Freshly reconstructed, Oct. 9th, 2009.
They call it 'unemployment insurance'. But perhaps it should be better called 'unemployment non-insurance'.
While other political parties -- specifically the Liberals and the NDPs -- have been harp(er)ing on adding more unemployment insurance to the tail of the benefits program, or allowing self-employed citizens to collect unemployment insurance during a parental leave of absence, I for one, am particularly disturbed about the 'front end' of the program and how many ex-workers are actually screened out of the program before they even get on it.
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Employment Insurance program
Employment Insurance (EI) provides regular benefits to individuals who lose their jobs through no fault of their own.
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You pay into it for your whole adult life while you are working. Then you find out that you are ineligible for it you resign from your job -- or you are 'dismissed for violating a corporate policy'.
What's with this?
What if the 'corporate policy' is blatantly unethical -- if not illegal? What if someone working on Wall Street before the American mortgage and banking collapse, had told his or her boss:
'I am resigning. I don't like 'hedge funds'. I think they are unethical. And/or 'I don't like duping people into accepting sub-prime mortgages only to fleece them a few years later with unbearable interest rates.'
In Canada, such a person would not be eligible for Unemployment Insurance. Nor would anyone who was dismissed in this type of toxic work environment for 'violating corporate policies'.
I have a better idea.
How about a 'no fault-finding' Canadian Unemployment Insurance Department?
We have 'no fault' insurance.
We have 'no fault' divorce.
It is time -- long past the time -- that the government of Canada, and particularly the Unemployment Insurance Department, should get out of the 'fault-finding' business. They have no business being in it -- especially when an agent of the UI department says that you are ineligible for UI because you 'violated a corporate policy'. What this statement blatantly asserts is the prejudice that the government is showing in favor of corporations (as socio-pathological as they may be with possibly 'corrupt corporate policies') and, at the same time, the prejudice that the government is showing against the individual working who may be rebelling against a pathological work environment.
The government of Canada obviously does not care.
Because it continues to be in the 'fault-finding' business while at the same time wording their government policies such that they assume corporate normalcy when everything over the last number of years -- from last year's collapse of the Wall Street mortgage and banking businesses
to the collapse of the car industries, and the exporting of North American jobs to cheaper foreign labour markets, to Michael Moore's latest film production, 'Capitalism: A Love Story', tells us that many if not most corporations today -- and their particular 'corporate policies' -- are far from 'healthy' or 'normal'.
What, in effect, the government of Canada is supporting then, or at least turning a 'blind eye' to -- and this shouldn't really surprise us, especially when it is Harper's Conservative Party -- is Corporate Pathology which includes: corporate narcissism, corporate greed, corporate gouging, corporate filtering of money out the top of the corporation into private bank accounts (even in the government as witnessed by the late eHealth scandal) while the people who put the money there for supposedly legitimate purposes, are in essence being scammed, corporations in this manner can in effect be either bled dry and/or bled alive while the corporation continues to survive while still scamming either customers and/or the people at the bottom of the organization who naively or not so naively continue to help to put the money at the top of the organization where it continues to be filtered out....
Need I go on in this regard?
Now the fact that our Harper-led minority Conservative Government continues to ideologically support and/or turn a blind eye to Pathological Corporations and Pathological, Corporate Narcissistic Capitalism through the government policies it continues to implement, and the wording in these policies -- such as UI -- tells us only one thing: specifically, that the Conservative Harper-led Government suffers from the same general malaise as the rest of Corporate Canada and North America does -- as far better depicted by Michael Moore in his new movie, than I could depict in any one of my individual essays on this subject matter.
Specifically,
'Corporate and Government Unbridled Narcissistic Capitalism -- Completely Gone Wild and Out of Control'
In essence, Marx's prophecy about 'Capitalism, in effect, destroying itself and all the people in its way through the pathology of its own process -- specifically, uncontrolled human power and greed' (my words, not his).
Forget about the 'market correcting itself'.
How can the market correct itself when all these top corporate executives are draining public and private coffers alike, and leading the rest of us to suffer from all this 'unpunished corporate thievery'? Oftentimes, there is nothing left to 'correct' unless it is a 'bonus stimulation or separation package' to these same corporate thieves -- which in effect calls upon the 'victim' (non-transgressing Canadian citizens) to further 'stimulate the victimizer' (the person at the top of the public and/or private corporate ladder who has just drained the corporate coffers).
These are the same people -- more and more often these days -- who we 'trust' (or at least our Harper-led Canadian government 'trusts') to tell us what is 'right' and 'wrong' as far as 'corporate policy'.
Meanwhile, the individual worker who 'resigns' or is 'dismissed' from this type of corporate environment, is told that he or she was 'wrong' for 'violating corporate policy'.
And we call this 'capitalist and corporate normalcy'?
We call this 'fairness to the worker'?
We call this 'no prejudice'?
We call this 'equal rights' between the corporation and the corporate worker?
Think long and hard about this one, Prime Minister Harper...
Because I call it -- and I don't use this common metaphorical expression either stereotypically or lightly -- 'giving more and more food to the pigs who can't or won't show any self-control as to how much food they gorge themselves with at the corporate and/or public feeding trough'...
Why should they when they keep getting away with it with light or no punishment?
Now to be clear, this type of harsh statement is not directed at every corporation and every corporate executive in Canada.
There are some corporate owners and corporate executives who treat their employees extremely well. The Globe and Mail just came out with a list of the top 100 employers in Canada. These companies should be idealized and learned from -- they should serve as role models for other employers to follow.
Unfortunately, there are many, many other employers who like the the type of corporation they are already running -- one with a corporate bank account that they confuse with their own personal private bank account with the first one simply functioning as a funnel to the second one.
These types of employers need to be strongly deterred from what they are doing -- which is essentially either bleeding their corporations dry, and/or using and abusing both their employees and their customers while it is still alive.
In this latter regard, it is time -- long past time -- that the government started legislating 'corporate executive diets'...for those who do not know how to, or more likely are simply unwilling to, stop over-eating at the corporate trough.
And this should apply to both public and private corporations.
What was it the auditor wrote the other day -- that a billion dollars of taxpayers money was 'wasted' in the Ontario eHealth scandal.
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A scathing report on the eHealth Ontario spending scandal charges that successive governments wasted $1 billion in taxpayer money.
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And yet our Government of Canada has the nerve to say that those workers who 'violate corporate policies' are ineligible for Unemployment Insurance.
Sounds like a re-visitation of 'One Flew Over The Cukoo's Nest' from my perspective.
In this regard, it is time -- long past time -- that the government of Canada addressed the blatant coporporate bias and prejudice inherent in its Unemployment Insurance Program.
As long as an employee has a good track record of paying into the UI system, his or her 'resignation' or 'dismissal' should not be discriminated against by the Government of Canada.
The Government of Canada has no right to put a 'great big black X on your forehead' -- eliminating you from the UI program -- just because you have resigning from, or been dismissed from, a job. UI should be in the 'no fault' business just like the divorce courts are.
I would even support a 'personalized user system' where you can use what you have available to you in your own account, and anything you don't use when your retire gets transferred to your 'personal Canadian Pension Plan'.
Let me be clear on this point: I have a strong 'Protestant -- and 'Conservative' -- work ethic. I don't think I missed a day of work in the last year of my last job.
But I do not support blatant Government prejudice in favor of often pathologically narcissistic Corporations, and against individual workers who to be sure may be partly or totally in the wrong, just as the Corporation may be.
Which is exactly why the government of Canada shouldn't have any 20 year old agent -- let alone anybody regardless of their age or experience level -- saying to a Canadian worker that 'you do not qualify for UI because you violated the corporate policy of the company you worked for'.
I support a more 'Dialectically-Democratic Unemployment Insurance' that gives equal rights and respect to both the corporation and the individual worker. And if the individual worker has been paying into the UI system for a long enough time to qualify, then he or she should be granted UI without any 'fault-finding' mission.
The key reason for UI should be to help a recently unemployed Canadian worker through that economically tough period of transition time while he or she is looking for a new job that will reasonably support him or her.
No prejudice.
No bias.
Just a 'safety net' to help the unemployed worker who has been paying into the insurance program for a sufficient amount of time to help him or her through this heavy period of economic stress.
Everything else is government -- 'snake oil' (to use Senator Barney Frank's famous words aimed at AIG).
The Government of Canada needs to get out of the 'snake oil' business.
Either it is protecting the Canadian worker with Unemployment Insurance,
Or it is not.
And if it is not,
Even though it is collecting UI premiums from these same denied workers...
Then this is the 'snake oil' business.
Indeed, it is very close to government fraud.
And when the government of Canada says that its 'numbers for unemployment insurance',
Have gone down since the previous month,
We should be very wary of this type of statement,
Because nobody in the Government is saying,
How many people are being 'denied' Unemployment Insurance each month...
Numbers -- taken out of their proper full context -- can be made to appear to say anything.
Prime Minister Harper may call it 'Capitalism: A Love Story' -- and mean it.
Michael Moore might call it 'Capitalism: A Love Story' -- and not mean it, the sarcasm dripping out of the side of his mouth as he says it.
Right now it is no Capitalist love story.
There are people out there drowning in economic debt.
And there are many, many unemployed Canadian workers,
Who are being denied the 'supposed safety net' of Unemployment Insurance',
Because of the stringent -- almost fraudulent -- parameters that have been put on it.
And I say that the answers to all of these government and corporate parameters,
Lie at the top, not the bottom.
But only if and when the many people in the middle and bottom portions of the economic and corporate pyramid and hierarchy hold the people at the top of this pyramid and hierarchy -- accountable for their actions.
Now politicians love to use words like 'integrity' and 'accountable' and 'transparent' when they are campaigning for election.
It is just that these words often tend to disappear from their vocabulary as soon as they are elected.
What did you say you were going to do with the Senate again, Prime Minister Harper?
Well, forget about the Senate -- you obviously have, anyhow -- Prime Minister Harper.
Let's start with overhauling the Unemployment Insurance Department,
To show that -- dare I say this -- you might indeed have some compassion for the unemployed worker, regardless of how their work came to an end.
Otherwise, refund them their Unemployment Insurance money,
That they may have been paying to the Canadian Government for 20 or 30 years,
And call this their 'Unemployment Insurance Benefit' --
The money that you may have 'forgotten' that you collected.
-- dgb, Sept. 22nd, reconstructed October 9th, 2009.
-- David Gordon Bain,
-- Democracy Goes Beyond Narcissism
-- Dialectic Gap-Bridging Negotiations...
-- Are still in process.
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Stuffing the Senate
Aug 28, 2009 04:30 AM
There he goes again. After stuffing the Senate with Conservative bagmen, backroomers and election losers barely eight months ago, Prime Minister Stephen Harper was dishing out the $132,000 cash-for-life prizes again yesterday, vaulting yet more cronies into cushy places instead of naming people who are respected leaders in their fields.
Carolyn Stewart Olsen, Harper's communications director, got her seat in the Red Chamber. So did Doug Finley, the Tory election campaign director. Don Plett, party president. Failed candidate Claude Carignan. And Judith Seidman, from the party national council.
Toronto writer Linda Frum Sokolowski also made the list.
And while Harper says they're expected to retire in eight years, the law lets them stay to 75. A nation is not holding its collective breath.
This glut of cronyism overshadowed the few credible appointments: Canadiens head coach Jacques Demers, Northwest Territories premier Dennis Patterson, and scientist/academic Kelvin Ogilvie.
In short, it was business as usual for a PM who once derided the Senate as a "dumping ground" for cronies, and vowed to reform it. Liberal Leader Michael Ignatieff's office duly howled "Harpocrisy," but without much conviction. Both parties have sinned.
Still, Harper well deserves the title "Senate patronage king," bestowed upon him by the opposition for naming a record 27 senators in a single year. For all his past preaching against patronage, the Prime Minister has now proven himself a master of dispensing it.
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