Law Commons^™

The Impact Of Regionally Differentiated Entitlement To Ei On Charter-Protected Canadians, Sujit Choudhry, Michael Pal

Sujit Choudhry

Under Canada’s Employment Insurance (EI) program, access to unemployment benefits varies according to the regional unemployment rate. Previous studies have shown that this regime works to the disadvantage of certain provinces and urban areas. In this paper we measure the impact of the variable regional entrance requirements on specific minority workers, including visible minorities, linguistic minorities, recent immigrants, and naturalized citizens. We find that over the period 2000-2010, the regional variation in access to EI results in certain minority workers being required to work modestly more hours to qualify for EI than the average worker. Though the findings with regard …