Despite an unemployment rate of 10 per cent, Central Ontario residents are being penalized by the EI system, says New Tecumseth Mayor Mike MacEachern.

“The EI system is flawed, and it penalized people who have chosen self-employment to make a living. We should be adding our voice to those saying the system should be seriously overhauled,” MacEachern told his county council colleagues Tuesday.

Delivering social services for the entire region, the county is in a prime position to comment on how provincial programs affect residents.

Locally, unemployment is higher than Toronto’s 8.9 per cent. The number of hours required to access the program is 560, with coverage ranging from 23 to 47 weeks, while in Ottawa, those numbers are 19 and 41, and in Windsor, 31 and 50, a county staff report says.

Further, said MacEachern, who is the executive director of Focus Community Development Corporation, which helps refer people to the best agency or program to help them improve their quality of life, added the EI system changes have been purely cosmetic.

“As much as 60 per cent of unemployed Canadians cannot access those benefits, even though they paid into them. It’s not a fair system,” he said. “(Changes) shouldn’t be cosmetic, to placate people. It needs to be overhauled.”

Along with the self-employed, those not eligible for EI include those out of work for an extended period of time, as well as those who voluntarily quit a job; Talon noted the number totals about 50,000 Canadians, and as national unemployment rates rise, that would increase.

A move to bolster EI earnings to base the insurance on the best 14 weeks of earnings won’t help Simcoe County residents, explained Terry Talon, the county’s social services general manager. The region’s 6.6 per cent poverty rate could rise, as the recession continues and the length of unemployment increases.

The hole that allows the self-employed to fall through the cracks is the prime challenge a federal parliamentary working group will be examining this summer; part of a deal to avert a summer election, the group is to examine eligibility criteria that will allow self-employed Canadians to participate in the insurance program as well as make the program more fair across the country.

A report is to be issued in late September.