EI benefits after overseas assignment

[diamontree]

I am considering of taking an overseas assignment where I will be living for 2-3 years outside Canada. I have been working here for years and contributed to EI. The question is, when my contract is over and I am back in Canada looking for work again, can I apply for EI and get benefits?

Thanks.

[Steven]

Possibly, depends on where you're working, the US and Canada have a treaty.

[dracine99]

Just had that situation myself and your qualifying hours are good for two years.
If you stay out longer than two years then you don't qualify. It's like you never worked in Canada.
If you don't work in Canada when you come back in mean you need all your qualifying hours from before you left.
So if you need let say 600hrs to qualify (~4 months of full time work) then you need to come back and apply with in 20 months of leaving your last Canadian job.
This is pretty much what I was told and ended up not qualifying for EI.
My recommendation would be that if you are pretty sure that you would depend on qualifying for EI when you comeback, don't go.
EI seems to have plenty of ways to insure they don't have to pay so it would be a mistake to rely on it.
Ideally you should negotiate a salary that would let you save enough to afford your own “EI” when you comeback.
My POV

[Steven]

If there's a treaty you can apply for EI benefits from the country where you worked. I.e. come back to Canada and claim for benefits from that country. The US and Canada have a treaty like that, depends on the country you worked in and what their rules are.

[diamontree]

I am considering taking a job in UK. Not sure if there is a treaty between UK and Canada. But it seems like negotiating a higher salary and saving $15-20,000 for return is the best strategy to make up for EI loss.

On top of that wage standards are lower in UK than they are in Canada. plus everything 30-50% expensive in UK in general.

Thanks,..Wish I can find a job where I live in Alberta.

[Steven]

With the UK you can apply for NI benefits from Canada and I think they're more generous than EI from what I recall. The UK and Canada do not have a totalization agreement though, so for example your state pension is not added to CPP, you have to claim them independently of each other.

Which I personally think is actually quite good, because in the UK the pension you get is a fixed amount. Every year you contribute counts as 1/30th of the total amount you get when you hit 65. So if you work for 30 years you get the full amount.

You can claim it from Canada as well, but because the social security agreement is fairly rudimentary you don't get cost of living adjustments.

But at least you can easily estimate what your pension will be when you retire, you just take the amount today, factor in inflation and multiply by whatever it is over 30 (i.e. the number of years you worked there).

And here is where it gets good, if you have contributed for NI for three years I think it is, and you still work in Canada when you return, you can carry on making Class 2 NI contributions (which is a piddling amount of money, like £9 a month) and you get the full pension when you retire! All you have to do is fill in some forms, have a UK account they debit the money from and provide some evidence you're still employed abroad (if you're not employed you can do Class 3 contributions but they're more expensive).

Compare this to Canada where I think the CPP calculation is a more closely guarded secret than the access code to NORAD.