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Bring Back Quality Employment Insurance – Vote the
Conservatives and Liberals Out Stephen Harper's Conservative government has blocked all attempts to improve Canada’s ailing Employment Insurance System. In fact neither the Conservatives nor the Liberals will restore an Employment Insurance program that leaves most of us out in the cold and unable to collect. Liberal promises can’t be believed as they gutted the EI system in 1996. Lloyd Axworthy restructured it into a system that takes multi billions of dollars from workers that they don’t get back. Instead the government, in what could be called outright thievery, uses the money for other purposes. The new system is full of inequities. Ontario’s 450,000 unemployed were cheated out of $1.7B last year due to EI rules. All Canadians in fact lose. It is harder to get EI, it takes more work hours to collect for a shorter period, and benefits paid are lower. Less than one-quarter of unemployed workers in Toronto manage to collect EI and province wide only 36 per cent get benefits. 80 percent of workers used to be eligible for EI, today only 40 percent can collect. EI reformers oppose discriminatory rules that require new entrants or re-entrants to the workforce to work more hours before qualifying for benefits. All social justice and labour advocates want Ottawa to reform EI. Many recommend cutting qualifying hours and making them uniform across the nation. They want to eliminate the two-week waiting period and raise maximum weekly benefits while increasing the maximum duration of benefits to 50 weeks. It is a tragedy that one of our most beloved social programs has been all but destroyed. Canadian working people are paying into a system that casts them into poverty while there is a current 50 Billion EI surplus. The Conservatives and Liberals have proven they can’t be trusted, both are the enemies of quality EI and of Canadians. Voting NDP or for the Bloc in Quebec would be the best solution for a restoration of this important social program. ================
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