(The following article is from the October 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: $30/year, or $15 low income rate; for U.S. readers - $45 US per year; other overseas readers - $45 US or $50 CDN per year. Send to: People's Voice, c/o PV Business Manager, 133 Herkimer St., Unit 502, Hamilton, ON, L8P 2H3.)

The proposed changes to the Employment Insurance (EI) system announced Sept. 14 by Federal Human Resources Minister Diane Finley have been called an "insult" to both working and unemployed Canadians by Communist Party leader Miguel Figueroa.

     "It would be far too charitable to call this meagre gesture `lame'," says Figueroa. "In fact, this temporary fix will help barely 10% of the officially unemployed, and does absolutely nothing to reform the broken EI system that already excludes coverage for over half those currently out of work."

     For those who have paid at least 30% of their maximum annual premium in seven of the last 10 years, the changes will mean a maximum five additional weeks of coverage. To get the full additional 20 weeks, a worker has to have paid in for 12 to 15 years. The measures are temporary and will apply to new claims filed since January 2009 (if the Bill is passed by Oct. 15), and will not apply to new claims filed after Sept. 11, 2010. There are additional clauses that significantly cut benefits for new claims filed after June 6, 2010.

     "At a time when millions of workers are being victimized by the impact of a devastating crisis brought on by the speculative greed of finance capitalists, and when billions upon billions of public funds are ladled out to banks and corporations to rescue their sliding profit margins, this feeble pittance is a sop, and a monumental insult to working people," says Figueroa.

     "One of the most insidious aspects to these changes is that workers who are most vulnerable to temporary and long-term layoffs - those who have claimed 35 weeks or more in EI over the last five years - and whose living conditions are therefore the most precarious, will be completely excluded from additional coverage. This reflects an underlying mentality that those workers who had previously suffered bouts of unemployment have only themselves to blame."

     "Finley's `anti-reform' Bill C-50 demonstrates once again the vicious anti-working class character of the Harper Conservatives, and underlines the urgency of driving the Tories out of office at the earliest opportunity," Figueroa added.

     The Communist Party leader also criticized the position taken by the federal NDP to support the proposal, dubbing it "a step in the right direction".

     "Mr. Layton and his NDP caucus say that they cannot `in good conscience' vote against this pitiful measure. Everyone knows the truth however; the NDP strategists are afraid that bringing down this hated government might result in losing some NDP seats in a resulting election. It was that partisan and mistaken calculation, not `good conscience', which paved the way to this shameless and opportunist retreat."

     "Passivity and poll-gazing will not defeat the Conservatives. What is needed is the development of a fighting alternative to the Tory/corporate agenda - a people's alternative that creates real meaningful jobs for working people, that defends Canadian sovereignty, that reverses the gutting of public services like health and education, and gets Canada out of the war and occupation in Afghanistan now. That people's program is needed to rally and galvanize the working class and its allies to victory," says Figueroa.

     "A real jobs program is the key, one which reverses the sellout of the Canadian economy to foreign capital and reverses the slide into de-industrialization. With respect to the EI system itself, the Communist Party has called for meaningful and significant changes which would extend coverage for the entire period of unemployment at 90% of former earnings, and remove the current two-week waiting period."