CBC Digital Archives

Employment Insurance: A Maritime way of life?

Employment insurance is a legacy of the Great Depression, and remains a pillar of Canada's social safety net. The system was created to provide an income while unemployed workers find new jobs, but expanded to include seasonal workers, new parents and those caring for ill relatives. Canada's EI system was once among the most generous plans in the world, but tightened rules in 1996 brought surpluses in the billions of dollars. CBC Digital Archives documents how employment insurance has evolved since 1941.

In the recession of the early 1980s, unemployment has hit the Maritimes hard. But there's one place where business is booming: the Canada Employment Centre. With more claimants needing service every month, the centre has been on a hiring streak just to keep up. Elsewhere, however, most of the jobs available seem to be short-term government creations that last just long enough for workers to qualify for unemployment insurance. This episode of the program Inquiry, based in Halifax, probes the endless cycle of dead-end jobs and UI dependency. 
• Due to the seasonal nature of much of the work in the Atlantic provinces (for example, fishery work), unemployment rates there have long been higher than in the rest of Canada. In 1983, the year of this clip, the overall rate of unemployment was 12 per cent. In Newfoundland and Labrador, it was 18.1 per cent; P.E.I., 12.2 per cent; Nova Scotia, 13.4 percent and New Brunswick, 14.9 per cent. • In 1984 Newfoundland and Labrador received $3.38 in UI benefits for every $1 in contributions. In P.E.I., the number was $2.83; in New Brunswick, $2.24, and in Nova Scotia, $1.40. The figures for Quebec and B.C. were nearly identical at $1.24 and $1.22, respectively. Ontario, Manitoba, Saskatchewan and Alberta all received less in benefits than they contributed.

• In November 1983 the Canadian Mental Health Association said high unemployment was causing depression, anxiety and mental illness in hundreds of thousands of Canadians. It also said that government statistics calculating unemployment at 11 per cent were inaccurate since so many Canadians had given up looking for work. The real number, it said, was closer to 19 per cent.

• A 2005 Statistics Canada study found that between 1993 and 2001, 15 per cent of unemployed people accounted for 41 per cent of the nation's unemployment during the period. This means a small group of people had repeated bouts of unemployment over those eight years. People in the Atlantic provinces made up 8.5 per cent of the nation's labour force but accounted for 16.6 per cent of the chronically unemployed.

Medium: Television
Program: Inquiry-Halifax Edition
Broadcast Date: April 27, 1983
Guest(s): Primrose James
Host: Ian Parker, Susan Murray
Duration: 25:19

Last updated: February 8, 2012

Page consulted on May 3, 2013

All Clips from this Topic

Related Content

Maritimes hit by ice storm

A day braving the storm.

Cuts come to employment insurance

In 1996, benefits are slashed and qualifying periods increase for Canada's unemployed.

West helps East with cod fishery woes

Remembering the help they got during the 1930s drought, the West is now helping out with Easte...

Employment Insurance: Forget Commission seeks...

Business owners offer their perspectives on how the UI system should be overhauled.

Employment Insurance: Unemployment reaches al...

The crippling recession of 1982 forces a record percentage of Canadians out of work.