The Canadian Labour Congress has responded to news that Canada lost 129,000 jobs in January with a renewed call for the federal government to make urgently-needed improvements to the Employment Insurance program.

America’s neighbor to the north lost 213,000 full-time jobs in the past three months.  The unemployment rate is at 7.2%.

The trade union organization says many laid-off workers and their families will be left out in the cold because governments have changed the rules for EI, making it harder to qualify and chopping the benefits for those who do.

Canada lost 129,000 jobs in January 2009, a deterioration well beyond anything seen in the past three decades.

About a quarter of a million full and part-time jobs have been lost in the past three months. Canada is now back to levels of employment experienced 15 months ago, in October 2007.

Most of the jobs lost were full-time (114,000), but many part-time jobs (15,100) were lost in January as well. The biggest job losses occurred in Ontario (71,000), British Columbia (35,000) and Quebec (26,000).

Canada now has 1,310,100 unemployed, an increase of 100,000 newly- unemployed people in January alone.

The Canadian Labour Congressrepresents 3.2 million Canadian workers. The CLC brings together Canada’s national and international unions along with the provincial and territorial federations of labour and 130 district labour councils.