To this Conservative government, anything that might interfere with the mythical free market — and particularly with the market’s downward pressure on wages — is anathema.
The above is just a brief excerpt from Thomas Walkom's column in today's Star, additional food for thought as I continue trying to critically assess these recent changes to Employment Insurance rules.
This report kind of reminds me of an old spoof on small-town newspapers I once saw, with the headline "Two Local Women Missing in Japan" with almost the entire front page taken up with the story. In a small space at the bottom, this headline: Massive Earthquake Kills Thousands in Japan".
National borders? Economic sovereignty? Closures of branch plants? Completely irrelevant in the new Canada being formed by Harper Inc.
Government policy conducted in dark secrecy, as I suggested in my last post, is difficult for the critical thinker to evaluate; that task is made even more arduous when it is hidden within an omnibus bill, as is the case with the reforms to Employment Insurance eligibility.
However, one piece of information has emerged that perhaps makes the job a little easier. The CBC's Allison Crawford reports that a new Social Security Tribunal will replace about 1,000 part-time members of the Employment Insurance Board of Referees and 32 umpires, and that same tribunal will also hear appeals from Canada Pension Plan and Old Age Security claimants.
Under the current system, most appeals on denials of benefits are heard within 30 days. Under the new Tribunal, to be in place next year, it is difficult to see how complaints will be dealt with expeditiously, since it will consist of only 74 members, half of whom will hear the E.I complaints.
University of Ottawa law professor Lucie Lamarche says the new measure, which comes on page 196 of the more than 400-page budget implementation bill, is "well-hidden," and she fears that under the new system, applicants will have to hire lawyers. She says it appears that under the legislation, people will have to make more technical, legal arguments.
So, a little more information, ferreted out by diligent journalists and citizens, has perhaps helped in my quest to critically assess the 'new and improved' E.I. program.
An age-old question without a firm answer, it is one I find myself regularly pondering as I continue striving toward an ideal I know I'll never attain, that of being a consummate critical thinker. Bombarded by information as we are, it is often difficult to separate the proverbial wheat from the chaff and arrive at satisfactory conclusions. And of course, there is always one's own biases to contend with as major filters of that information.
Take, for example, my deep antipathy toward the Harper Conservatives. So used to their tactics of denigration, disparagement, denial and deception am I that part of me strongly believes truth in any form is alien to them, that their actions are driven not by any concern for us as a nation, but only as the subjects of a grand neo-conservative experiment.
But to interpret everything they do according to that restrictive framework is also to deny true critical thinking and is simply to be as reactionary as the right-wing.
And so, in the spirit of honest inquiry, I seek to make an honest assessment of the changes to Employment Insurance announced yesterday by Human Resources Minister Diane Finley. Is it, as Star columnist Tim Harper suggests, a reform that curiously dovetails "with the Canadian Taxpayers Federation view that a bunch of lazy layabouts are milking the system and forcing more ambitious offshore workers to do the work they won’t do" ?
Or is it "all about matching Canadians hungry for work with employers hungry for employing Canadians instead of foreign workers," as the government insists?
Another question: what commitment does Ottawa have to improving and expanding access to retraining programs for those seeking to upgrade their skills? And how do the E.I. changes affect them?
Like all policy conducted in secrecy instead of collaboratively with the public, this legislation invites the worst of interpretations, whether or not those interpretations are wholly warranted. Such is the price to be a paid by a regime committed to restricting the flow of information and treating those it 'serves' with palpable contempt.
That kind of philosophy of government certainly doesn't make it easier to be a critical thinker these days.
Surely there can be no other explanation for the fact that at the same time that Human Resources Minister Diane Finley has announced new rules for those claiming E.I. benefits, her department has cut off the flow of some key employment data that the public has a right to.
Now being withheld from public scrutiny is information showing the total dollar amount of benefits paid to each province and the average weekly payments by province. As reported by the CBC, the official explanation involves some inconsistencies in the Human Resources raw data that were discovered over a year ago, but, strangely enough, inconsistencies that did not prevent Statistics Canada from doing its usual job of aggregating data over the past year. However, as of May, that data has been cut off by the Harper government.
One can only hope that these 'inconsistencies in data' are resolved soon, lest uncharitable thoughts should emerge to undermine this government's 'credibility'.
As a retired English teacher and a lifelong lover of books, I have always been fascinated by words, both what they actually mean and how they are used to influence and manipulate. As the years have gone by, I have become especially interested in the political uses and abuses of language along the lines described in George Orwell's seminal essay, Politics and the English Language, the latter of which I would explore every year with my senior classes.
As I noted in an earlier post, the power of language to curb liberty and undermine free and critical thought is something we are witness to on a regular basis, and it is only by being familiar with these techniques that we can, to some extent, guard against them and recognize perversions of truth when they occur.
Orwell was well-aware of these dangers when he wrote his essay 56 years ago, and the problem has become so extensive that many of us almost automatically tune out when politicians or other 'leaders' open their mouths.
In Ontario, we are currently witness to a barrage of demagoguery and euphemisms from the McGuinty government in its battles against teachers and doctors. Take, for example, Education Minister Laurel Broten, whose government insists on a two-year pay freeze for teachers and the elimination of the retirement gratuity that exists in lieu of any post-retirement benefits. When she says she is choosing full day kindergarten and smaller elementary class sizes over teachers' paycheques, she is awakening latent public antipathy against 'greedy teachers', a pretty obvious subtext of her public pronouncements.
When she says, “I am asking the unions and the teachers to come to the table and work with us,” insisting she is “not negotiating in the media,” that is precisely what she is doing, of course.
And then there is her strange use of the word 'negotiation', which denotes a give and take to arrive at a reasonable solution. However, in this context, since she and McGuinty have made clear there is to be no give, only take, (OSSTF, for example, did offer to accept a two-year-wage freeze but not the end of the gratuity) 'negotiate' becomes a euphemism for saving the government the political embarrassment of having to strip away collective bargaining rights at some political cost to the party.
The same, of course, applies to the 'negotiations' the province is conducting with doctors. When Health Minister Deb Matthews says she’s disappointed that the OMA rejected her offer, what she is really saying, since the word 'offer' is a euphemism for 'ultimatum', is that she is sorry that the medical profession has not capitulated to her government's demands. That negotiation is not possible is attested to by the fact that she and McGuinty rejected the OMA's offer of a pay freeze.
No matter where we might stand on the direction being taken by the McGuinty government, it is imperative that all of us recognize and decry tactics that take us further and further from a healthy state of democracy.
