The complaints about folks in this part of the country relying on pogey to get through the winter, at the expense of truly hard-working taxpayers, all of whom apparently live somewhere else, is hardly new.
The legend of former Alberta premier Ralph Klein’s 1982 attack on eastern “bums and creeps” has been resurrected amid growing concerns over changes to the Employment Insurance program currently in the works by the federal Conservative government.
Klein was mayor of Calgary at the time, dealing with a housing crisis, an influx of job-hungry easterners and jails that were said to be filled with non-Albertans. A CBC report at the time said 70 per cent of convenience store robberies and 95 per cent of bank robberies had been committed by offenders who were newcomers to Alberta.
The rarely tongue-tied Klein, in his defence, was mostly attempting to announce the welcome mat was not being laid out for would-be criminals, no matter where they came from.
But there is no denying that East-West tensions, enraged by the national energy program of the Trudeau Liberal government, were adding fuel to the rift.
The old resentments that have pitted the booming western region of this nation against the economically challenged East, particularly the small Atlantic provinces and rural parts of Quebec, are now being played out in a new way.
The only difference, three decades later, is that even more rural communities have been drained of their young workers, many headed to the West — or maybe just Halifax — in search of a job.
Even more Albertans are just one generation removed from their eastern roots. And this time around, Saskatchewan has emerged as an economic power. For that matter, to a lesser degree, so has Newfoundland.
It is in this environment that the Conservatives will soon get down to the business of explaining just how tightly they will begin to choke off the flow of EI benefits to seasonal workers, particularly repeat offenders who live in high-unemployment areas of the country.
The table is set, again, for a nasty war of words about workers moving westward and criticism aimed at the loafers who refuse to budge from “home,” thanks in part to the generosity of an employment insurance program that makes it possible for them to stay.
In too many communities, there is a undeniable disconnect between the stubborn demands that “the government” hurry up and come to the aid of folks who refuse to acknowledge the lack of opportunity in dying one-industry towns, and the reality that the EI program is being funded mainly by workers who will rarely if ever use it.
On the other hand, some folks in the West forget that hardworking taxpayers in the East — shucks, even in the downtrodden Maritimes — pay into those programs, too.
The big political knot for the Harper Conservatives comes into play over the question of seasonal workers and repeat users of EI. Tourism, campgrounds, the fishery, downtown restaurants in every city in the country, farms in every province, forestry in Nova Scotia and British Columbia, all rely on seasonal workers to some degree.
It so happens, in rural communities and especially in Atlantic Canada, that we have more seasonal workers than do most more affluent provinces.
Right-wing think-tanks have penned convincing reports about how workers in high-unemployment areas can get more unemployment with fewer weeks of work than a similar worker in a big western city, why this makes no sense and why the EI program must change.
There won’t be a whole lot of discussion about the billions in EI revenues that payroll deductions pour into federal coffers, with little accountability for how it’s all spent.
The Conservatives have their speaking points written, but they will have to repeat history before they learn the hard way that some policy dramas bring political backlash. But with even more Commons seats now held in the West and Ontario, the Atlantic whip has less crack than it ever did. So, what do they care?
There will be more rural EI recipients who will be squeezed by new rules aimed at making them accept any job within an hour’s drive — take the bus! What bus? — and who will no longer be able to make ends meet at “home” because of reduced benefits.
And for every worker who pulls up stakes and takes the family West, another nail will be pounded into the coffin of a small-town economy that is dying, one plane ticket to Alberta at a time.
Original Article
Source: the chronicle herald
Author: MARILLA STEPHENSON
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