The COVID-19 pandemic is forcing the Trudeau government to rebuild the Unemployment System we once had. Tom Walkom writes:
In 1995, Jean Chrétien’s Liberal government effectively gutted what it by then was calling Employment Insurance, reducing payouts and making it much more difficult for the jobless to qualify for benefits. In one blow, the federal government rendered irrelevant one of Canada’s premier social programs. That irrelevance only grew as governments across the country allowed businesses to avoid payroll taxes by treating their workers as self-employed, independent contractors ineligible for EI.
By last December, only 39 per cent of the unemployed qualified for EI. But jobless rates were low anyway and no one much cared. Until the coronavirus epidemic struck.
Now workers are once again losing income. The reasons differ from the experience of the 1930s. People are staying away from work for health rather than economic reasons. But the effects are the same. Through no fault of their own, large numbers of Canadians are effectively unemployed.
The feds have added additional programs to the old one:
The Emergency Care Benefit will provide up to $450 a week for up to 15 weeks to those required to stay home from work who don’t qualify for either paid sick leave or EI.
The Emergency Support Benefit will provide an as-yet-unspecified amount of money to those facing unemployment who don’t qualify for EI.
In effect, the Liberal government is reinventing an unemployment insurance scheme that will actually cover the unemployed.
Bill Morneau claims that these are temporary measures. But they will have to become entrenched -- for at least two reasons:
First, there is no guarantee that this epidemic will be over soon. Even the eternally optimistic Trudeau says this emergency could last months.
Second, we will almost certainly face more emergencies. Some will be epidemics like this one. Some will result from climate change. Some will stem from the financial and economic contradictions in world markets.
The world is being remade.
Image: ResearchGate
8 comments:
.. WoW .. another exceptional post.. and timely ! Its likely to be read in immediate conjunction to Lorne's post at Politics & Its Discontents.. as it follows right after. They really fit together.. as in Cause/Effect .. Reality. I really look forward to the rollout of any funds.. perhaps I will qualify for a small amount or payment.. perhaps not. As I work.. or did, anyway as a freelance, indy interior painter with small CPP & OAC monthly. Nobody really wants a stranger in their house right now, who may have arrived via public transit and who knows where else I may have been in the last week or more !
I look around at society and I see many ways in which relatively recent changes to society have contributed to the problem. Here are a few, by no means are where near complete
Too many people living in high density
Self checkout...businesses trying to save a few bucks but think of all the people touching the checkouts
Overdependence on tight supply chains
The internet...while it is good for disseminating information, it is also good for spreading fear, false info, and allows people to sell goods at hyperinflated prices
A society of consume, consume, consume, which leads to spread, spread, spread
Desire for low taxes has led to unpreparedness for medical emergencies
Obviously, traveling for fun
We need a total rethink of society.
GDN
We're hunkered down here, too, sal. In the end, all of this may kickstart a guaranteed annual income.
I agree, GCN. In the end, we may start producing things we DO need -- not things we really don't need -- and then spend a lot of time trying to convince ourselves that we couldn't survive without.
Was it Chretien, or was it Martin, or some of the kids advising them who devised the cynical scheme to turn the pogey into a revenue stream for the Federal Government? Harper and Flaherty were the guys who applied the finishing touches to this monumental fraud. Up until now it was only those who work in industries where unsteady intermittent employment is fact of work who felt the blow. Get used to it. We saw you coming. Welcome back to the thirties. Extra gangs, anyone? If you get twenty-eight days in before we put the run on you, we won't charge you the fare you'll need to chase the next Big One.
How quickly people forget the lessons of history, John. History teaches that there are prolonged rainy days. These people assumed that prolonged rainy days were no longer a worry.
The Cassandras, including yours truly, see the Covid-19 business as presaging a world in change at a rate that probably exceeds our ability to keep pace. The margins of safety are waning. We're being overtaken. We have known all of these realities for some time.
We speak of 'normal.' The new normal. Normal connotes some degree of stasis and continuity. Where is that to be found today? What is adaptation but a response to the loss of normalcy?
What will be the next seismic event? Who knows? It could be 50 years off, more like 20. My fear is that we will see one or more of these altering events before this decade is out probably in the form of one or more direct impacts of climate change. It could be critical biodiversity loss, such as a collapse of pollinator populations. Climate Departure is projected to set in beginning around 2023.
I agree that the trajectory isn't good, Mound. However, as a wit said long ago, hanging concentrates the mind. A crisis is both a disaster and an opportunity. True leadership will see the opportunity and drive forward. Time will tell if we have those kinds of leaders.
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