OTTAWA — A federal department is reconsidering the boundaries that determine how workers in different areas qualify for employment insurance. Duclos said the objective needs to be making the EI system better and not about picking “who wins and who loses. Alberta has zones centred on Edmonton and Calgary that include some suburban and surrounding rural areas but not others. After oil prices crashed, the Edmonton region was at first excluded from a 2016 boost to EI benefits, leading to complaints from people who worked in the oilpatch but had permanent addresses in the city. Officials discussed using unemployment rates in the review by looking at long-term trends rather than at a single point in time.

Source: National Post June 09, 2019 14:15 UTC