John Ibbitson: Unemployment

Unemployment Insurance Dept: According to John Ibbitson, writing in these pages , the Harper government is preparing to ignore all these PQ demands. This is understandable but unfortunate, at least with respect to EI. This is one program that really should be provincial rather than national because labour markets are so different around Canada. In opposing separatism, the Conservatives don t have to become last-ditch defenders of the centralized welfare state built up by the Liberals, according to Globe and Mail. First they extended coverage to fishermen and other seasonal workers, whose unemployment is predictable and at least partially self-induced. Then they introduced regionally differentiated benefits, making the payout greater and easier to obtain in areas with higher rates of unemployment a thinly disguised manoeuvre to gain political support in poorer provinces by transferring income from better-off provinces and taliban Arts a Entertainment Division Through a constitutional amendment, unemployment insurance, as it was then called, was transferred from provincial to exclusive federal jurisdiction in 1940. It seemed like a good idea at the time, as the Depression had nearly bankrupted the provinces. However, subsequent history has shown the problems caused by relying on the greater fiscal and borrowing capacity of the federation; politicians cannot resist exploiting it for political purposes. (www.immigrantscanada.com). As reported in the news.