One day many years ago, then-premier John Buchanan stood at the window of Province House, bemusedly watching a protest over changes to fisheries programs. It was standard fare: a hundred or so placard-waving, chanting fishery folk stomping around in the rain.
A reporter wanted to know why the protest was happening in Halifax when fisheries were under federal control and the program changes came from Ottawa.
“It’s too far to travel and too expensive to go up there,” Buchanan explained with a shrug. “They protest here because it’s closer to home.”
It’s that kind of unfocused public backlash that worries the four current Atlantic premiers, although this time, it’s about employment insurance. They seem to have no leverage over federal programs and therefore no way to meet public expectations or temper public anger. Ottawa can use the remote-controlled drone approach to politics: calmly making changes from afar while setting fire to the countryside here.
At least it appears that way. We still know so little about how Ottawa plans to change EI that it’s hard to predict the fallout. In political terms, even the Tories can’t be sure where the changes will take them.
This all grows from the fact that the Conservatives spent themselves into a deep budget deficit and now seek to cut their way out of it. EI makes a tempting target because it is perceived to be mismanaged, abused and a distorting factor in the economy.
It’s also easy to characterize EI users as exploiters, which Premier Darrell Dexter rejected as a stereotype based on myth.
EI provides a perfect vehicle for informal Conservative messaging: cut off the lazy bums and save money for other taxpayers, who work hard, live somewhere else and vote Tory. If only life were so simple.
Cabinet ministers from Atlantic Canada know it’s not simple at all. Peter MacKay represents a rural riding, as does Gail Shea in P.E.I., Peter Penashue in Labrador and Bernard Valcourt in New Brunswick. They’ll be perceived as traitors if the reforms are unfair to seasonal workers. Not a Tory east of Ontario would be safe.
Yet a properly managed, focused EI program could do what it’s supposed to do: smooth out the bumpy periods in the economy and provide labour market stability everywhere in Canada.
That’s what the Atlantic premiers were trying to emphasize last week during their meeting in Brudenell, in the seasonal-work bastion of eastern P.E.I. In places like that, the EI system provides stability in industries that can’t go all year-round: fisheries, farming, tourism and the like.
Those are important economic factors all across Atlantic Canada. So the premiers, currently still at the muttering-and-complaining stage, might have no choice but to take up arms. They will have to stand up for their constituents.
Dexter warned that damaging agriculture and fisheries won’t only hurt Maritimers, that other Canadians who “like to have lobster, scallops, potatoes ... those are products of seasonal industries.”
Human Resources Minister Diane Finley is slowly being drawn out on the government’s plans for EI reform. Hints at the changes first emerged among the multiple concealed suitcase bombs in the omnibus federal budget bill. Apparently, the reforms will create three new classes of EI claimants and make it much more difficult for “frequent flyers” to qualify.
Finley says the new, improved system will be both flexible and fair. Both of those descriptors are vague enough to mean one thing to the “cut the bums off” crowd and something else to seasonal workers, their employers and governments.
If the changes aren’t seen as fair and flexible, Tory fortunes on the East Coast will be bleak. Conservatives currently hold 14 of the 32 seats in Atlantic Canada and all but two of them are true rural ridings. An EI backlash like the one against the Liberals in 1997 could be costly.
The federal Tories might feel they can walk away from the vote in Atlantic Canada, but closer to the ground, the region’s premiers know they have no such luxury. If the changes end up being too disruptive or plainly unfair, they will have no choice but to fight.
Original Article
Source: the chronicle herald
Author: DAN LEGER
A reporter wanted to know why the protest was happening in Halifax when fisheries were under federal control and the program changes came from Ottawa.
“It’s too far to travel and too expensive to go up there,” Buchanan explained with a shrug. “They protest here because it’s closer to home.”
It’s that kind of unfocused public backlash that worries the four current Atlantic premiers, although this time, it’s about employment insurance. They seem to have no leverage over federal programs and therefore no way to meet public expectations or temper public anger. Ottawa can use the remote-controlled drone approach to politics: calmly making changes from afar while setting fire to the countryside here.
At least it appears that way. We still know so little about how Ottawa plans to change EI that it’s hard to predict the fallout. In political terms, even the Tories can’t be sure where the changes will take them.
This all grows from the fact that the Conservatives spent themselves into a deep budget deficit and now seek to cut their way out of it. EI makes a tempting target because it is perceived to be mismanaged, abused and a distorting factor in the economy.
It’s also easy to characterize EI users as exploiters, which Premier Darrell Dexter rejected as a stereotype based on myth.
EI provides a perfect vehicle for informal Conservative messaging: cut off the lazy bums and save money for other taxpayers, who work hard, live somewhere else and vote Tory. If only life were so simple.
Cabinet ministers from Atlantic Canada know it’s not simple at all. Peter MacKay represents a rural riding, as does Gail Shea in P.E.I., Peter Penashue in Labrador and Bernard Valcourt in New Brunswick. They’ll be perceived as traitors if the reforms are unfair to seasonal workers. Not a Tory east of Ontario would be safe.
Yet a properly managed, focused EI program could do what it’s supposed to do: smooth out the bumpy periods in the economy and provide labour market stability everywhere in Canada.
That’s what the Atlantic premiers were trying to emphasize last week during their meeting in Brudenell, in the seasonal-work bastion of eastern P.E.I. In places like that, the EI system provides stability in industries that can’t go all year-round: fisheries, farming, tourism and the like.
Those are important economic factors all across Atlantic Canada. So the premiers, currently still at the muttering-and-complaining stage, might have no choice but to take up arms. They will have to stand up for their constituents.
Dexter warned that damaging agriculture and fisheries won’t only hurt Maritimers, that other Canadians who “like to have lobster, scallops, potatoes ... those are products of seasonal industries.”
Human Resources Minister Diane Finley is slowly being drawn out on the government’s plans for EI reform. Hints at the changes first emerged among the multiple concealed suitcase bombs in the omnibus federal budget bill. Apparently, the reforms will create three new classes of EI claimants and make it much more difficult for “frequent flyers” to qualify.
Finley says the new, improved system will be both flexible and fair. Both of those descriptors are vague enough to mean one thing to the “cut the bums off” crowd and something else to seasonal workers, their employers and governments.
If the changes aren’t seen as fair and flexible, Tory fortunes on the East Coast will be bleak. Conservatives currently hold 14 of the 32 seats in Atlantic Canada and all but two of them are true rural ridings. An EI backlash like the one against the Liberals in 1997 could be costly.
The federal Tories might feel they can walk away from the vote in Atlantic Canada, but closer to the ground, the region’s premiers know they have no such luxury. If the changes end up being too disruptive or plainly unfair, they will have no choice but to fight.
Original Article
Source: the chronicle herald
Author: DAN LEGER
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