On January 16, the Langley Chamber, joined by other chambers of commerce from across BC, met with Carla Qualtrough, the federal Minister of Employment, Workforce Development and Disability Inclusion to discuss ongoing labour challenges for BC businesses, workforce development opportunities, and to advocate against expansions to the Employment Insurance (EI) program. 

During the meeting and in further communications, the Langley Chamber highlighted the $27.2 billion deficit that the EI program is facing -- driven largely by expansions made to it during the COVID-19 pandemic.   The Langley Chamber urged the Minister to use federal funds to rebalance the program instead of relying on higher premiums on employers. 

In addition, the Langley Chamber noted ongoing efforts by the government to expand and modernize the EI program, pushing back on any changes that would increase costs to business at this time. 

The Langley Chamber also advocated for maintaining key elements of EI, which some have called to be removed, including:

• Keeping ties to local unemployment rates
  • Currently, EI uses local unemployment rates to determine both eligibility for the program and the extent of benefits.  Some have called for this to be scrapped, but the Chamber believes this would ignore the needs and realities of the local job market
• Maintaining and strengthening the requirement to look for work
  • In areas, like Langley, with persistent low unemployment, the EI program should have more robust job search requirements and resources to help people get back to work and fill vacant positions in our economy

Read our letter to the Minister outlining our EI recommendations