With federal Employment Insurance, of course, it’s usually not optional — most working Canadians must pay EI premiums — but the basic concept is the same. If someone loses his job, EI is supposed to kick in after a couple of weeks to help pay the bills until that person can find alternative employment.
That means the federal government has a tremendous duty of care to ensure the EI system is functioning as expected. Legitimate claimants who’ve paid into the system expect — indeed, count on — the program to work when needed. Discovering it doesn’t can inflict real damage in people’s lives.
Ottawa has clearly failed to fulfil that duty. The number of Canadians having to wait more than four weeks for a decision on their EI claims last year climbed above 90,000, our Ottawa Bureau Chief Paul McLeod reported Friday.
In 2010, that number had been less than half that amount, at 44,000.
The federal government has now responded by hiring 400 people on two-year contracts to help process EI claims and clear the backlog. That’s how long it’s expected to take for the government’s automated EI processing system to be capable of handling the workload, according to a review done for Employment and Social Development Minister Jason Kenney.
Mr. Kenney only assumed the portfolio in the summer of 2013, taking over for former minister Diane Finley.
Complaints about the EI program have been steadily rising for years, from 444 in 2006-2007 to nearly 10,000 last year, although there was also one spike up to 15,000 in 2011-2012.
That negative trend coincides with repeated substantial changes to the EI system by the federal government during those years.
Opposition NDP MP Robert Chisholm and the National Union of Public and General Employees have both blamed the Conservative federal government for causing the backlog by cutting substantial numbers of federal civil service jobs.
Meanwhile, officials in Mr. Kenney’s office insist the EI reforms — which they say were focused on rules regarding how already approved claimants had to look for work — are not connected to the backlog in approvals.
We have no details of what the rising number of complaints about EI since 2007 have specifically been about.
But to make significant, often controversial changes to EI rules while trying to expand automation and cutting staff dealing with EI claims, doesn’t seem wise, to say the least.
Employees say they told the government at the time the automated system wasn’t ready, one former EI worker told Mr. McLeod.
The bottom line is the department wasn’t capable of handling the demand. Otherwise, the backlog of Canadians waiting more than four weeks for a decision on their EI claims wouldn’t have more than doubled in four years.
Ottawa’s failure meant the EI safety net wasn’t there when it was needed.
Original Article
Source: thechronicleherald.ca/
Author: EDITORIAL
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