Employment Ghosting - Canadian Small Businesses

A call for Modernizing Employment-Insurance Enforcement to Stop Interview “Ghosting” and Protect Ontario’s Small-Business Workforce

We, the undersigned small-business owners and managers in Eastern Ontario, respectfully request that our elected representatives advocate for an online Employer-Reporting Portal within the Employment Insurance system. This tool must allow us to report interview no-shows, first-day ghosting, and unjustified job refusals quickly and securely, ensuring EI benefits serve those genuinely seeking work.

Our, Ontario Approved Professionals, recent combined hiring experience:

• 86 Applications, 25 interviews booked; only 2 candidate appeared (Ontario Approved Professionals, May – June 2025).
• Average turnover and hiring delays now cost our firms tens of thousands of dollars annually, undermining local economic growth.

We believe that modernizing EI enforcement will:

• restore fairness for taxpayers and bona fide job seekers;
• reduce costly hiring churn for small enterprises; and
• encourage Gen Z workers to engage fully in the labour force—especially in Ontario’s in-demand skilled trades.

Ontario Approved Professionals Inc. urges all levels of government to pilot an online Employer-Reporting Portal that would:

1. Accept 24/7 submissions (web form or chatbot) of interview no-shows, job refusals, or first-day ghosting—secured via the employer’s CRA Business Number.
2. Trigger an immediate review of the claimant’s eligibility and, where warranted, a temporary suspension of EI benefits pending claimant clarification.
3. Feed anonymized data back to workforce boards and schools to highlight soft-skill gaps and promote job-readiness training.
4. Integrate with Skilled-Trades outreach, steering youth into apprenticeship pathways that deliver stable, well-paid careers and future entrepreneurship.

This system would not penalize genuine job seekers; it would simply enforce existing EI provisions that already disallow refusing suitable work.

The Bottom Line - “Actively looking” isn’t the same as actually working. Our live hiring stats prove the EI loophole lets a minority game the system—at the expense of honest taxpayers and desperate small businesses. Let’s modernize reporting, enforce the rules, and help Gen Z turn search into start date.

For further information, please contact Ontario Approved Professionals at dave@ontapproved.ca