02) THE ABSURD MR. HARPER

(The following article is from the June 1-15, 2009, issue of People's Voice, Canada's leading communist newspaper. Articles can be reprinted free if the source is credited. Subscription rates in Canada: $25/year, or $12 low income rate; for U.S. readers - $25 US per year; other overseas readers - $25 US or $35 CDN per year. Send to: People's Voice, c/o PV Business Manager, 133 Herkimer St., Unit 502, Hamilton, ON, L8P 2H3.)

People's Voice Editorial

The battle over Employment Insurance heated up when Stephen Harper called proposals to improve access and benefits "absurd." The opposition parties in Parliament have been pressing the minority Tory government to allow workers who lose their jobs after 360 hours of work to qualify for benefits - 19 weeks or 37 weeks, say the Liberals and NDP respectively. Mr. Harper has gone ballistic, calling these periods "a year" in one of his overheated blasts of right-wing rhetoric.

     Like his despised predecessor "Iron Heel" Bennett, Harper is committed to expanding the "reserve army of the unemployed," giving the corporations greater power to hold down wages and increase profits. What better way to keep workers hungry and desperate than to deny access to an insurance program which every worker pays into?

     The real absurdity is that Canadian workers have collectively paid over $50 billion more into EI than they have received in benefits. For 20 years, the program has been used as a cash cow by Liberal and Tory federal governments. Successive changes in eligibility requirements have left most laid-off workers unable to collect. Officially, only 40% of unemployed workers are eligible for EI, receiving a paltry average cheque of $330. Since discouraged job seekers and those working a few hours a week are not counted in official unemployment figures, the real jobless rate is now over 12% in Canada. That means over a million unemployed workers can't collect EI.

     That's not "absurd". It's a criminal policy to impose mass poverty. The labour movement is mobilizing to demand improvements in EI, and the opposition parties have pledged to challenge Harper on this issue. It remains to be seen what will happen next in Parliament, but the need to defeat the Tories remains the crucial political imperative for working people in Canada.