I did wonder about the COBRA reference. COBRA in the UK is some sort of Government Security Comittee that PMs use to talk tough but do little or nothing.
Interesting clarification about the Canadian unemployment and welfare, which appear to be more European than British in concept. UK benefits cover specific things - especially, housing - and there is an insanely complex system of benefits-in-work and tax reliefs associated with it. The outcome is that there is an effectively unlimited eligibility to a fairly minimal level of support with no time limit, and it's very simple to arrive at the point where you actually make the position worse by working in a low-paid, insecure job.
This is why the UK has more Polish immigrants than the rest of the EU combined - their benefits expire after about 6 months, ours don't, and the Germans and Dutch put measures in place to restrict the numbers who could go there when they joined the EU. Every coffee and sandwich chain is staffed with East Europeans, because the combination of low-paid zero-hours contracts and the sheer complexity of the wider system means low-income Brits avoid them.
It's a lunatic system, but (like the business of Dutch workers cherry-picking offshore work and leaving the rest for whoever will take it) it's a logical course of action for those within that system