The significant changes to the Employment Insurance (EI) program which are to be quickly implemented through Budget 2012 with very little consultation have not received enough critical attention.

First, a word on what is not in the budget. It is disappointing, to say the least, that the government is failing to respond to the fact that less than 40 per cent of unemployed Canadians are now qualifying for EI, well below the already low pre-recession rate. And, for all of the talk about skills shortages in Canada, it is notable that there is NO increased investment at all in EI-supported training, which would assist unemployed workers to find good jobs.

Instead, the focus is on tightening discipline over those workers who have managed to qualify for a claim.

Amidst the plethora of media reports on "payroll tax" increases for 2012, there was little mention of increases in benefits.

For example, the Toronto Sun, cued by the Canadian Taxpayers Federation, reported:

If you feel a hand grabbing at your wallet next week, calling the cops won't do any good because it's the federal government picking your pocket.

It's that time of year again when tax collectors at the Canada Revenue Agency, at the behest of their political masters, siphon more from the pay stubs of Canadians while giving corporations a New Year's bonus.

Further to my post on the Mowat report on EI, I looked up the most recent rates of unemployment for the 58 EI regions. In the current regionally differentiated system, which Mowat wants to replace with a single national system, these unemployment rates are those which determine the level of hours needed to qualify for benefits, as well as the duration of benefits.

The Mowat Centre final report on Employment Insurance (EI) released today has won a fair bit of media attention, and will serve to deepen the national debate over Canada's most important income security program for working age adults and families.

The federal government has launched consultations on EI premium setting. This provides the opportunity to shift from a very ad hoc system to one that is more fair to workers, and more economically rational.

The current worker premium is $1.78 per $100 of insured earnings and the employer premium is $2.49 per $100, adding to a total premium of $4.27 per $100 of insured earnings. EI premiums are paid on earnings up to an annual maximum of $44,200.

Premiums are, under current rules, set to rise by 24 cents per $100 of insured earnings each year between now and 2015-16. (The increase in the worker premium will be 10 cents; employers pay 1.4 times the worker premium.)

StatsCan has released an interesting paper, "The Income Management Strategies of Older Couples in Canada." It looks at who controls the family finances in couples with one partner aged 45 and over. (They used the age cut off because a special question was added to the General Social Survey which is restricted to that age group.)

Today's Statistics Canada release "Income of Canadians" provides data for 2009 and a partial reading on the impacts of the recession. (I say partial because the 2008 annual average data were impacted by the onset of the recession in the last quarter of the year, and since these impacts continued well into 2010.)

The data give some sense of the devastating impact of the recession upon working families, and also underline the importance of income support programs like Employment Insurance.