Harper government changes Employment Insurance into workfare

Boom Boom it is like "mortgage insurance" you pay but it does not mean you are insured. You only get covered if you are laid off.

Kimberly Rogers. She was on welfare, pregnant and charged with fraud I believe. Before the welfare inquisition of Mike Harris got rolling, Rogers was trying to get off welfare. She was receiving social assistance and drawing on student loans, which was actually accruing debt owed by her not anyone else. Rogers only did this because the previous NDP administration encouraged welfare recipients to pay for education and retraining any way they could including collecting welfare benefits at the same time drawing on student loans. That all changed under the Harris regime, and Rogers, a straight A student in college, was caught in the Harris-Flaherty dragnet.

Rogers was punished by our neoliberals for trying to climb out of poverty. She was pregnant and died of heat exhaustion, I believe, after being confined to house arrest by the welfare police in Ontario. She was holed-up in a dingy apartment with inadequate ventilation during an oppressive heat wave.  This was but one example of the fruits of actual neoliberalism in Ontario under the Harris regime and one of the reasons I fear the Hudak Tories sliding into power by fluke. 

I believe this is a red herring. The announcement is being made by the Minister who is about to embark on the Largest Recruitment of Foreign Temp Agency workers this country has ever seen. The Minister who breached this subject first was NOT Diane Finley, but Jason Kenney. I will put it out there for discussion, that this charade is to bring into Canada a significantly larger number foreign, likely Asian and most likely Chinese workers in the hundreds of thousands to work in the Western Provinces oil sector. This practice already exist and for those who don't know about it.. read the link below to see the benefits of foreign labour in the oil sector. These guys just happened to get caught...because of a tragedy. These workers made $600 per month in Fort McMurray. http://www.fortmcmurraytoday.com/ArticleDisplay.aspx?e=2557013&archive=true Regardless announcing that your are going to bring into the country Hundreds of thousands of foreign temp workers isn't politically popular so it must be masked. And here is how its done. 1) Announce you are cutting back on immigration to play to your base. 2) Make a scapegoat and attack the lazy unemployed and Fix EI the Conservative way. Traditional Conservative Wedge politics. Now, I think China needs oil and alberta needs a pipeline, fast, quick and cheap.

I'll go out on a limb here as well. The Cons want a crime agenda-- for that they need crime. Crime is not working out well as it is declining. Force enough people into desperation and you will have crime and justification for the crime agenda.

When you consider Conservative policies -- most of them add up so that all the negative consequences for the people actually serve the interests of the Conservatives.

Note: Back when Mulroney was PM I thought I could never ever hate a PM as much as I hated him and that I could never hate a political party as much as I hated that party.

I was wrong.

The Chinese have well trained oil field workers.  Remember the tens of thousands of workers they evacuated from Libya before NATO unleashed its hellfire and brimstone on the citizenry. The packing industry in Western Canada is staffed primarily by temporary slaves.  It stopped all the unionization drives in the industry despite despicable working conditions.  Temporary slaves understand that if they talk union they get sent home and most likely will be forced to repay the flights back and forth to their home country. 

Yes Kropotkin. I think that the Cons want that culture mixed with other workers as much as possible so that the entire workforce is bullied into silent submission.

Chinese workers die on the job at horrific rates. This is tragic. I hope that they will be able to empower their workers as well. I wish we were in an advanced society that had a positive attitude to workers and when we welcomed workers from overseas that they would come and be informed about their rights here letting them draw conclusions about what they believe in going home. Instead of a military force in the world or a force of economic coercion I wish Canada was a moral force by example. Instead we are a bad example in many respects.

Instead of being arrogant on the world stage we should be listening to others.

On China I have a lot of conversations with Chinese people and this is my impression when it comes to policies-- in many respects I do not understand or agree with what they tell me is done there-- there is certainly a different culture-- but I also have heard ideas and policies that we can learn from as well. It is important to exchange people and recognize that learning is a two-way street. But in Canada, that is not what we get from foreign workers who are more often abused than listened to for their different perspective and experience. (Sorry for the drift but I felt I wanted to comment on the value of international workers sharing experiences-- if that could happen in a better environment Canada could gain out of it.)

I also want to increase the number of immigrants and refugees but I am not opposed to all temporary worker programs because i have wanted to see one of a different design for a long time. I don't like them being used for labour market hole-filling.

I'd like to see a good temporary worker program run like this-- worker to worker exchanges. These would be opportunities for workers here to go to other countries to work there for a short time while allowing workers from overseas to come here. Employers I think could actually be used to help this-- connected with employers overseas so that workers at a place in one country can loan a worker to us for a time while we loan one of ours. The advantages for both the workers and the employers as well as the professions could be incredible. This is of course a very different use and purpose for a temporary program and the people coming here would be employed overseas just as people here would be employed here but the advantage of cross cultural competencies could be invaluable.

Sean, your opening post explains a great deal what is wrong with this change, far too much for me to quote a single section, but I also want to add in why it's bad for businesses in the long run as well.

If an employee is in a job for which said employee is ill suited, the employee's performance will suffer after a while. This has an effect not just on the employee, but on the entire company as well, and you can imagine how disastrous the impacts of having several ill-suited workers in one company will be.

I was actually part of a job search program where I had to take a job search class, and the lady who taught the class is a big believer in taking the time to find a job that's right for you, even if it means turning down or not applying for jobs that you find less-than-ideal. More generous EI rules would allow that.

It also wouldn't hurt to meet with EI recipients face-to-face on a regular basis. That person-to-person contact could make a HUGE difference in people finding work.

In my experience, it might actually take a while for this to sink in to the middle-class workers who would be affected. My impression from dealing with them is their belief in their skill sets and personal connections to ride out the storm and find new work right away. They would also expect some sort of severence package, and so may not even apply for EI, assuming that the severence package would help bridge the gap. Let's not forget young professionals, who may have the option of either moving back in with their parents or who never moved out of home in the first place, so for them, the financial situation is not as dire and they would be in a position to look for a bit. (The hit to their self-esteem is a completely different matter.)

Not that I'm disagreeing with what you're saying Jacob, but I don't think the full effects of such a policy would be felt by this bunch of workers right away.

Yes Jacob-- but that is part of it== the chill the threat even more than the reality could force workers not to advocate for themselves.

Bachus-- I agree some things won't be worth reversing because they would not be good use of resources.

I think NDPP is saying something else which is a concern that the NDP won't deliver on trying to do the best by people and will be like all the others. I do not share that point of view but I can't say that a person cannot have that fear. It is good for the NDP to hear from people that this concern is there and the party like any other will need to be reminded of their promises and who has supported them. I hope we can prove NDPP wrong but I won't in the mean time fight with him for raising the concern as the more it is raised the less chance it has of coming true.

I am sorry to say that desperation is already reflected in many Aboriginal communities-- desperation of that nature does not help change things-- it just leads to more suffering. This is why I am so bitter about what we are doing to Aboriginal people here. We could make a difference and are just not willing to do so.  This is the deepest shame Canada has ever had.

One Canadian one vote.

Those are our demands.

Viva la revolucion!

Which would end majority governments ever after to the betterment of Canada

Arthur the question is why-- many of us argued about this but the simplistic idea that the Liberals and Cons are the same won the day. There was frankly, loads of evidence that Harper and crew were reactionary, dangerous to national institutions in a way that the Liberals were closer to merely neglectful.

A huge point that I have made since the early 90s is the distinction between parties that are somewhat responsive to public opinion and those that will lie but at the end of the day don't care; parties that want to govern for everyone and those who have no interest in whole segments of the population and are therefore unreachable. (More at the bottom on this)

I argued for years with people on this -- that you don't have to say Liberal Tory same old story to make the case that they are both wrong and the NDP is better.

I suspect that this discussion was distorted by fears of lesser-evil voting. This indicates that not only is the voting system and results distorted by FPTP but also people's perceptions of the parties and the full band of political discussion.

The NDP needs to end FPTP-- I believe that is the reason people did not see, in spite of overwhelming evidence, that this was coming.

***

I raised the issue again here of supporting my argument that some parties are unreachable because they do not govern for the whole of society while other hope to convince everyone that they are right.

Examples:

Parties that try to represent everyone even when they have deep disagreement

The NDP does not have the ubber rich as a constituency. At times it makes an effort to talk to them and to accommodate them and at other times does not. However, the NDP does listen to them and while it won't always find agreement it includes their interests it just weighs that interest with everyone else. The fact that the group the NDP represent the least is the one with the most power explains why the NDP even as strong as it can be on its issues knows that it cannot dismiss and ignore the folks holding the most concentrated block of power. The NDP has at times strongly reached out to people that did not agree with it and attempted to make compromise: the NDP did this in Ontario even with Rae's rather arrogant personality he did often try to meet with and find common cause with opposing types. The Nova Scotia NDP have also done this-- at moments to the extent that they have forgotten who their allies are. That is the risk of reaching out to govern for everyone-- you have to work to remember who you are, what your principles are but at least you are listening.

The Liberals may be wrong on policy but they always liked to be loved and that is a core part of who they are. Unfortunately they are often adrift when it comes to principles and while they like to be loved feel entitled to be loved which can defeat the purpose.

The Progressive Conservatives historically like Mulroney did want to govern for everyone even when their policies were out of the mainstream-- he did things we don't like but he wanted to be loved and was hurt personally when he was not. He was biased, distant and quite to the right of the population at times but not completely unreachable. In spite of Mulroney's "you dance with those who brung ya" comment traditionally this was the difference between the PC party and the Conservatives. There is no pretense now that anyone other than Conservative supporters and demographics can influence this government.

 

Parties that have shown no desire to govern for everyone

Mike Harris PCs in Ontario-- they were clear about that and rode in to power on beating up parts of the population.

Ralph Klein similarly made it clear that there were people he did not care to represent and would not listen to-- unlike Redford who may be wrong on things but is not staking out a ground smaller than the entire population.

Parties that cross the nationalist or separatist divide in Québec are often like this. On both sides they often show an unwillingness to listen to each other on the core issues of the other. It is likely the most dysfunctional part of politics in Québec. At least on most areas of provincial governance they are not as hard nosed-- usually and many good policies come from Québec as a result of a national cross party consensus there.

Harper has been clear from the start that there are segments of the population that he wishes did not exist, that he will not listen to and he wants applause from his base when he abuses them.

Based on this I am shocked when people say that anything we are seeing is truly surprising.

If you want good governance you need parties to listen to those they disagree with and at least have some grudging respect for them. I believe that it was Mike Harris's contribution to politics to prove that you can go in and get elected stating that you won't govern for all the people --just those who you like and like you.