Introduction

Canada’s Employment Insurance (EI) system is predicated on the need for automatic economic stabilization at times of labour market upheaval. A well-functioning system of unemployment insurance is one of the most effective means of quickly and significantly stabilizing communities and the larger economy when unemployment is on the rise.2 The Depression of the 1930s demonstrated the economic folly of relying on meagre means-tested social assistance.

Our country’s EI system is also mandated to meet other broad economic and social objectives including income maintenance during episodic separations from work such as parenting or sickness. There’s a heavy economic price to pay in countries like the U.S. where this is not done.