It’s time to declare our federal parliament dysfunctional.
The latest discussions between Prime Minister Stephen Harper and Liberal Leader Michael Ignatieff yielded no new answers for the almost 400,000 (and counting) unemployed Canadians who have fallen victim to this global recession.
Instead, they agreed to create ‘working groups’ to study the issue and report back to Harper and Ignatieff by September 28.
By the time this report is delivered, the recession will have been underway in Canada for an entire year, with no meaningful action for the unemployed. Just another study.
After September 28, the two agree to work in ‘good faith’ to implement ‘consensus recommendations’ — which means if they don’t agree, Canadians will have waited four more months to be delivered a whole lot of nothing.
If this is the best they’ve got, it’s time to pull the plug on this minority government and put someone in charge who isn’t so readily prepared to let working class Canadians freefall into the depths of poverty while parliamentarians ‘study’ the issue.
Canada’s Employment Insurance (EI) system needs to be fixed to allow more unemployed workers to qualify for benefits. The solutions are readily available and would take, oh, about a week to turn into action.
It’s not rocket science but, apparently, it is political science. And Canadians just fell victim to the worst political game of stalling that we’ve seen in years.
They should be outraged.
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