Employment Insurance (EI)

Decision

[1] I am allowing the Application to Rescind or Amend. The Applicant has proved that there is a reason to reopen and change the decision issued by the Social Security Tribunal’s General Division (SST-GD) on November 20, 2019. I am changing the decision as follows:

The Claimant is entitled to 15 weeks of sickness benefits since she accrued 659 hours of insurable employment in her qualifying period, from February 19, 2017, to March 4, 2018.

Overview

[2] A party can apply to the SST-GD to ask for a decision to be reopened and changed.^{Footnote 1} The party who applies is called “the Claimant.”  In this case, the Applicant is the Claimant. This is how I will refer to her below.

[3] The Claimant’s case has a long procedural history, as documented in the evidence. I will begin with the decision dated November 20, 2019, in which a Tribunal member summarily dismissed the Claimant's appeal to the SST-GD. The member decided that the Claimant was not entitled to employment insurance (EI) sickness benefits because she did not have enough hours of insurable employment in her qualifying period.

[4] The Applicant filed an appeal of this decision with the Appeal Division of the Tribunal (SST-AD). She also initiated an Application to Rescind or Amend the SST-GD’s decision. Her Application is now before me.

[5] The Claimant filed new information with her Application. She argues that the SST-GD’s decision should be set aside because on September 18, 2020, the CRA made a new ruling on her insurable hours. ^{Footnote 2} She says this ruling is important enough for the decision to be reopened. She wants the decision to reflect the CRA’s finding that she had 659 insurable hours in her qualifying period, from February 19, 2017, to March 4, 2018. She says this is well above the 600 hours she needed to get 15 weeks of sickness benefits.

[6] The SST-AD convened a case conference on October 5, 2020, to review with the parties the CRA’s updated ruling. During the case conference, the Commission accepted the CRA’s updated ruling as a new fact. It agreed that the Claimant had enough insurable hours to qualify for sickness benefits. The Commission has asked the SST-GD to rescind its decision and issue a new one so that it can pay the Claimant all her sickness benefits.

[7] I made my decision on the record without convening a hearing because the Claimant’s new information and the outcome of the case conference are self-explanatory and require no clarification.

Issue

[8] Has the Claimant proved that there is a reason for reopening the original decision?  If so, I must decide how the original decision changes.

Analysis

[9] I cannot just reopen a decision when an applicant asks me to do so.  I can only reopen and change a decision for the following two reasons:

1. New facts are presented to me, or
2. The original Tribunal Member made a decision without knowing about some material fact, or based the decision on a mistake about a material fact.^{Footnote 3}

[10] Both reasons involve me looking at whether the new information affects the issue in the original decision.^{Footnote 4}  For new facts, the court has said that I have to look at whether the new information is “decisive.”^{Footnote 5}  For the second reason, I have to look at whether the information is about a “material fact.”^{Footnote 6} 

[11] For both reasons, the Claimant has to show that the new information affects the decision. This is because she is asking me to change the decision based on this information.  If the information will not affect or change the decision, there is no point in reopening it. 

Is the information significant enough to affect the issue in the decision?

[12] Yes. This information is not just significant; it is decisive. The issue in the decision is whether the Claimant had enough insurable hours in her qualifying period to get EI sickness benefits. She says her new information is significant enough to affect the decision, because it shows that the CRA recalculated the insurable hours in her qualifying period as 659. This is well above the 600 hours she needed to qualify for sickness benefits.

[13] The Commission has accepted the CRA’s new ruling according to the records of the case conference convened by the SST-AD.^{Footnote 7} The Commission now agrees that the ruling is a new fact that is significant enough to affect the issue in the SST-GD decision.

[14] I agree that the new information is significant because it comes from a reliable source. The CRA has exclusive jurisdiction over determining the number of insurable hours accrued in any period of employment. The information is directly relevant to the issue of whether the Claimant had enough insurable hours in her qualifying period to get sickness benefits.

Has the Claimant shown that there is a new fact?

[15] Yes. The Claimant has shown that there is a new fact, as documented in the CRA’s updated ruling that she had 659 insurable hours. The ruling establishes her entitlement under the law to receive sickness benefits.

[16] The next thing the Claimant has to prove^{Footnote 8} is that the new fact arose:

• After the decision was made, or
• Before the GD-SST issued its decision, but someone acting diligently could not have discovered this fact before that time.^{Footnote 9}

When did the information arise?

[17] The information arose because the Claimant challenged the CRA’s previous ruling in tax court. The CRA issued its new ruling on September 18, 2020,^{Footnote 10} after the SST-GD made its decision.

[18] I find that the Claimant has proved that I should reopen the decision because the information arose after the SST-GD issued its decision. The information introduces a new fact that is significant enough to affect the decision. 

[19] For this reason, I am setting aside the SST-GD’s decision dated November 20, 2019, and replacing it with the decision below.

Conclusion

[20] I am allowing the Application to Rescind and Amend and changing the decision as follows:

The Claimant is entitled to 15 weeks of sickness benefits since she accrued 659 hours of insurable employment in her qualifying period, from February 19, 2017, to March 4, 2018.