Every day the top headlines include news about factory or plant closures and layoffs, job instability across industries, and the federal government’s potential plans to support workers by investing in new or “shovel-ready” projects. Missing from the government’s plans is any meaningful, permanent change to one of the most crucial support systems that workers look to in times of turbulence: Employment Insurance (EI).
As of May 2025, only 33% of the unemployed in Canada were accessing EI, with the numbers likely even lower for low-wage workers. This rate, part of a long-term historical trend, is abysmally low and is in stark contrast to numbers before the 1990s, when more than 70% of the unemployed were covered by unemployment insurance.
ISAC and West Scarborough Community Legal Services, co-chairs of the Ontario Community Legal Clinic EI Working Group, have called on Finance Minister Champagne, Jobs and Families Minister Hajdu, and members of the Treasury Board, to endorse immediate changes to EI to make it more accessible for more workers and to increase the amount workers receive so that they will be able to pay their bills and maintain stability. The changes being called for within the letter were endorsed by 25 community legal clinics from across Ontario. You can read the full letter here.
Workers are looking to the federal government for meaningful and sufficient support. We will all be watching on November 4 when the federal budget is released, hoping the federal government makes good on its many generic promises to support workers in these times.