The federal NDP says it's time the Conservative government made it easier for people to get employment insurance benefits.

B.C. Southern Interior MP Alex Atamanenko told CBC News he has received numerous calls from recently unemployed people who can't access EI benefits.

"Statistics show roughly 60 or 70 per cent of people who don't have a job aren't eligible in the system as it currently stands. That's a huge amount of people," he said.

"If anything, we should be making it easier for people to qualify. We've paid billions into this fund [and] at the same time the government has made it harder for people to collect the benefits they've paid into."

In a news release, the federal New Democrats said Statistics Canada numbers show only 43 per cent of unemployed Canadians and only 39 per cent of unemployed women currently qualify for EI under the government's regulations.

The federal NDP is asking the government to eliminate the waiting period for EI, reduce the number of work hours needed to qualify, expand eligibility to include self-employed workers and encourage retraining.