Therrien, a federal fraud investigator, leaked documents in February that showed the Harper government had instructed investigators to identify $485,000 in EI fraud per year. Those targets were just one element of a plan to save money by cutting benefits wherever possible, Therrien told the Star this week. “My values just wouldn’t allow me to do that,” she said. “It was so unfair. These people are like everyone else. They have children, and we send them to the streets.”
For her stand, the government suspended her without pay. Now she’s living on a friend’s couch, struggling to pay her son’s university tuition.
Therrien’s leak sheds light on the process by which Canada’s EI coverage has deteriorated in recent years. Statistics Canada reported last week that the number of EI beneficiaries is falling at a much faster rate than the number of unemployed Canadians. In May, only 37.7 per cent of our unemployed received regular EI benefits — a proportion lower than at any time since World War II.
It’s no wonder. According to Therrien, the pressure to meet the so-called fraud quotas led her and her colleagues to bend the rules to find savings. “You highlight some things, you ignore some things, you manipulate some facts. It’s easy,” she said.
No one would argue against weeding out fraud. But Therrien has revealed what appears to be a government culture that would rather see one legitimate claimant denied access than one dollar misspent. That’s a position that lacks both compassion and economic sense. EI exists to ensure that people in temporary trouble don’t fall permanently out of the labour market and become forever dependent on welfare. A dollar saved by depriving an unemployed person of EI is not a dollar saved at all.
By exposing the government’s disquieting approach to fighting EI fraud, Therrien did a public service. Whether she went about it in the right way is another matter.
Civil servants are allowed by law to alert the public directly to serious government malfeasance only if there is “insufficient time” to exhaust all internal avenues. Therrien should have been suspended with pay until the Public Sector Integrity Commissioner had time to evaluate her case.
Instead, yet again, the government has come down hard, and without due process, on a whistleblower. That’s a shame. This one in particular ought to be commended for her courage. She knows better than most that if she loses her job, our deteriorating social safety net might not catch her.
Original Article
Source: thestar.com
Author: Editorial
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