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The Employment Insurance (EI) Act, which came into force with the passage of Bill C-12 in June 1996, was the most fundamental restructuring of the Unemployment Insurance program in the past 25 years. Such substantial changes are likely to affect the behaviour of many people. Given the variety of provisions contained in the Bill, various demographic groups are likely to be impacted differently and to different extents by these changes.

This research uses the fact that the implementation of Bill C-12 proceeded in two separate phases. With each phase being separated by a full quarter, it is in principle possible to estimate the impact of each by quasi-experimental methods using appropriate COEP surveys. Furthermore, given the numerous surveys available, it should also be possible to provide two separate estimates of the total impact of Bill C-12. One of the estimates relies on surveys that were relatively close to the implementation date of the Bill. It is thus important to investigate whether strategic behaviour can be detected in the data. If unaccounted for, such behaviour can seriously bias the parameter estimates obtained from quasi-experimental methods.

In general, the econometric and non-parametric results indicate that the new EI legislation has had an important negative impact on the duration of both the unemployment spells and the benefits recipiency spells. On the other hand, various demographic groups have reacted differently to the new provisions. When focusing on the duration of unemployment spells, we find that men have shortened their spells considerably more than women, and that part-time workers have reacted similarly compared to full-time workers. On the other hand, young workers do not seem to have reacted to the new provisions, whereas seasonal and non-seasonal workers have adjusted their behaviour similarly.