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Canada’s federal government introduced measures to aid businesses and workers on Friday, in response to trade uncertainty with the United States.

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Measures include better access to an employment insurance program and billions of dollars in funding to help businesses impacted by tariffs and to find new export markets.

Effective Friday, Ottawa introduced temporary flexibilities to an existing employment insurance (EI) scheme called the “Work-Sharing Program” which provides partial EI benefits to employees who agree to work reduced hours due to a decrease in business activity beyond their employer’s control.

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“The duration as I just outlined, will be longer, more organizations … will be permitted to have access to these funds,” said Employment and Labour Minister Steven MacKinnon, during a press conference in Ottawa.

The program is funded through the EI fund and is designed to help keep workers employed during difficult business cycles. MacKinnon confirmed that participation in the program will not impact an employee’s future eligibility for full EI benefits in the future.

On Thursday, United States President Donald Trump hit pause on 25-per-cent tariffs on Canadian and Mexican goods that complied with the Canada-United-States-Mexico Agreement (CUSMA) until April 2.

In response, the Canadian government kept its retaliatory 25-per-cent tariffs on American goods in place but hit pause on its next phase  that would have put tariffs on an additional $125 billion worth of American goods. Finance minister Dominic LeBlanc said the government will continue to push for the removal of all tariffs.

International trade minister Mary Ng said 40 per cent of Canadian exports are currently in compliance with the trade agreement.

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“Virtually all of our exports are CUSMA eligible, but because we are a free trade country and because of the WTO most favoured nation status applies to the rest of that trade, businesses don’t file paperwork to say it’s CUSMA compliant,” said Ng. “We just trade, we trade freely, openly and have been doing so for a long time.”

The federal government also committed $5 billion over two years through Export Development Canada, to help companies who face financial losses as the result of tariffs.

Additionally, $500 million of “favourably priced” loans will be made available through Business Development Bank of Canada and $1 billion in new financing will be provided through Farm Credit Canada.

Ministers confirmed on Friday that none of the new measures will be funded through retaliatory tariff revenue.

The announcement on EI falls short of what’s being asked for by the New Democratic Party and labour leaders, who would like to see more substantive changes to the employment insurance scheme including easier access, increased coverage for different types of workers and larger amounts of benefits.

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“We have four more years of chaos, what we need out of this chaos is a vision and a plan,” said Canadian Labour Congress president Bea Bruske, in a press conference alongside NDP leader Jagmeet Singh, in Ottawa.

Bruske added that she is already hearing of potential layoffs in sectors of the economy.

The Bank of Montreal estimates a full trade war with the U.S. could push Canada’s unemployment rate up to eight per cent.

Mackinnon said more substantive measures will be considered if tariffs move forward on April 2.

“We have every intention of customizing [our] response to tariffs or no tariffs, as the case may be from the United States,” he said. “Should this prove to be an enduring situation, then you can absolutely expect that we would come with further measures to protect our workers.”

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