Mr. Speaker, I thank the member for her very important question about the program reform.

I want to thank the hon. member for her concern about this matter. I certainly understand that there are difficult and very sensitive cases among the thousands of people who receive assistance under employment insurance sickness benefits.

El sickness benefits are an important support measure for Canadians who have to leave their job due to injury or sickness.

Employment insurance sickness benefits are an important support for Canadians who have to leave their jobs because of illness or injury.

El sickness benefits provide 15 weeks of income replacement for Canadians who leave work due to short-term illness or injury. ln 2016-17, almost 379,000 new sickness claims were made, with approximately $1.6 billion being paid to beneficiaries. Sickness benefit claimants collect, on average, 10 weeks of the maximum entitlement of 15 weeks. This shows that the available coverage is sufficient in the majority of cases.

However, we are fully aware that some claimants do exhaust all 15 weeks of benefits before they are able to return to work. That said, El sickness benefits complement a range of other support measures in the case of long-term sickness or disability, including employer and private insurance programs, Canada pension plan long-term disability benefits, as well as numerous other supports provided by provinces and territories.

I want to assure my colleague that we take this issue very seriously.

I want to remind the House that we have already implemented several measures to ensure the EI program is more flexible, inclusive and easier to access.

For instance, in the past few months we have created an employment insurance family caregiver benefit for adults, which provides up 50 weeks of benefits to eligible caregivers to offer support to an adult family member who is critically ill or injured. Immediate and extended family members with critically ill children now have access to a new benefit that was only available to parents in the past. This replaces and enhances the benefits for parents with critically ill children and continues to offer a maximum of 35 weeks of benefits. In addition, medical doctors and nurse practitioners can now sign documents attesting that the child or adult is critically ill or injured. This change also applies to compassionate care benefits for providing end-of-life care to family members.

Budget 2018 announced that the government would extend the working-while-on-claim provisions to sickness and maternity benefits. This provision came into force in August. It will allow Canadians recovering from illness or injury to have much greater flexibility to stage their return to work and also keep more of their EI benefits.

As the member can see, we have already taken real action to support Canadians. I want to assure her that will continue to do our utmost to ensure the EI program is better aligned to today's labour market realities and is responsive to the needs of Canadian workers and employees.

As hon. members can see, we have taken tangible measures to support Canadians. I can assure the House that we will continue to do everything in our power to ensure that the employment insurance program is better aligned with the realities of today's labour market and can meet the needs of Canadian workers and employers.

Adam Vaughan

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