‘When I needed it, I used it’: Green Party leader Elizabeth May says she was repeat EI user

Green Party leader Elizabeth May objected Thursday to the Conservative government’s targeting of “repeat users” of the Employment Insurance system — because she was one herself.

Ms. May said that from 1975 to 1980, she received what was then called unemployment insurance during the off-season while working as a waitress and cook at her family’s restaurant and gift shop business in Cape Breton, she says.

Labelling regular users of EI, such as herself, as lazy or abusing the system is unfair, she said.

“I paid into employment insurance. When I needed it, I used it. When I didn’t, I didn’t. I raise my personal experience because I don’t think anyone should be ashamed that seasonal businesses in this country that are big, or small, have benefitted from a legal system of insurance that pays for itself.”

It is repeat claimants like Ms. May who the Tories are targetting with sweeping reforms to the EI system unveiled Thursday.

She worked at her parents’ tourism business, Schooner Village, along the Cabot Trail in Margaree Harbour from 1974 to 1983, and collected EI during some of those years. It would typically shut down after Thanksgiving until staff would return to re-open on Victoria Day weekend, leaving its 35 to 50 workers to find other work or collect UI. Ms. May said she looked, but could not find, work in the town.

“I’m coming out myself and saying this was my life. If you want to say this is a wrong way to live, fine,” she said. “Let’s have that conversation.”

She said the business paid more money in taxes to the federal and provincial governments than staff claimed in employment insurance benefits.

Ms. May, now MP for the riding of Saanich-Gulf Islands in B.C., said the government’s EI changes will have a huge impact on industries such as forestry and tourism.

“Most of the forest industries in this country would not be able to have a trained workforce that could pick up when they’re ready to come to work, if their employees didn’t find work that was so compelling that they weren’t available,” she said.

“It’s a structural reality of the seasonal industries in this country. If you don’t like it, you can have a conversation about the fact that forestry, fisheries, tourism, mining in some parts of the country are seasonal and that very large corporations benefit from this system… If you don’t like it, then have an evidence-based conversation about changing that system. But since its legal, it pays for itself, I don’t know why people have a problem with it.”

Original Article
Source: national post
Author: Armina Ligaya