Blondine Savoie, a fish plant worker in remote Pokemouche, N.B., starts her first shift of the season this week to sort and clean snow crab. If the catch is generous this year, Savoie, 48, will likely work a total of 14 weeks. The other 38 weeks, she will support herself with Employment Insurance.

Sartaj Teeth spent two years working as a machine operator at the Progressive Moulded Products Ltd. plant in Vaughan. He was laid off in March when the auto-parts factory unexpectedly shut down. Despite the thousands of hours the Etobicoke resident had worked, he was awarded only 28 weeks of EI. His benefits ran out in December.

Both Savoie and Teeth completed the minimum hours needed to qualify for benefits. They both paid into the weekly insurance premiums on every paycheque. So why the 10-week difference in their payout?

It comes down to geography.

Under the current system, access to EI, how quickly you get it, and how long you have it for, depends on the unemployment rate of the region you live in. The lower the unemployment rate in your region, the more hours of work needed to qualify. In Toronto, workers need between 595-700 hours to be eligible. In areas of high unemployment, the qualifying conditions drop to 420 hours, allowing more people access to EI with fewer hours of work.

Historically, the theory behind the system made sense. Where there is low unemployment, there should naturally be an abundance of jobs. But as job losses mount in Toronto and manufacturing jobs become obsolete, this no longer holds true. Full-time work is being replaced by temporary, contract, part-time, and self-employed work – jobs that normally don't fit well under the current EI rules. So, unemployed workers across the GTA, who have contributed into the system for years, are now losing out when they need it the most.

Last month, just 23 per cent of unemployed workers in Toronto received benefits, compared with 31 per cent in Ontario, and 44 per cent nationwide. In Quebec, New Brunswick and Newfoundland, the numbers were significantly higher – 56, 90 and 99 per cent coverage, respectively.

"I tried to find out why there is this inconsistency," said Teeth, when he realized how little he would be getting. "But after a few months, I stopped asking. I felt like I was begging for money. It's against my principles."

The biggest problem, said Teeth, is a lack of transparency. "You don't know how they calculate your hours, how they process your case. Why is it different for everyone?"

Even more maddening for Teeth, was the variation within his company. One of his co-workers received 38 weeks of benefits when she was laid off last July. Others, he heard, got 43 weeks.

This regional discrepancy in EI allocation has become a hot-button issue in Ottawa – with opposition parties threatening to make it an election issue. Calls for reform are getting louder, backed by a national consensus among unions, academics, economists and provincial politicians that the current system is in need of an overhaul.

All three opposition parties are demanding uniform countrywide requirements of 360 hours – around 10 weeks – to qualify, and benefits extending up to 50 weeks for all workers. That change, Liberal Leader Michael Ignatieff has said, would provide coverage to an additional 150,000 unemployed workers.

But last week, Stephen Harper rejected the Liberal proposal, arguing that any changes to EI would come with payroll increases.

Moreover, the Tories say they have already helped address the problem by offering a 5-week extension of benefits to those on EI.

But that's a handout 75 per cent of Torontonians can't tap into because they don't qualify, or have already used up their benefits before the policy came into place March 1.

It is not going to get better anytime soon, said Michael Mendelson, a senior scholar with the Caledon Institute of Social Policy, as more workers turn to non-traditional jobs to help them through the downturn.

In Pokemouche, work is inconsistent, said Savoie. Some days, she spent 12 hours at the plant. Often, weeks go by without a call. As work dwindles, so has optimism. "We are a depressed area," she said.

Savoie moved back from Moncton to live with her mom. She has no doubt, one day she will be forced to move again.

"To tell you the truth, there are no more fish left in the ocean," she said. Savoie spends the year scrounging up enough work between the local snow crab plant and a herring processing plant to make up her best 14 weeks to put toward EI. Her region is one of 23 across the country, where the Best 14 weeks pilot project was implemented in 2005, allowing workers to submit the best 14 of 52 weeks.

Elsewhere in the country, EI is calculated using the average earnings over the past 26 weeks – a formula critics say discriminates against workers with irregular jobs, since they often work reduced hours or part-time. Labour advocates are pushing to see this changed so benefits can be calculated based on the best 12 weeks of earning from the previous 26 weeks.

To Savoie, Toronto seems like the land of opportunity, a place where if one looked hard enough there is always a job available. "If I was in Toronto, I would work at the local Tim Hortons," she said.

Carla Chavarria, a laid off sewing machine operator, has tried just that. She was laid off from Cases Unlimited last June and has been unable to find permanent work since. She works a month here and there, in hopes of extending her EI as long as she can. She knows the likelihood of landing full-time work is slim. So she's re-training, polishing up her English, and hoping to launch a second career in early childhood education. But at 44, she admits it's not easy to start over.

Teeth is equally frustrated.

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"Everyone says there are so many jobs here. I have been running pillar to post (looking for) a job. Where are they? He has sent out dozens of resumés to temp agencies since December. A doctor in India, Teeth landed work as a baker for a few days last month. Now he is working part time at the PMP Job Action Centre as a peer helper, making $160 a week, guiding others just like him through the EI process.

"I have to survive somehow," he said. It's hardly enough, but it is reliable. He is hopeful by the time he finds a permanent job, Ottawa will have taken action on fixing EI.

"We are the workers of this country," he said passionately. "We are willing to work hard. We have put our money into the system. It is the government's turn to pay us back."