Employment insurance – This Magazine

The 7 private members' bills that shouldn't die in parliament, but probably will

This Magazine Staff — Mon, 20 Sep 2010 18:27:47 +0000

Compiled by Kevin Philipupillai and Simon Wallace

Parliament resumes today. Over the next few weeks we’re going to hear a lot about the gun registry and the census and the economy and the economy and the economy. Often overlooked are the small, less flashy, things that parliamentarians do. Like propose private member’s bills, legislation that individual MPs sponsor, but that almost never become law. That’s sad, because there are lots of worthy ideas amidst all the chaff. Here’s a list of seven of the most interesting proposals that we’d like to see enacted. Naïve? maybe. But to be a progressive voter is to live in hope.

1) C- 318: An Act to amend the Employment Insurance Act
Shocking as it may be, it turns out that most artists and authors are neither flush with cash nor given many employment benefits. (This I know from experience.) It turns out that Tony Martin of the NDP knows this too, so he’s proposing amendments to the Employment Insurance Act. Basically if you find yourself employed under contract (implied or actual) as an artist or a writer (as, say, a foreperson at the prose factory) you will also find that you now qualify for EI – which means that writers and artists would also qualify to “receive maternity, parental and sickness benefits and access to publicly funded training programs.” So, yeah, we definitely hope this passes.

2) C-298 and C-300 re: Regulating the Social Responsibility of Mining Companies
One pressing and under-reported issue, two proposals for action. Paul Dewar (NDP) and John McKay (Liberal) offer similar-but-not-the-same proposals aiming to hold Canadian mining giants accountable for their practices in other countries. We are once again reminded of the absurdity of relying on resource-extraction companies to police themselves (i.e. restrain themselves from beefing up profit margins).

3) C-224: An Act to amend the Canadian Bill of Rights to include a right to housing
Large-scale changes to our legal rights may seem abstract compared to the everyday struggles faced by too many people, but they can have an impact for the better. Peter Stoffer of the NDP wants a right to housing to be written into the Canadian Bill of Rights. Right up in Part 1, Section 1. Next to life, liberty, security, and equality. There are related proposals from NDP colleague Libby Davies to amend both the Criminal Code (C-558) and the Human Rights Act (C-559) “to prohibit discrimination on the grounds of social condition.”

4) C-381: An Act to amend the Criminal Code (trafficking and transplanting human organs and other body parts)
The poor, yes, are poor so the rich can be rich. But being poor, and being rich, isn’t just about personal wealth but also tremendous amounts of power. One of the most grotesque examples of of how the wealthy in our midst literally live off the poor is the global traffic of human organs and human remains. In some cases kidneys are bought, in other cases they are literally stolen from the bodies of the living—either way it’s always some rich guy who does well by this black market trade and it’s always some ravaged and abused person who suffers because of it. It’s been going on for centuries, but it’s still nice to see that there is at least one Parliamentarian (Borys Wrzesnewskyj, Liberal) trying to do something about it.

5) C-509: An Act to amend the Canada Post Corporation Act (library materials)
Libraries are one of the most used public institutions in the country. A lot of us read, a lot of us enjoy reading, and all of us benefit from a literate and knowledgeable society. Having the post office (a government service — for now!) subsidize the mailing costs for libraries (another public service) makes so much sense we can’t believe it hasn’t been done yet. Actually, we can’t believe that mail isn’t free for libraries. But this bill written by Merv Tweed (Conservative) is a good start.

6) C-394: An Act to acknowledge that persons of Croatian origin were interned in Canada during the First World War and to provide for recognition of this event
This I did not know. Thus proving, to me at least, that it’s important. During World War I individuals of Croatian origin were interned in camps. It’s important in and of itself to know these things but with the way things are starting to look in the Afghanistan war era we could all be reminded that history does judge, and it does not judge kindly racism and the suspension of civil liberties. Even—especially—if it’s done in the name of freedom. Props, again, to Borys Wrzesnewskyj.

7) C-353: An Act to prohibit the release, sale, importation and use of seeds incorporating or altered by variety-genetic use restriction technologies (V-GURTs), also called “terminator technologies”
Even in the aftermath of the devastating tragedy which continues to affect Haitians, there was enough suspicion among many Haitian farmers about ‘terminator seeds’ given as food aid that many burnt them in mass protests. These are crops genetically modified so that they essentially-self-destruct after one generation. Here we have a bill proposed by Alex Atamanenko (NDP) to keep terminator seeds out of our fields and off our plates.

Don’t save the economy. Make a better one

Graham F. Scott — Mon, 26 Apr 2010 13:27:13 +0000

The golden age of the welfare state wasn’t that golden. The real solution is economics that actually promotes equality

Remember the good old days when Canadians used to think the government was supposed to help everyone share in economic prosperity and prevent anyone from shouldering the brunt of economic adversity? We thought we’d learned the bitter lessons about the perils of the free market from the Great Depression. A welfare state was needed to moderate the harsh forces of the market, with government programs that entitle all citizens to certain social and economic rights.

Today, the welfare-state programs of the 1960s and 1970s seem like a distant memory. Free marketeers have attacked everything from employment insurance to welfare to education funding.

One response of progressives to the shredding of the social safety net is the impulse to go back to where we were before the bad stuff happened. Remember the good old days, when most unemployed people could actually qualify for unemployment insurance? When the discussion was about how to fix or improve public services, not what price the government could get for auctioning them off? After losing so many fights over the decades to protect social programs, you can appreciate this nostalgia for the way things used to be. Wouldn’t it be great to have adequate income support programs again instead of having to rely on the not-so-tender mercies of seedy payday loan joints?

But nostalgia for the past overstates the virtues of the welfare state. Carleton University sociologist Janet Siltanen’s research shows that—even on its best days—the welfare state paradigm was far from paradise. Even in the “golden age” of the Canadian welfare state, politicians were long on rhetoric and short on substance. Income security programs were modest, and social programs were often not extended to everyone. Plus, a weak commitment to full employment meant that the Canadian government fell far short of placing the rights of citizens above market forces.

Some might argue that—despite its flaws—the Canadian welfare state of a generation ago is still preferable to today’s neo-liberal nightmare. But Siltanen argues that viewing the welfare state with rose-coloured glasses is not a great starting point for a new vision for Canada.

The welfare state paradigm was predicated on an agenda of redistribution: the idea that the government should take from the affluent to help out those who are struggling.

Under such a redistribution scheme, socially marginalized groups must fight over whose agendas will be supported from a limited pot of tax revenues. Groups that battle racism, sexism, homophobia or other forms of discrimination are badly disadvantaged when it comes to determining who are the deserving beneficiaries. For them, the welfare state is not a paradise lost.

Not that redistribution is a bad thing—far from it. And maybe we could sort out our oppressive prejudices enough to ensure that welfare state programs are not designed around the heterosexual male breadwinner household, and to ensure that many more groups (women and First Nations come to mind) receive the benefit of this redistributive vision.

But there are other problems with welfare-state-style income redistribution as a political agenda. Taking from the haves and giving to the have-nots occludes a bigger question: Why is it that the economy produces haves and have-nots?

This is a question about more than just income redistribution. Rather than relying solely on government to try to improve on an economic system that reinforces inequality, wouldn’t it be better if we had a more egalitarian economic system? If the economy weren’t creating such gulfs between rich and poor, there would be less damage for the government to fix.

This line of reasoning leads in a number of interesting directions—directions we don’t pursue if we are stuck in the past with the same redistribution mindset we had a generation ago. Siltanen poses her own provocative question: Who said markets are sacred? The market economy, with all of its imperfections, is not some force of nature; it is socially created. So for Siltanen and others, we should not just set our sights on a return to some imaginary, glorious past, but on creating a future where the economic system itself is up for debate.

Graphic: Where are all of Canada’s stimulus dollars going to?

Graham F. Scott — Tue, 18 Aug 2009 17:07:59 +0000

When Finance Minister Jim Flaherty first revealed his stimulus spending package back in January, he announced that Canada’s Economic Action Plan would “protect Canadians during the global recession” and “put more money in the hands of Canadian families, to help them weather the current storm.”

Although Flaherty claims to have introduced a budget that is “Canada’s response to the challenge of our time,” many groups, including the Centre for Policy Alternatives, are saying Flaherty’s plan is “too little too late.”

This had us wondering if anyone, or anything, will benefit from the almost $40 billion stimulus package being pumped into our economy over the next two years. Here’s what we found.

Open publication

Tax Cuts

Personal income tax reductions will give Canadians of all economic stripes between $21 to $53 a month extra to play with. But this $2 billion per year in tax cuts is essentially just a shallow crowd-pleaser that’s widely seen as an ineffective way to jump-start the economy. Instead, the government should have pumped that money into health care, for example, where it could have created more than three times as many jobs as broad-based tax cuts.

Mid- and upper-class homeowners

The 15 percent home renovation tax credits, for renos between $1,000 and $10,000 and available only until February 2010, will beneﬁt only those who happen to have extra money to spend on redecorating.

Infrastructure

The government plans to throw $12 billion over the next two years into infrastructure, mostly through construction projects. But while this is a major job-producing move, it beneﬁts sectors that are still largely dominated by men, leaving women out in the cold in terms of job creation. And while the government likes to boast that its stimulus package equals 1.9 percent of the GDP, CPA economist David MacDonald points out that that ﬁgure includes the matching funds that provinces and municipalities are expected to put up for infrastructure, meaning the feds are effectively counting “what other people are spending.”

Unemployed Canadians

Though only 40 percent of unemployed Canadians can access EI, no really signiﬁcant EI reforms were made in the budget, with the stimulus package granting a mere ﬁve extra weeks of available beneﬁts for the unemployed. And of the 1.5 billion set aside for retraining, only one third is available to unemployed Canadians not accessing EI.

Parents needing childcare

Under the stimulus package, low-income parents are able to earn a little more under the Canada Child Tax Beneﬁt, but those earning less than $20,000 will see none of the increases they might have hoped for.

First Nations groups

Although the $1.4 billion allotted to First Nations communities for skills training and on-reserve housing might seem impressive, off-reserve First Nations people won’t beneﬁt from much of this cash.

Affordable housing

Although the government is putting $1 billion over two years into social housing renovation projects, accessing these funds requires a 50-50 commitment from the provinces, a demand that may be difficult for poorer provinces to meet and may mean they miss out on housing they need the most. This money also can only be spent on already in-place affordable housing units—no new units are part of the stimulus plan.