New EI reform for Canada
June 17, 2009 · By Charles Anthony
All of this nonsense talk from the Liberals demanding reform to employment insurance is pissing me off. Clearly, they are just using EI reform because they have no other principle to uphold. However, it has got me thinking that maybe it is certainly time to reform Canada’s employment insurance once and for all.
It is time to abolish employment insurance altogether. If any government is serious about creating jobs, that government would make things easier and cheaper for employers to keep people employed. Abolishing employment insurance would abolish those payroll deductions.
What to do about the shrill cries from the hordes of socialists who pretend to defend the unemployed?
Easy. Tell them to shut up.
What to do with the unemployed?
Nothing. Let them continue looking for a job.
What to do with your bleeding socialist heart that can not bare to let unemployed people free to look for a job in the new economy?
Well, here we may consider some compromises. I propose that the unemployed can go on welfare.
We already have a welfare scheme. Why not use it to its full advantage? There is no reason to waste tax-payers’ money paying for extra layers of worthless bureaucracy managing the old employment insurance scheme when EI payments are nothing but glorified welfare.
I like it! I vote you site on that “blue ribbon panel”!
‘We already have a welfare scheme. Why not use it to its full advantage?
That’s why the Premiers are the ones calling for reform,
their welfare payments, when EI runs out, are swelling.
Anyone want to bet that PMSH set up the Blue Ribbon Panel is to answer the ‘Premiers’ concerns, and was already in the works….!
Wow, what a solution!!! You have other great ideas like this one, you brilliant OH so great thinker?!!! Machiavelli’s probably jealous of you right now… I think we should call you the “new” Prince!
What’s your next move? Abolishing human rights? Having George Bush as our next Prime Minister?
Your comments make me sick! Come up with at least some kind of a solution, not just throwing ideas just for the sake of it… Reaction, reaction, reaction… but no solution… Just great…!
Go you Charles! Amen brother. Say it!
Iggy-the-part-time-Canuck, didn’t have anything better to whine about than this.
I say: whatever supports the stimulation of our economy without causing our deficit to deepen.
Not that I support an enlarged welfare state–a socialist I most certainly am not–but I am a professional who has put in 15 solid working years in Canada, paying diligently into E.I. and only using it once before, in 2000, and only for a few months before landing a new job in IT. So yes, I hear what you’re saying, Mr. A., you big ol’ hunk you. But my scenario is now the following: I have been out of the country working for two years, teaching English abroad, basically working as an indentured servant and “white-faced English monkey”. I enjoyed my time away from Canada, and didn’t cost this country a red cent whilst abroad; I paid my own medical/dental, and paid my taxes like a “good little Korean”. I returned last September (’08) and within three weeks was gainfully employed. In all, I’ve completed two 3-month contracts, the latter an embarrassingly low-paying IT job wherein I was taken advantage of on account of my desperation at landing *any* job in this brutal economy. But now, again, I’m unemployed, and there are literally no jobs…and if there are, there are clearly hundreds more like me, each one fighting and lying his way to secure their pathetic little scrap of meat. It’s a madhouse, this country. Canada, who inexplicably is still taking in immigrants, simply cannot support its growing population. And now we have obnoxious little twerps like you posting your inane drivel online? I confess to being both amused and enraged by your lumping of all people, all prospective EI recipients, into the same category, as if we were all cankers on society. To the point: I’ve been turned down for EI, having worked “only” 876 hours since I came back to Canada last fall. The cut-off for me, having been out of Canada for 2 years, is, alas, 910 hours. So yes, only 34 hours short but still…screw me, baby gets nothing. “But, but, but…what about all those years where I paid into the system, Mr. Harper?” Screw me, apparently. I can go suck on an egg. And again, we return to the likes of you, whose apparently well-meaning bile smacks more of Marie Antoinette than anything like a modern realist. You, sir, ought to be thoroughly ashamed of yourself. I can only hope that some day soon you lose every bloody thing you have, and are reduced to the level the rest of us–we faithful Canadians who are not abusing the system but merely looking for a boost as we diligently seek work day-in and day-out. I hope and pray for your downfall, sir, really I do. Perhaps then you’ll see that were the tables turned, you too would seek a leg up and not a very polite screw-you, the one normally reserved for the abusers of our narrowing social safety net. Go suck an egg, sir.
Mr. G,
Unlike any other business expense, payroll deductions are an onerous cost placed on employers that just goes out the window. Without payroll deductions, employers would have the means to devote more of their budget to keeping more employees employed. I encourage you to meditate upon that.
Maybe someday — hopefully sooner rather than later for your own sake — you confess to having read what you wanted to read rather than what was actually written.
— but you are completely wrong. The jobs are out there. They are simply being crushed by payroll deductions.
I think you were ripped off by the EI system and I condemn that. You seem to want more of it. You think it can work. Well, if you think it can work, why is it not working for you?????????
You do not have to tell me nothing. For half a dozen years, I have employed four, sometimes five, full time employees and my lowest paying employee always made more money than me — she still does. My highest paid employee currently makes three times as much as me. It took me five years to turn a profit. I have liquidated all of my assets, re-mortgaged my home, maxed out all of my credit, borrowed everything from my family and all for one thing: just to make payroll and payroll deductions.
Let me guess: You still want to see my downfall, right? I am willing to bet you do.
The amount I regularly pay in payroll deductions could hire two additional full time staff each making more money than me. Meditate upon that and then try to come back with a responsible argument. Otherwise, you are just a confused economically ignorant selfish socialist who should be grateful that arrogant bastards like me are speaking up.
Without people like me, you would have to stare reality in the face. You would have nobody to blame but yourself. You do not sound like you are man enough to even consider the possibility that the government is the problem. Like every other fool in this country, you probably think the government creates jobs.
As a small business owner I don’t like paying 1.4 times the amount of my employees ei deduction, but I do. To have to pay it on myself NO! We are in a global recession, it is hard enough bidding on jobs in these tough times, To suddenly have to raise my prices to cover this could be a death nell for my business, HST on top of this and suddenly I have to bilke my customers another 50$ a day!
Why not call it a work tax? I’ve been in construction for 22 years and have only recieved ei twice for very short periods of time. As a labourer getting 60% of my gross was not enough to live on.
This should be optional, if you want to pay ei pay it, if not don,t and opt out of the social safety net that Canada has developed to promote uselessness.
Do away with EI do away with welfare, increase mothers allowance and disability pensions. Nobody handed me anything, I did my time as a slave labourer for just above minimum wage, learned a trade and opened a business that now employes people.
If this is insurance it should be optional.
Hows this sound? I work about 80 hours a week, salary of 2000, I pay my premiums on those hours, lay myself off due to lack of work, collect 60 % of my pay, works out to 4800 a month, Say it takes two monthes to get my hours, 10 months at 4800/ month is 48,000$ a year plus the 16,000 I made in 2 months work = me making 64,000$ a year for 2 months work. Of course this is before tax!
This is a stupid idea that will be abused. The fact we didn’t have this safety net is what drives us to keep finding work to keep ourselves and our labourers employed. If we didn’t work we starved.
If somebody is running a business that badly why should my money go to keep a competetor in business, this is supposedly capitalism, why punish the successful businesses to keep the non successful businessman going.
I’ve got a grade 12 education and my trade papers, I own two trucks, four motorcycles, my 200,000$ house will be paid off next year (exactly 10 years after I bought it), I have a cottage in New Brunswick. I do commercial snow plowing during the winter and masonry restoration during the summer.
Why the hell punish me and my business, If I run this business into the ground where is my government bailout package going to come from. Thats right I wouldn’t get one!
How about the mom & pop store on the corner of my street. They own the building and live in the apartment above, they have no employees. They are in there from 7am to 11pm 7 days a week. How could they possibly benefit from paying out ei premiums?.
This is nothing but a dumb assed cash grab that is going to kill small business.
what the fuck man! ill take grant money any day to get schooling or training for a job any day. thats pretty much why its there get you facts straight man
Screw unemployment insurance, i have been paying into this sh*t my hole life, and the worthless Mother F*ckers wont approve my unemployment insurance when i get laid-off.
I don’t even be-leave unemployment insurance, but if they are going to force me to pay for this garbage, then i should get my money back when i need it, no wounder people try to work under the table. this is unjustified crap