TORONTO—Unifor welcomes the Canadian tariff countermeasures announced today but is reiterating the union’s call for stronger industrial policies and income security measures, as the trade war with the United States escalates.
“Unifor has long called for Canada to fight back against Trump tariffs designed to target Canada’s industrial base and force concessions from Canada,” said Unifor National President Lana Payne. “The Canadian counter-tariffs are a good first response, but we need to take action at home to keep workers on the job by fast-tracking procurement dollars, implementing national industrial strategies, and calling on corporate Canada to step up and Buy Canadian.”
In addition to dollar-for-dollar counter-tariffs on $27.6 billion worth of U.S. goods, the federal government also announced several changes to Employment Insurance (EI).
The measures include extending the waiver of the one-week EI waiting period and allowing workers to receive EI without first using up separation payments, both through October 2027. They also extend the Work-Sharing Program to March 2027 and provide an additional 20 weeks of EI for long-serving workers only, through June 2027.
New measures will also allow workers who voluntarily leave their jobs to collect EI without penalty and help connect unemployed and underemployed workers with major projects that are hiring.
However, these measures still fall short of what workers need, as the government failed to address some of the biggest gaps in Canada’s EI system, including lowering qualifying hours for part-time, part-year, seasonal and precarious workers, improving EI benefit rates or introducing a minimum benefit, and broadly extending benefit durations beyond the additional 20 weeks available only to long-serving workers.
“Workers are being asked to absorb the economic shock of a trade war they did not start and cannot control. These EI measures will provide some welcome relief, but they are temporary fixes to a much bigger problem,” said Unifor Quebec Director Daniel Cloutier. “Workers need income security they can count on, not a patchwork of measures that expires when the next deadline passes. As this trade war continues, the federal government must be ready to go further to protect workers, support communities and ensure people are not left carrying the cost of this escalating fight.”