“I was shocked. I didn’t understand why the government was doing this … I was hurt,” said Jane Kittmer, 41, who learned in January that the federal government is appealing her successful 2½-year fight for EI sickness benefits.
The mother of two has beaten her cancer but the effects of chemotherapy leave her unable to return to work.
Last December, an EI umpire ruled in favour of Kittmer’s EI sickness claim, a month after Parliament voted unanimously to amend the Employment Insurance Act to ensure those on maternity and parental leave are also eligible for sickness benefits.
The Helping Families in Need Act, which came into force Sunday, is expected to help about 6,000 parents a year, Ottawa said in a statement earlier this month.
When asked about the Kittmer case, a spokesperson for Human Resources Minister Diane Finley would say only that the government is helping families “balance work and family responsibilities.”
The government is “offering new support measures to Canadian families at times when they need it most,” Alyson Queen added in an email Friday.
In the past, EI claimants on maternity or parental leave couldn’t get sickness benefits because the law required them to be “otherwise available for work.” The new legislation waives that requirement.
In 2011, in a precedent-setting case involving Toronto mother Natalyal Rougas, an EI umpire ruled that government officials have been misinterpreting the spirit of the original 2002 law.
(An umpire, usually a Federal Court judge, reviews decisions by the EI board of referees. His or her decision becomes case law.)
In his ruling in the Rougas case, Justice J.R. Marin said the government should either direct officials to interpret the rules more liberally or make legislative changes.
Rougas, who was diagnosed with breast cancer during maternity leave in 2010, was awarded the maximum 15 weeks of sickness benefits in addition to her combined 50 weeks of maternal and parental benefits. The award amounted to about $6,000, or $400 a week.
Ottawa did not appeal the Rougas decision and began working on a legislative fix, introduced last summer as Bill C-44.
At Senate hearings on the legislation in December, Finley said the Rougas case prompted the government to act “to make sure that it was codified and clarified.”
Kittmer’s circumstances are almost identical to those of Rougas. She was diagnosed with breast cancer in April 2010 while receiving EI maternity benefits and was denied sickness benefits. Armed with the Rougas ruling, Kittmer took her case to the EI umpire last fall and won.
However, instead of accepting the decision, the government is appealing.
“They are publicly announcing that the government’s policy is that women should be getting this benefit,” said Kittmer’s lawyer, Stephen Moreau. “But they are making every effort to make sure that nobody gets this benefit before March 24, 2013 — except Natalya Rougas.”
Moreau, who also represented Rougas, filed a class-action suit in January to win benefits for as many as 60,000 other women who he argues have been wrongly denied EI sickness benefits since 2002.
MP Rodger Cuzner, the Liberal human resources critic, says Ottawa’s decision to appeal is an abuse of process.
“The ruling in Rougas was absolutely clear,” he told the Star. “To see the government still challenging people in court is absolutely nonsensical.”
Original Article
Source: thestar.com
Author: Laurie Monsebraaten
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