EI, fast-track facts, votes and more (updated)

A busy few days at work and some sleepy evenings have me rather behind in my blogging. Before I get to the rather surprising (and not) developments of yesterday that have made a fall election extremely unlikely, allowing me to make plans for October (work trip to Nashville, fun fun) let me talk about the more recent developments of today.

The Liberals offered today to fast-track the Conservatives’ EI reform legislation, which the NDP says is their reason for propping-up Stephen Harper’s government, through Parliament, so the NDP would be free to either vote for or against the government on the Liberal confidence motion in late September/early October knowing the EI changes have been passed and are flowing.

Fast-tracking a bill requires the unanimous consent of all parties, and it can mean a number of things. It could mean doing all three readings at once and bypassing committee, essentially passing it in a matter of hours, or a day or two. You’ll recall the Ontario government’s TTC back-to-work legislation was passed in an afternoon in this manner, and the bill was rushed over to the Lieutenant Governor who was at a Maple Leafs game for his signature/royal assent immediately after.

I’m told Liberal House leader Ralph Goodale offered Liberal support for doing this with EI this morning, but there wasn’t unanimous support from the parties. There does seem to be a general consensus in principle around fast-tracking the bill, however. It seems that both the NDP and BQ want it to go to committee, and I’m hearing the BQ have some issues with the bill they want to look at. The house leaders have been meeting and there’s no word on what they’re looking at but there does seem to be agreement around fast-tracking it past first and second reading and quickly getting it to committee, with the committee possibly even sitting during the break-week next week. Conceivably, it could come back the following week for a past-tracked third reading, be sped through the Senate and be law before the Liberal opposition day, but we don’t know what sort of timeline will be agreed upon. All I know is the Liberals support moving it through as quickly as possible.

One point that I want to clarify having spoken with Liberal sources, asI was confused on this myself: the Liberal Party will not be voting in favour of this EI legislation. Not everyone needs to vote in favour of the bill for it to be fast-tracked. There just needs to be all-party agreement to dispense with debate and go straight to the vote. The Liberals are saying lets speed this thing through quickly but we’ve made clear we don’t support this government, they can’t be trusted, there needs to be change and we will be voting against them.

The Liberal Party will also be voting against Friday’s ways and means motion. I’m told the whip has ordered all hands on deck, the Liberal caucus will be out in force, no one is leaving town early.

Now, as for the strategy here. Are the Liberals trying to squeeze the NDP? Absolutely. We think this EI legislation is wholly inadequate, it will help only a fraction of the unemployed that need help, and it does nothing about what was the NDP’s prime concern on EI (and one of ours too): eligibility and access. But I’ll get more into that tomorrow when I write about the events of the week.

But the NDP latched onto this EI legislation as their fig leaf, saying they will prop-up the Harper Conservatives until it’s passed. We’re saying fine, lets pass it tout de suite, get this inadequate help out to the few that it does help more quickly, and then the NDP is free to either vote against the government on the Liberal confidence motion, or they can find another reason to support Harper. And if the NDP stalls on it, they’re delaying help to the unemployed that they seem to deem pretty important.

Now, I’ve been reading NDPers saying this is disrespectful to the unemployed, that using this legislation to “embarrass” the NDP isn’t fair to the unemployed. Frankly, I think they’re projecting. Think about it from the perspective of the unemployed: even if the Liberals are playing strategy here, if it means the bill is fast-tracked and they get their benefits faster, what do they care if the NDP is embarrassed? They’d be getting their benefits more quickly. And if the offer to fast-track is rejected, then those that oppose it can explain those unemployed people why they need to wait longer for the help.

So, we’ll have to wait and see what the house leaders agree to. It will be very interesting indeed.

No matter how quickly the EI bill goes through, I’m still seeing a fall election as highly unlikely. This morning I dropped my prediction down to 10%. Today’s events might bump it to 15%, at best, but no higher.

NOT MUCH LATER UPDATE: Breaking news tonight:

One day after claiming victory for extracting employment insurance reforms from the Conservatives, New Democrats now say they've read the fine print and the government's latest bill is not the prize they had hoped.

The party will attempt to use the leverage it gained from offering to keep the government in power in exchange for the EI improvements to extract further concessions when the bill goes to a House of Commons committee. This will prolong a debate that the Liberals are attempting to move off the agenda.

The legislation is the only reason NDP leader Jack Layton has put forward for providing short-term support for the government in a confidence motion Friday on budgetary matters.

I'll have to do some pondering on what this means. Bottom-line, I suppose, is the fast-tracking won't be particularly speedy, so the NDP will likely still be able to use EI as their rationale for propping-up the government on the Liberal confidence motion in a few weeks time.

Now, I suppose the question is, are the NDP serious about trying to improve this bill, or are they just playing for time? I agree with them this legislation is wholly inadequate, that's absolutely correct. That's why we feel this government must be defeated. The NDP had been indicating something was better then nothing, now they're apparently saying there must be changes, which will effectively slow-down passage of the bill?

So, serious desire to improve or mere stall by the NDP? I think a little of both. Seeking improvements is a good reason for spending more time with the bill, with keeping your excuse for propping-up Harper alive as an added bonus.

I do still, however, question their motives. For example, if they thought they had a strong bargaining position, why didn't they demand more Tuesday, when the Conservatives announced their proposed legislation, before it was written and introduced? This is getting into ground I want to leave for the next post, but Layton didn't attempt to negotiate at all. He could have said then "we want more on this and this" to Harper, if they wanted his support. Instead, they said we're going to keep you alive until EI passes, before they'd read the bill. That surrendered a fair bit of power in the negotiation to Harper, I'd contend. Better to demand more before pledging conditional support.

I suspect Layton didn't make the demand at the time because he knew Harper would likely say no, and then Layton would be left to either support legislation he has deemed inadequate or go to an election he really doesn't want. So he'll try for changes in committee instead.

I don't know where that will go, or if the Liberals will support opposition amendments in committee and then vote against passage of the bill overall, as promised. But, while I may be wrong on the math, I believe that, if the Conservatives oppose an amendment in committee, the NDP and BQ can't pass it on their own without Liberal support. Even a Liberal abstention would leave them out-numbered by the Conservatives. Maybe that's their plan, delay the legislation without seeming like its delayed for political reasons, while trying to tag the Liberals as obstructionist toward better legislation.

We'll see, as they say. I'll now bump the election odds back down to 10% though.

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(Videos) Harper job-killing permanent tax on everything

It seems that Stephen Harper's job-killing permanent tax on everything has inspired a few YouTube videos:





Another video I missed on the weekend:

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Conservative EI proposals don't address eligibility and access

From the early reports I'm reading of the Conservative Party's rushed announcement on proposed employment insurance reforms (after a summer of offering nothing but hot air) I can't say I'm overly impressed:

The Tory government is proposing legislation to extend employment insurance by up to 20 weeks for long-tenured workers, Human Resources Minister Diane Finley announced Monday.

Finley said the proposed measures, which would cost $935 million, would provide from five to 20 weeks of additional benefits depending on how long an eligible individual has been working and paying into EI.

Finley said the proposed legislation is a temporary measure that will be phased out gradually as the economy improves.

That's all fine and dandy, extended benefits are good. But it will do nothing for the many thousands of unemployed Canadians that don't even qualify for the program. It does nothing about the regional inequality of a system with a patchwork of national standards; there's nothing on national or even fewer regional standards or on a lower eligibility requirement.

These changes are fine, but there are months late and many dollars short. If the Conservatives were serious about EI reform, they would have brought these proposals to the joint Conservative-Liberal panel on EI reform during the summer.

Finley's presser today is an obvious attempt to make it appear the Conservatives are doing something on EI, without really doing much, going into an election. I would hardly call this a serious attempt at appeasing the NDP to avoid an election, as the Conservatives have done nothing to address the core concerns the NDP has around EI. Remember, the Liberals only wanted a temporary 360 hour national standard. The NDP wanted 360 hours permanently, and they chastised the Liberals for indicating "flexibility" on the number of hours.

Now, if the NDP does attempt to seize on this half-baked and inadequate Conservative proposal and call it a victory that lets them prop Harper up, they will be proven more desperate to avoid an election than I thought they were. And while I live to be surprised, I'd deem it unlikely.

No, there's nothing here that indicates Stephen Harper doesn't want an election this fall. And there's no fig-leaf for the NDP here either.

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Conservatives hiding the facts on EI

We know the Conservatives have pretty much killed the EI reform panel. And it seems they're now spending more time trying to blame others for their unwillingness to approach the issue seriously and actually discuss reforming EI then they did actually trying to reform it.

You'll recall the Conservatives essentially blew the panel up when they prodded the independent civil service into doing a "costing" of the Liberal EI reform proposal. But rather than cost the actual Liberal proposal, the Conservatives asked them to include a slew of things the Liberal proposal didn't in order to get a vastly inflated number, an inflated number they could then use as an excuse for doing nothing on the issue, while hiding behind the civil service when challenged on the fictitious nature of their numbers.

The Liberals rightly challenged them on this and asked the parliamentary budget officer, Kevin Page, to do his own costing of the Liberal proposal. After all, Canadians deserve to know the real numbers. Page is working on it, but there's one little problem:

The Parliamentary Budget Officer hasn't received all the information requested of HRSDC Deputy Minister Janice Charette, which includes data, analysis and assumptions underlying the government's cost projections. The office said that, if necessary, it would produce the analysis in the next two weeks, even without the information.

Meanwhile, while the government continues to try to block a truly independent and fair costing of the Liberal EI reform proposal, Conservative MP Pierre Poilievre is still sticking to the Conservatives' fictitious, fantasy land costing, using the independent civil service as a shield for his party's political gamesmanship.

The Conservatives, it seems, are concerned that if the public knows the real cost of the Liberal plan, the government's inflexibility on the issue, and the fact they've yet to even release a proposal of their own, will be quite negative. Unable to win the argument on its merits, they need to stack the deck. They need to cheat to win.

If they're confident in their positions, let's have the real numbers and then let the people decide. Stop trying to hide the truth, and to withhold the information Page needs to do an independent costing.

And Pierre and company should have the guts to stop hiding behind the independent civil service, who should not be used as partisan blockers for a weak quarterback afraid of getting sacked.

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EI EI No

With the news last week that the Liberals are asking the Parliamentary Budget Officer to price their EI reform proposal following Conservative pricing shenanigans, and the Conservatives retreating to a no national standard stance after earlier saying it made sense (and having offered no proposal of their own), it appears the EI reform panel summer camp is all over except for the battle over framing.

Not with a bang, but with a whimper.

So, what does this mean as political strategy, and what does it mean for this fall?

First, my NDP friends seem to take this as both vindication of their position (vote against the government but we don’t want an election) and that “taking EI out of the House of Commons” was a mistake. They’re wrong on a few counts. It wasn’t really in the HoC. The NDP private member's bill was non-binding and ignorable by the government. The House wasn’t going to sit all summer anyways. And the NDP bill will still be there this fall. This process was about seeing if common ground could be found to create legislation that might actually pass the HoC, might actually come into effect, and therefore might actually help the unemployed. Sadly there were, and are, no bills in the HoC that will do that.

Second, for the Conservatives, it’s about positioning. Were they ever serious about finding agreement on EI reform? Quite possibly not. I’d argue that, if they surveyed the situation a few weeks ago and decided it was in their interests, they’d have gotten serious. They decided they don’t need to do a deal, for whatever reason: they don’t view it as affordable, they like their polling, or they think they don’t need to appease the Liberals. They’ve made their calculus, for better or for worse.

Thirdly, for the Liberals, it was about EI and it wasn’t about EI. We believe in EI reform, and this panel offered the best chance, albeit a slim one, at getting there in the short-term. EI reform isn’t going to happen in the short-term without government buy-in; the alternative is forcing an election on it. No one wanted an election in the summer, this offered a chance at EI reform while avoiding an election no one wanted, so it was worth a shot.

So, with EI reform dead, what now? Will EI be the Liberal election rallying cry? No, it won’t. But that doesn’t mean the EI reform failure doesn’t bring us closer to an election.

For the Liberals, I think that, in addition to avoiding bad election timing, this panel was about taking a flyer by giving the Conservatives a chance to make this minority situation work. I’d argue it’s a chance the Conservatives spectacularly blew with their cavalier attitude and approach to this issue, which explains why they’re trying so hard to spin it the other way.

IF the Liberals do try to force an election this fall, the EI failure will likely fit into the narrative thusly, and EI won’t be the issue: the issue will be making parliament work and competence to govern. The EI panel will be held up as the latest example of the Liberals being the one party willing to put some water in its wine to make this minority parliament work by sitting down and trying to find common ground with the government.

We don’t blindly oppose everything, and we don’t take a my way or the highway approach. We try to get things for Canadians. And, once again, the Conservatives returned that principled approach with partisan attacks, leaving Canadians to suffer.

That should be the trigger narrative (which disappears after a day or two anyways), and ironically it’s not dissimilar to Harper’s when he triggered the 2008 vote. Except, this time, it’s actually true. Parliament has become disfunctional. Despite our efforts to make Parliament work, Harper has consistently shown he has no interest in working with the other parties in the interest of Canadians. So it’s time for a change.

Or so says I, at least.

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Job losses are escalating, so Cons blow-up EI reform

The headlines tell the tale:

Still no sign of economic recovery in July jobs numbers as 45,000 disappear
July job losses point to difficult recovery
Canada lost 45,000 jobs in July: Statistics Canada
Canada July Jobs Loss Triple Economists' Forecasts
Canada bleeds more jobs in July, recovery in doubt
Job losses deeper than feared

And directly from Statistics Canada:

Following little change in June, employment declined by 45,000 in July, with losses in both full- and part-time work. The unemployment rate remained unchanged at 8.6%, as fewer people participated in the labour market.

So it sure is a good thing the Conservatives made clear this week they have no intention of getting serious about reforming the EI system to help the 400,000 Canadians that have now lost their jobs since Stephen Harper's Conservatives were re-elected.

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Conservatives lie on EI reform, and they lie badly

Not only are the Conservatives lying to Canadians about employment insurance reform, they're engaging a supposedly non-partisan civil service to help them do it.

Here's the screeching messaging that ConBot Pierre Poilievre's guys took to the media tonight, after the Liberals and Conservatives sat down for what was supposed to be constructive dialogue on EI reform:

A government analysis said the Liberal proposal to slash the minimum work requirement to qualify for employment insurance benefits to 360 hours across the country could exceed $4 billion a year.

A senior Conservative official circulated a synopsis of the cost analysis to reporters.

It said the proposed change could cost four times more than the $1 billion cited by Liberal Leader Michael Ignatieff, who has promoted the 360-hour standard as a means of easing the plight of the unemployed during the economic recession.

Wow, $4 billion! More than four times what the Liberals said! Wow, that's crazy, dammed Liberals will bankrupt us, rawrrrr!

Except no, its a bald-faced Conservative lie. It's all nonsense.

During the meeting, Liberals said, federal officials admitted that their estimate of the number of people affected by the “360” plan includes new entrants to the work force, re-entrants and those receiving special benefits, such as maternity leave — none of whom Mr. Ignatieff's proposal is intended to cover.

Mr. Ignatieff's intention is to cover only those unemployed workers who've paid into the EI system but haven't worked sufficient hours to qualify for jobless benefits. Based on HRSDC's own figures, that would be 9.6 per cent — or about 150,000 to 160,000 — of the current 1.6 million unemployed Canadians.

You see, rather than ask the civil servants to cost what the Liberals have actually proposed, the Conservatives had them cost a fantasy-land proposal with all sorts of stuff they pulled out of thin air, in order to get a vastly inflated number they could throw around say "rawrrr, Liberals bad!"

The Conservatives directed government officials to cost a proposal that is not the Liberal proposal.

Instead of costing the Liberal proposal to include laid-off workers who have paid into the EI system but are ineligible due to a lack of hours, the Conservatives unilaterally decided to cost a proposal that would extend eligibility significantly beyond this group, more than doubling the number of potential beneficiaries.

At today's meeting of the working group, department officials confirmed that the costing of the real Liberal proposal would be approximately $6,900 per additional beneficiary, which is in line with estimates from TD Bank Economics. This validates Liberal calculations that a 360-hour proposal would cost approximately $1.0-1.5 billion.

It's not just that the Conservatives lie. We all know they do. But they're just so fricking obvious about it. They had the public service cost a fantasyland proposal and now they're hiding behind the independence of our civil service for their political lies.

Ottawa MP Pierre Poilievre, a Conservative member of the working group, insisted the costing is accurate, produced by “an independent and non-partisan public service.”

And while they're busy artificially inflating the Liberal proposal for EI reform, we can't cost the Conservative proposal because THEY DON'T HAVE ONE.

So, in the absence of one I'm going to cost their proposal: one gazillion billion trillion quadrillion dollars. Prove me wrong, Pierre.

P.S. Who is the "senior government source" that leaked the BS report to the media. Tell me media, are you in the habit of protecting anonymous sources that flat-out lie to you and use you as pawns? Because I know that'd piss me off.

More from Steve and Scott.

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Video: Harper's Government Reports: Canadians seeking EI at an 11-year high

A video from daviolis on the Harper government's EI record:

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360 hour EI not sacrosanct for the NDP either

The NDP had a press conference today, and I'd already decided not to do another tired "NDP decides to oppose whatever happens this fall before it even happens" post. That seemed to be the lead of the press coverage out of Jack Layton's presser.

But reading some CanWest coverage, I was interested to see Layton also had some substantive comments to make on reforming employment insurance:

NDP Leader Jack Layton signaled willingness Monday to compromise on employment-insurance eligibility reforms over the summer.

He said he does "not close the door" on a work requirement for benefits greater than the 360 hours the New Democratic Party has advocated for many years.

And he praised as "creative and helpful" a proposal by the Western premiers to pare 58 employment-insurance eligibility zones down to three: urban, rural and remote.

Layton's comments at a news conference echoed Liberal Leader Michael Ignatieff saying he's prepared to put some "water in (his) wine" to reach a compromise with the government this summer over EI reforms.

(snip)

However, Layton said EI improvements remain a top priority for the NDP and "ultimately, you have to create a consensus" if change is to occur.

Eligibility now ranges from a minimum 420 hours where unemployment is at least 13 per cent, to 700 hours where it's under six per cent. Layton said the NDP "would not be inclined to support" a minimum higher than the existing 420 hours.

I'm glad Layton recognizes that compromise means everyone has to give a little and move from their starting positions. And perhaps now that Layton has signaled the 360-hour mark isn't sacrosanct, his colleagues who were attacking the Liberals last week for saying the same thing will get the message and instead begin moving forward on EI reform in a constructive way.

Layton points to his party's private member's bill on EI reform, but, frankly, a non-binding private member's bill isn't going to achieve EI reform. He's been flogging it for months. The EI working group is clearly the way forward, and as I've noted previously, Liberal pressure has already moved the Conservatives from their previous staunch defense of a common national standard of EI eligibility. It's the Liberal strategy that has brought us closer to meaningful EI reform.

Of course, Layton's party isn't part of the working group. His strategy of blind opposition over the last week has left his party on the sidelines of the EI debate, and now he's trying to push his way back in or be rendered irrelevant on an issue the NDP has been out on front on for some time. So it's natural he's trying to re-engage in the debate.

To be a serious player in this debate though, Layton is going to have to clear up some confusion: does he want to make parliament work, or not? And that doesn't mean passing enough non-binding motions and private member's bills to wallpaper his condo, but cooperating with the other parties, giving a little to get a little, working in a substantive way to get something done.

He's still sending mixed signals. He says today he's willing to put some water in his wine to get something done on EI reform. Yet his surrogates still attack Michael Ignatieff for doing just that, and Layton still signaled today he'll bring the government down at the first opportunity this fall, seemingly leaving no ground for achieving a consensus on EI reform.

It's a hard circle to square, so I hope Jack undertstands my confusion.

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(Video) Ralph Goodale on the EI working group

I thought Liberal MP Ralph Goodale did a good job outlining the Liberal position on the working group on Don Newman's Politics broadcast last night.

BTW, only two broooooadcaaaasts left from Newman, tonight and Friday. End of an era.

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A noble compromise

With my summer electioneering plans now off, the Blue Jays really need to start playing some decent baseball again. Unless I can find a pick-up election somewhere.

All in all, while this week didn’t unfold the way I’d have played it, I think the Liberals and Conservatives have acted responsibly today, reaching a compromise that moves us closer to real employment insurance reform, ensures real transparency around financial reporting, and avoids the summer election Canadian want while ensuring there will be real election triggers in place for the fall.

Now, for those of you who want an election now, obviously no compromise was going to be acceptable, so it's all moot. We can't always have what we want, though.

And I’ll note that “election now” was a position held by NONE of the major political parties. That includes the BQ and the NDP. They both insist they don’t want an election, but they also weren’t willing to do anything cooperative or substantive to avoid one. So it fell to the grown-up parties to see if common-ground could be found, and if an election actually could be avoided.

The question, of course becomes can enough common ground be found to avoid an election. For those of you that say the “get” wasn’t big enough here, assuming you didn’t favour an election, I’m curious what you would have considered a sufficient get to avoid an election all parties agree they don’t want, bearing in mind it needs to be something both sides are likely to agree to.

Let’s delve into just what this agreement entails.

*A Pabst blue ribbon panel on EI. 3 Liberal appointees, 3 Conservatives. They’ll work through the summer and report by Sept. 28th.

In a minority government, any EI reform is going to require multiple parties to come together, each group giving something. Right now the Liberals want a 360 hour national standard, but only temporarily. The BQ and NDP want it permanently. The Conservatives have offered movement on self-employment.

Obviously, we’ll have to move from the 360 hour position to find consensus. And the Conservatives have already made a major move. In his presser today, Harper acknowledged the patchwork of differing regional standards has to go. That’s a significant concession from his past position of staunchly defending the system that has been achieved already by this Liberal initiated cooperative process.

The panel will take the summer to try to narrow the gap further, and will report to Parliament in September. If they reach a consensus both sides find acceptable, it can be passed with majority support in the House.

To those who say this is too long to way for meaningful EI reform, I ask you what’s the alternative you’d propose? A compromise can’t be achieved overnight on the back of a napkin, and an election would mean a reconstituted parliament couldn’t even begin to consider the issue until the fall, at which point (assuming no one got a majority) a consensus would STILL need to be negotiated.

This is the fastest way to meaningful EI reform. I’d also add that this Liberal process has pushed the Conservatives to speed-up plans (that maybe they never even had) to bring EI benefits to the self-employed, a significant reform as well.

*On the reporting front, we get an additional fiscal report card from the Conservatives that wasn’t scheduled before, and it will be due Sept. 28th.

The report is required to have the real, detailed information that was missing from the Duffy infomercial, specifically details on actual stimulus dollars spent, jobs created, and real, go-forward deficit projections with their plan to balance the budget.

*Finally, we have taken back control of the timing of opposition days, including a Liberal opposition day following the Sept. 28th reporting deadline for the fiscal report card and the EI panel. This is more of a significant get than it may appear to be.

Like the Martin Liberals did (to the Conservatives’ distaste) the Harper Conservatives have shown a habit of manipulating opposition days to avoid confidence votes. They pushed back the opposition days in this session to this week, so to preclude any possibility of an election other than late July/early August. And they had already signaled their clear intention to similarly manipulate the fall schedule.

Left unchecked, they could well have jury-rigged the fall schedule to avoid giving the opposition the possibility of voting them down before the 2010 Games, other than a possible Christmas election. Now, the Liberals have taken that hammer back, and, should we choose to use it, we’ll have the ability to force a fall election. Well, maybe early November e-day, but its still fall. And its definitely not Christmas, or next spring.

The aftermath

So there you go, that’s the get. Now, my feeling going into this thing last week was as follows: let’s stop doing anything to support this government. If the NDP or BQ want to make a deal, fine. I think they would (I still do). Frankly, my preferred timing would be the fall. But if pulling our support means a summer election, so be it.

Obviously, a different tact was taken: one of compromise, of trying to make parliament work. I think this desire from Ignatieff was genuine. It wasn’t gamesmanship. Will it play out better for the party in the long-term? Only time will tell.

We know what they’ll say in Ottawa. The media had already written the cooperative approach off before the agreement was announced. It’s not surprising. The same media pundits that said forcing a summer election would be madness will now decry the Liberals for not forcing a summer election.

The media, and politicos for that matter, as I wrote yesterday view these things through confrontational lenses. They like confrontation. Chest-thumping. You know what swinging. Bravado. They can only view cooperation as a ploy, a cynical strategy designed to gain position. Actual desire for an cooperative approach is alien to them. They also prefer writing confrontation stories, of picking winners and losers. It makes their jobs easier.

Then there’s the opposition parties, whose response has been predictable. They didn’t want an election either, but they’ll be upset at the Liberals for not giving them one. But you know, they’ve become increasingly irrelevant through this process. The NDP’s non-binding EI bill isn’t going to do anything for anyone, just like all the other non-binding feel-good motions they’ve passed. But it’s the Liberals that have brought us a process that can lead to actual EI reform that can actually be passed into law with majority support, while the NDP watches from the sidelines.

And out there in real Canada, they’ll be glad that at least some of those idiots up there in Ottawa are acting like grown-ups and trying to get things accomplished.

Meanwhile, since I really did want an election, all you people that didn't want an election should invite me to your cottages so I have something to do this summer.

UPDATE: Video from Ignatieff's statement on the compromise.

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Conservatives spooked at prospect of EI-triggered campaign

I think this brouhaha around employment insurance that the Liberals have been raising since their convention, and the NDP for some time before that, is starting to cause the Conservatives deep concern.

How else to explain that this morning I woke-up to an inbox stuffed with clippings from Conservative pundits and editorials from Conservative-friendly papers all poo-poohing the Liberal proposals for a fairer EI system. And Diane Finley (’s staffer) even wrote an op/ed today filled with so many falsehoods it raises the question: if a Conservative minister wrote an editorial saying the sky is purple and the ocean tastes like koolade, would CanWest just print it without comment?

Clearly, they’re spooked. And I can well understand why. While I really don’t see how we get into an election over EI, if we do I know which side of that campaign I’d want to be on. And it’s not their’s.

Here’s an interesting fact I learned in my morning reading. Now, the Liberals have been proposing a national 360 hour standard for EI for the duration of the recession. Critics say that number is crazy low. And not having a point of comparison, I thought maybe it was. Then I learned the current figure is between 420 to 910 hours, depending on where you live.

So, at the low end, we’re talking a difference of 60 hours. Or, a week-and-a-half of full-time work. Quelle horror! And while that regional disparity may have made sense once, it really doesn’t in today’s economy. It just doesn’t make sense anymore that someone in Ontario needs to work twice as long to qualify for EI as someone in Newfoundland. Nearly 70 per cent of unemployed Ontarians don't qualify for EI. Fighting to maintain that unfairness isn’t a position I’d want to take in an election campaign.

Will the Conservatives be putting this comment by Diane "Let them eat cake" Finley in a commercial?

"We do not want to make it lucrative for them to stay home and get paid for it.”

Probably not. But I’m sure someone will be ensuring that comment gets lots of play, as well as all the similar comments made by Conservative ministers, not to mention Stephen Harper himself, who called changes to make the system fairer an “absurdity.”

Anyone who has been on EI knows its far from lucrative. Why would someone voluntarily leave a job will full salary (and maybe benefits) in order to collect a fraction of their salary? It doesn’t make sense. What we’re talking about is helping Canadians who have lost their jobs because of this recession get back on their feet and find new employment, and ensuring they can benefit from a system THEY paid into.

Unemployment is rising sharply in regions where it never has before, highlighting the disparities of he current system. Over 300,000 Canadians have lost their jobs since the last election, thanks to a recession only the Harper Conservatives didn’t see coming. And many, many more are concerned about the safety of their jobs and the livelihood of their families.

Do the Conservatives really want to die on this hill, and fight an election calling potential EI recipients featherbedding freeloaders? Fighting against a fairer EI system when so many Canadians are either losing their jobs or fearful that they will soon be out of work? Saying people in Ontario should work longer to receive benefits?

They’ll back away from this somehow. And they should, because the focus here should be on making the EI system work for Canadians, and because they’re not that stupid.

If they want to unnecessarily force an election on this though, I say bring it on. Luckily for all the unemployed Conservatives that election will create, the Liberal will ensure a fairer EI system will be there for them.

WORTH READING:

*Michael Ignatieff's op/ed on employment insurance reform
*Liberal fact check on EI and Conservatives mistruths
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PS. Check-out my entry for the YLC's positive politics ad challenge, "Is this your Canada?"

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Video: It's the economy, Stephen!

Michael Ignatieff had an excellent op/ed on EI in the National Post over the weekend:

Unemployment is up 83% in Alberta and 68% in B. C. -- but it's still twice as hard to qualify for EI in Western Canada as it is elsewhere in the country.

The rules end up pitting worker against worker. In Magog, Que., 200 people who lost their jobs at Gurit Canada at the same time and who have paid the same EI benefits are now receiving different levels of assistance because their town happens to straddle the border of two EI regions.

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PS. Check-out my entry for the YLC's positive politics ad challenge, "Is this your Canada?"

Recommend this Post on Progressive Bloggers