NDP Challenges Tory Attack on EI Services

SAULT STE. MARIE – The NDP is demanding the Conservative government explain why they have put in place a plan to slash processing centres for the unemployed across Ontario, including Sault Ste. Marie.

Under the Conservative government plan, 15 EI processing centres across the Province will be shut down within the year. This will leave a mere three “hub” locations to deal with the enormous backlog of EI claims in a province that has been racked with job losses.

MP Tony Martin said the Conservatives are frustratingly consistent in their failure to help the jobless, “coverage for only half out of work, and now taking the badly needed service out of the hard hit communities. This is dumb and dumber, with a government completely out of touch with the families hardest hit by the recession.”

MP Charlie Angus (Timmins-James Bay) says the decision by the Conservative to target EI jobs in the federal civil service shows a striking indifference to the economic impacts of the recession.

“My region of Northern Ontario has been massively hit by job losses and lay-offs. And yet, instead of helping the unemployed, we are watching the government shut processing centres across the region.”

At the NDP Northern Council this weekend, an emergency resolution was passed calling on the government to maintain EI processing at Service Canada centres across Northern Ontario. The resolution noted the move by government would slow “an already inefficient process and cost jobs in fragile Northern Ontario communities not yet recovered from economic recession.”

By March of next year, the Conservatives plan to shut down EI processing centres in: Kenora, Orillia, Sault Ste. Marie, Belleville, North Bay, Timmins, Sault Ste. Marie and Ottawa. Over the next two years they will shut down operations in Brantford, Barrie, Peterborough, Hamilton, Niagara, Thunder Bay, Kitchener and Oshawa.

“Either this government doesn’t understand or they don’t care. The recession is not over in Ontario. People need access to reliable service operations that are not swamped by cutbacks,” Angus said.

The government is looking to centralize all EI processing claims to three “hub” centres – Sudbury, Windsor and Kingston. But along the way, hundreds of staff will be let go.

Federal New Democratic EI critic Yvon Godin says the scale of the cuts will lead to increasing problems with processing of claims.

“The scale of these cuts is staggering. It’s as if the Conservatives are trying to walk away on Ontario’s unemployed.”

Toronto Star – May 18th-2010

Theresa Boyle

HEALTH REPORTER

A new Toronto mother diagnosed with breast cancer says she is being given the runaround by the federal government, which has denied her employment insurance sickness benefits.

Natalya Rougas, 37, had planned on returning to work January 25, almost a year after giving birth to her son, Aristotelis. But in early January she was diagnosed with stage-three breast cancer and has since been undergoing treatment, including chemotherapy.

She was hoping to tap into Employment Insurance provisions that allow new mothers who become ill to get 15 weeks of sickness benefits on top of the 50 weeks of combined maternal-parental benefits they get. But her claim was rejected, leaving her baffled.

Rougas appealed the decision to the EI Board of Referees, an independent tribunal, which dismissed the case in a ruling last Friday. She is now planning to take her case to the EI Umpire, an independent arbitrator.

Rougas is scheduled to soon undergo a double mastectomy. With the terrible diagnosis and a busy toddler on her hands, she says the last thing she needs right now is a battle with the federal bureaucracy.

“After you receive a life-threatening diagnosis, you find yourself in this struggle. Besides the fact you have these health issues, you have to think of your financial needs as well,” she says.

Rougas’ claim was rejected in a February letter from Human Resources and Skills Development Canada, which offered this confusing explanation: “It is not enough for a person to demonstrate that they are incapable of work by reason of a prescribed illness, injury or quarantine, but also that they would be otherwise available for work. In your case, you cannot prove that if you were not sick you would be working because you were on parental leave.”

At Rougas’ Board of Referees hearing last Wednesday, HRSDC representative Herman Weima acknowledged that the statement “is not easy” to explain, adding that it is based on the “most misunderstood” and “misconstrued” piece of legislation that many people have tripped over.

Rougas was just as perplexed when she left the hearing: “It doesn’t make sense . . . if you’re on parental leave, you’re not eligible to get sick?”

Rougas’ MP Carolyn Bennett (St. Paul’s) and Laurel Ritchie, a CAW national representative and member of the Canadian Labour Congress’ employment insurance committee, say there is a larger issue at stake here. The sickness benefits don’t appear to be going to mothers who fall ill in the year following their deliveries, they say. Only expectant mothers who become ill about 15 weeks prior to their due dates seem to get the benefit.

“This doesn’t make any sense in the real world where mothers can suffer complications from pregnancy, postpartum hysterectomies, postpartum depression, cancers and car accidents. This just is not humane,” Bennett says.

Ritchie, who has encountered a number of cases where mothers with postpartum depression have been denied the benefit, says the rejections fly in the face of the intent of the provision. It was introduced in 2002 following an amendment to the Employment Insurance Act with the aim of allowing new moms to make up for lost time bonding with their babies because of illness, she notes.

Ritchie argues that the confusion arises from the messy way in which the amendment was drafted and because of the narrow way in which it is being interpreted: “It is being interpreted increasingly to mean there is only one situation in which a mother could get a full 65 weeks of benefits and that is if an illness or injury occurs prior to birth.”

She points out that the narrow interpretations don’t even square with the HRSDC website, which says the provision is for mothers who claim sickness benefits prior to or “following” maternity or parental benefits.

“Where is the minister responsible for the status of women on this?” Ritchie demanded. “This is a problem that is begging for a solution.”

Even HRSDC employees are confused about the provision, says Rougas, explaining that she has been calling them since mid-January and getting conflicting information from different representatives.

She says she is fighting for the benefit because the extra money would go a long way to help her young family, now relying on the single income of her husband. It would amount to $6,000, or $400 for 15 weeks.

“My income has dropped but my expenses have grown because I have to pay for cancer drugs, and I have to hire a nanny for a couple of days every time I go for chemo because I need extra help taking care of my son.”

CLC Supports Bill C-308 on behalf of 3.2 million workers across the country.

Ottawa (17 May 2010) – The Canadian Labour Congress (CLC) has endorsed Bill C-308 on behalf of the 3.2 million members it speaks for in labour federations, councils and other groups of working people across the country. The bill would expand access to regular Employment Insurance (EI) benefits to 360 hours, the standard the CLC has long advocated as a uniform entrance requirement across the country.

If passed, the bill would modestly increase EI benefits to 60% of earnings, calculated on the basis of the best 12 weeks over the previous year. “We welcome the proposed move,” the CLC says. “MPs should recognize that the average benefit today is very low — at about $350 per week — barely enough to support even a single person above the poverty line. The maximum benefit today is about $150 less per week than it was in the last recession.” The congress says EI claimants qualify for an average of about 38 weeks of benefits, including modest improvements made by the federal government since the workers were hammered by the global recession. “At this point in the recession, jobs are still very hard to find,” it notes. “Between the start of the recession and September 2009, the average duration of a spell of unemployment has risen from 13.6 to 17.0 weeks, and more than one in five unemployed workers in February 2010 had been out of work for more than six months.”

The CLC says the result is that claimants are either running out of benefits or have already exhausted them, adding that the bill does not adequately deal with this fact. “While we notice that this Bill improves access and level of benefits, the duration of benefits remains a concern that still needs to be addressed,” it adds.

Canada AM Interview of Diane Urquhart, independent financial analyst. She said the Nortel restructuring plan is costing Canadian taxpayers, but the effect is less obvious. “To cut costs you terminate employees and also to cut costs you don’t pay those terminated employees severance pay. But clearly these employees still have monthly bills to pay and they’re going to go on public employment insurance plans,” “Unlike in the AIG situation where there was American taxpayer outrage, this is a more subtle use of public funds that most people don’t recognize is going on. However, we should be outraged. In this time economic stress, there are great strains on the employment insurance system of Canada.”