DCHP-2

employment insurance Employment Insurance, EI DCHP-2 (June 2016)

• n. & adj. — Administration, Law; euphemism (see fist note)

  temporary support payments for qualified workers who have been laid off, who are sick, injured or quarantined, or who are caring for a new infant or for a critically ill family member.

  Type: 1. Origin — Discussions of support for the unemployed in Canada began with the need to integrate returning soldiers after WWI. However, the first federal program dates from 1940 with the passage of the Unemployment Insurance Act. The name change from unemployment insurance (or UI) to Employment Insurance (or EI) solidified in the mid-1990s (see the 1994 quotation). The renaming was enacted in law in 1996 (Bill C-12, see the Maple Leaf Web reference), yet the antecedents of the change are much older (see the 1978 quotation). Today, the program is still often called by its previous name (see the 2013 quotation, see also the Maple Leaf Web reference).
  Note that employment insurance is offered not only to the unemployed, but also to the long-term sick, the pregnant, and those caring for a newborn, newly-adopted, or seriously ill family member.
  See also COD-2, which marks the term "Cdn".

  See also: EI  unemployment insurance  UI  Unemployment Insurance Commission  UIC  unemployment  

  • The shift from the term unemployment insurance to employment insurance reflects a desire to wipe out the long-standing stigma against the jobless that sees them as lazy rather than subject to economic and social forces beyond their control.