Minister of Defence Jason Kenney takes part in a press conference in the foyer of the House of Commons on Parliament Hill in Ottawa on Monday, April 27, 2015. A backlog in processing employment insurance claims that the government has yet to clear may have partially been a result of its own two-year-old budget cuts, a recently released document suggests.A two-year-old briefing note to then-employment minister Kenney outlines how federal budget cuts in 2013 made it more difficult to process EI claims and send either a payment or a denial letter within about a month of receiving an application.THE CANADIAN PRESS/Sean Kilpatrick
Republished June 18, 2015 - 10:23 AM
Original Publication Date June 17, 2015 - 1:35 AM
OTTAWA - April was the fourth month in a row that Alberta had the biggest increase in the number of people on employment insurance, according to Statistics Canada data released Thursday.
The province saw a 10.7 per cent jump in number of EI beneficiaries in the month, bringing the total number of Albertans on EI to 43,900.
The climb marks the sixth month in a row that Alberta has seen an increase as the big fall oil prices from a year ago continues to hurt the economy. Since October, 14,900 more people have started receiving benefits in the province — an increase of 50 per cent.
Nationally, the number of people on EI climbed 0.5 per cent in April to 521,300.
British Columbia and Saskatchewan also saw increases in beneficiaries, while Prince Edward Island, Newfoundland and Labrador, Manitoba and New Brunswick saw numbers drop.
Statistics Canada said there was "little change" in Ontario, Quebec and Nova Scotia.
News from © The Canadian Press, 2015