A day after reiterating a commitment to improve Employment Insurance access for unemployed Albertans, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said Friday that Saskatchewan and Newfoundland and Labrador are also targets for “extra help”.

“Obviously, job losses are a continuing challenge right across the country. Our unemployment rate is now at the highest level it’s been in a couple of years, nationally,” Trudeau said following a Parliament Hill meeting with Canada’s big city mayors.

“But provincially, as I heard yesterday when I was meeting with the premier in Alberta and business and community groups in Alberta, there is a real need to offer support for Albertan families, many of whom are facing the first ever experience of job losses and need for support and help.”

Friday morning, Statistics Canada released its January labour force survey results, confirming an increasingly bleak picture in Alberta — with another 10,000 jobs lost, bringing year-over-year declines to 35,000.

“The employment decrease in January raised the unemployment rate in the province to 7.4 per cent, the highest since February 1996. The unemployment rate in Alberta was higher than the national rate for the first time since December 1988,” Statistics Canada said.

But Alberta wasn’t alone.

Newfoundland and Labrador lost an additional 2,400 jobs in January, leaving the unemployment rate unchanged at 14.4 per cent. The unemployment rate in Saskatchewan, by contrast, was only 5.5 per cent.

All three, however, were mentioned by Trudeau on Friday.

“What I indicated yesterday, and what I continue to emphasize, is that the federal government is looking into improving access and strengthening EI right across the country — looking at it specifically for Alberta and Saskatchewan and other areas like Newfoundland and Labrador that may need a little extra help,” he said.

With EI benefits determined by place of residence and the regional unemployment rate, some improved access may be automatic.

Under the EI program characteristics for the period of January 10, 2016 to February 06, 2016, for example, workers in Calgary and Edmonton had to put in 630 and 655 insured hours to qualify for maximum of 38 and 40 weeks of regular benefits.

A higher reported unemployment rate should change that — a point Conservative interim leader Rona Ambrose told reporters on Parliament Hill earlier this week.

“EI is much more restricted in Alberta than it is in other parts of the country because we’ve always had such low unemployment. So there may be an opportunity to help there,” she told reporters.

“As you know, after the global crisis in 2008, our government did make changes to the EI system and when there’s a crisis in any part of the country, that’s an opportunity for the government to give more flexibility.”

Though Trudeau and Employment Minister MaryAnn Mihychuk haven’t been too detailed recently on what they plan for EI reform, Trudeau and the Liberals did make specific commitments during the 2015 campaign.

They included ending a rule that requires new workers and those reentering the workforce to accumulate 910 hours of work to qualify for Employment Insurance benefits and job training support, $500 million more per year in provincial and territorial labour market development agreements, and $200 million in training programs for workers who don’t qualify for EI.