will get no help from either the Employment Insurance program or the new Canada Emergency Response Benefit (CERB).
Watch: Reasons why you can’t get the new CERB benefit. Story continues below.
To qualify for the CERB, you have to have lost your job as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, but 1.2 million Canadians were already unemployed when the crisis hit, report author David Macdonald pointed out. Of those, only half, or about 600,000, qualify for Employment Insurance.
“If you were unemployed before COVID-19 hit, you get nothing from CERB, even though the prospects of finding work right now are virtually non-existent,” Macdonald said in a statement.
Of those who lost their job since COVID-19 hit, some 200,000 won’t qualify for CERB because they won’t meet the requirement of having earned a minimum of $5,000 in the previous year, he said.
The sectors most affected have many precarious or part-time workers, such as hospitality, retail and seasonal industries, where many may not have made $5,000 in the past year, Macdonald said.
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