ROBERT CHISHOLM / "ON-SITE"
1994 / 1996 - FULL REPORT AND SUPPORTING DOCUMENTS
2003 and again in 2005 – more trouble – with so-called
“Overpayment of Social Assistance” during this period –
You can see from looking elsewhere on this site that I had a full-time job up to December 2nd, 1994, as a painter, with Dean's Professional Painting Inc. in Ottawa.
I took this work because I couldn't get anything else - never mind anything in professional engineering (which is what I was doing in the U.K.) - and also because it should have allowed me to accumulate sufficient weeks of insurable employment to allow me to become eligible for an "ON-SITE" placement so as to be able to return to engineering as a career. Getting back to engineering also would have meant me paying more into the tax base, than working as a painter - quite apart from other issues.
I was forced to quit this painting job because Dean's Professional Painting were owing me about 5 weeks' un-paid wages and the situation at the time was worsening. In fact, they admitted to a "cash-flow problem" on my Record of Employment which was included with my U.I. application (dated December 5th 1994).
Subsequently, I had to reclaim my un-paid wages from the Ontario Wage Protection Plan because Dean's Professional Painting were insolvent. See ONTARIO MINISTRY OF LABOUR
Then the following occurred:-
1. I was then denied U.I. benefits, by letter from H.R.D.C. dated December 22nd, 1994.
2. This happened partly because I was mis-informed by my local U.I. office at the time about the number of weeks of insurable employment needed to "qualify" for U.I. benefits, as explained in a letter dated January 9th 1995, to my federal M.P. Marlene Catterall. See HRDOC_2
3. I appealed to the Board of Referees in a letter dated January 30th, 1995. See HRDOC_3 --In this letter I mentioned, among other things, that I had been forced on to social assistance, kept out of the "ON-SITE" re-training program for unemployed professionals (such as engineers) and prevented (in effect) from collecting un-paid wages owed to me; I also mentioned my appearance before the federal Standing Committee on Human Resources Development for the purpose of getting these kinds of problems corrected.
4. H.R.D.C. sent me another letter dated January 31st 1995, saying that I actually needed only 18 weeks of insurable employment to qualify, instead of the 20 weeks which they originally insisted on.
This did not help because I only had 17 weeks of insurable employment. See HRDOC_4
5. The Board of Referees ruled against me on February 23rd 1995 and refused me admission to "ON-SITE". See HRDOC_5/HRDOC_5P
6. I appealed against the Board of Referees 'decision, by letter dated April 10th, 1995 - on account of non-payment of wages in the job I had just left, Charter of Rights provisions relating to Right to Life and the Security of the Person, and its obvious consequences for the economy (by effectively barring me from gainful employment). See HRDOC_6
7. I received a letter from H.R.D.C. dated July 10th, 1995, stating that the U.I. Commission was recommending to the Umpire that my appeal be allowed, based on the documents I had provided (in other words, I did not have to go to an oral hearing). See HRDOC_7
8. I then received a letter from the Umpire's office, dated September 13th 1995, informing me of the decision - CUB 28929 - which was in my favour, and a copy of the decision. See HRDOC_8
9. After this, nothing happened for 2 months, so on October 28th 1995 I wrote to my federal M.P. - Marlene Catterall - asking her to expedite matters and enclosing copies of the documents just referred to. See HRDOC_8A
Soon after this, I received some cheques from H.R.D.C. for a total of 17 weeks' of U.I. benefits - over a two-week period in November 1995.
The last U.I. Benefit Statement which came with these simply stated that my claim had run out. See HRDOC_9 H.R.D.C. did not even mention "ON-SITE" but neither did they state explicitly that I was again ineligible for it.
10. Therefore I contacted the Umpire's office directly and requested that they confirm my eligibility for "ON-SITE" , among other things, by FAX dated December 11th, 1995. See HRDOC_10\HR_10_1
This FAX included, among other things, an analysis of the background to this request.
Ultimately, as explained in the background just referred to, the trouble all started back in 1982 soon after I arrived in Montreal from the U.K. as a result of being recruited by a Canadian company. The company – known then as The SNC Group, now known as SNC-Lavalin- then dismissed me after 15 weeks - insufficient to "qualify" for U.I. benefits under the 20-week eligibility rule (which was and is indiscriminately applied to "New Entrants" to the Canadian labour force). This started a chain of events in which I could never get any work and hence never get any weeks of "insurable employment" in order to be "eligible" for the "ON-SITE" program; in fact I had tried to get into "ON-SITE" on many previous occasions, even before the later set of problems described on this page.
11. I sent additional comments to the Umpire's office in another FAX darted January 8th, 1996. See HRDOC_11
12. I had been keeping federal M.P. Marlene Catterall informed throughout about what was going on, and also (since September 1995) federal M.P. Bob Wood (Nipissing) - but neither of them could or would do anything because, they claimed, their hands were tied by the existing legislation (and certain rules applying to M.P.'s, which they did not specify). This is borne out by a letter to me from Bob Wood's Executive Assistant, Susan Church, to me dated February 2nd 1996. See HRDOC_12
In this letter from Susan Church, she claims - among other things - that "...the
legislation is very clear and cannot be altered to suit unique or individual
situations. .." So far as I was concerned, this was a totally wrong
and irrelevant set of arguments - for reasons detailed later on, under paras.
15 and 23 below.
13. In reply to the FAXes referred to under paras. 11 and 12 above, I received a letter from a lawyer - Jonathan P. Langsner - of H.R.D.C. 's Legal Services Department, dated February 12th 1996, refusing my requests.
In this letter, there was no acknowledgement of my circumstances (already detailed); the entire set of arguments in it, as far as I was concerned, was totally irrelevant and amounted to nothing more than legalistic sophistry and time-wasting. SeeHRDOC_13
14. I pointed out to Mr. Langsner why his arguments against me were incorrect, by letter dated March 2nd 1996, and repeated my request for admission to "ON-SITE" (among other things, referred to in previous correspondence). See HRDOC_14
15. Simultaneously, in a letter dated March 2nd
1996 to Bob Wood's assistant - Susan Church - I pointed out, rather nastily,
what was wrong, both with Mr. Langsner's arguments and with the arguments in
Susan Church's letter to me dated February 2nd 1996. See HRDOC_15 and also HRDOC_12
Among other things, apart from what is documented on this site, I told Susan Church
that my rights under the Canadian charter of Rights and Freedoms were being
violated, and I recall her insisting to me that that ".....the Unemployment Insurance Act is more important
than the Charter of Rights. ..." I don't buy this argument - because it
implies that the mere absence of
specific clauses in the Act, relating to re-training as a route to gainful
employment (for the purposes of providing the necessities of life - and
by direct consequence, compliance with the Charter provisions concerning right
to life and security of the person), means that the Unemployment Insurance Act over-rides the Charter of Rights and Freedoms - which in
turn means that the former could be used to deny someone his/her rights under
the Charter! AND IN FACT THIS IS WHAT HAPPENED, IN MY OWN CASE!
No normal person with any brains or knowledge at all would dare to suggest this in private, and certainly not in public - but this is what was being suggested to ME - by the assistant to a federal M.P.
16. I made similar points in a letter to Marlene Catterall, also dated March 2nd 1996. See HRDOC_16
17. In a letter to me dated March 21st 1996, Mr. Langsner (the H.R.D.C. lawyer) ignored all the points which I made in my letter to him of March 2nd 1996. See HRDOC_17
18. This was followed by another Umpire's Decision - CUB 28929A - dated March 22nd 1996, in which all the points I made were ignored - for reasons which as far as I'm concerned merely constituted a smokescreen to "justify" legalistic sophistry and time-wasting (albeit allegedly based on existing legislation). See HRDOC_18\HRD_18_1
19. I complained about his by FAX to the Umpire's office on April 2nd 1996 - among other things, about how the Unemployment Insurance Act was in my case being applied in a nonsensical manner to produce a nonsensical result. See HRDOC_19
20. On April 10th I made a very strongly-worded complaint direct to the Umpire by FAX and copied it to Susan church at Bob Wood's office. See HRDOC_20 and HRDOC_21
The same day, I visited Bob Wood's office in person, met Susan Church and demanded, in very strong terms, that the nonsense be stopped, and banged my fist on the office counter - because, as far as I was concerned, I was being messed around by a bunch of office jerks.
In Canada, you seem to insist on making a stupid
mess worse when it is pointed out, instead of acting in an appropriate manner
to correct it. You refuse to face the facts and you don't use your common
sense. You use tax payers' money to employ expensive lawyers, who create legal
sophistry and stupid arguments and waste time - and thus prevent large numbers
of people from contributing to the tax base. Then you blame the people
affected. You complain that taxes are too high, but you don't act properly to
get unemployed people back to work so they can become tax payers again. You
also complain about excessive competition for jobs from immigrants, you make it
difficult for them to get work by excluding them based on "lack of
Canadian experience", you make it difficult for them to get their
qualifications recognised.
Worse, you largely ignore the major problem by not
even counting the numbers of unemployed who are on social assistance, or
unemployed and "not eligible" for any kind of assistance to get back
to work. So as a result, you are largely ignorant of the true numbers of jobs
needed (to get everyone back to work who wants to) - so that everybody with
potential to contribute to the tax base can in fact do so.
For example, in the Ottawa C.M.A. (population just
over 1 million - about 1/30 of Canada's population) there were estimated to be about
145,000 people unemployed in real terms as at the Fall of 1998, but the
H.R.D.C. / Statistics Canada figures only admitted to about 38,000
("officially unemployed"). This huge discrepancy is caused by
mis-leading figures from H.R.D.C. / Statistics Canada being reported in
the media, whilst the true numbers are seldom admitted to - and conveniently
forgotten.
Later that day, April 10th 1996, I was visited by the local police who
suggested that I could be arrested and get a criminal record if I visited Bob
Wood's office again. About a week later, I was visited by the R.C.M.P. who
explained that M.P.'s had no power to do anything.( If that is the case,
why do we have M.P.'s at all if they are bound by silly rules - which nobody
wants to discuss - which make them ineffective. I have dealt with this
important point elsewhere on this site, in detail. )
The Police and R.C.M.P. are to understand that this sort of action in
response to someone like myself is totally inappropriate. Instead, they should
question those who were responsible for the situation in the first place, and
press for it to be corrected. It's about getting people back to contributing to
the tax base, remember.
TO SUMMARISE – ALMOST ALL THE PEOPLE INVOLVED WERE
BEHAVING IN A CORRUPT AND NONSENSICAL
MANNER. THEIR METHODS CONSISTED OF HIDING BEHIND WHAT THEY CLAIMED TO BE “…THE LEGISLATION…” – WHEN IN FACT THEIR
“ARGUMENTS” AMOUNTED TO AN
INCOMPLETE AND BIASED USE OF IT, AIDED AND ABETTED BY PIG-HEADED LAWYERS! IN SHORT, INCOMPETENCE!
Everybody now knows - or should know perfectly well - that these kinds
of issues, or the problems they give rise to, will not be solved by either pretending
that they don't exist or brushing them "under the carpet". Quite
apart from social concerns, such behaviour merely equates to preventing a large
number of people in Canada from contributing to the tax base.
And - as everybody knows, or should know - shortage of tax dollars
relative to need, for such things as health care and education, is why the
hospitals and schools (among other things) are currently facing the desperate
shortages which everybody knows about. And the well-off complain about excessive
tax rates !
NOW DO YOU UNDERSTAND?
In 1999 there were newspaper reports about how an R.C.M.P. operation to catch drug traffickers in Montreal back-fired very badly, because of lack of funds to do the job properly. One of the R.C.M.P. constables involved complained about the situation, in writing, to his superiors, and resigned from the operation; his letter was published in the newspapers. The reason: lack of available tax dollars, for law enforcement purposes (and all the rest of it).
Why? Partly because, in Canada, you use tax payers' money to pay expensive lawyers and other people to make silly rules, which effectively bar large numbers of unemployed people from working. The numbers of people unemployed in Canada, in real terms, is currently (April 2003) somewhere between about 4.4 million and 5.3 million. Most of these are not recognised as "unemployed" by H.R.D.C./ Statistics Canada and so are not "eligible" for any re-training - based on such things as "insufficient insurable weeks" of employment, being categorised as "not in the labour force", etc.
Then, for the most part, when a problem is pointed out, you refuse to even acknowledge its existence - merely because it is not contemplated in the Unemployment Insurance Act (Employment Insurance Act, on and after July 1st 1996). Then you employ more lawyers to justify the continuation of those problems - evidently based on a pretence that because they don't exist in terms of the Act, then they don't exist at all. Further, you ignore other parts of Canadian law - in particular, the Charter of Rights and Freedoms.
Then you neglect to use your common sense and look at it from a tax revenue standpoint. It doesn't occur to some people that the problem might be solved by investing a little money now, to get returns later on in the form of more tax revenue.
Unfortunately, this is still largely the case even after the reforms which became law on July 1st 1996 - because the legislators involved did not follow the recommendations of the Standing Committee on Human Resources Development properly, and were out of touch with some of the realities of how the H.R.D.C. system was working in practice.
21. Following my latest complaint to the Umpire's office, I had another Decision (CUB 28929B) dated July 9th 1996, in which my requests were again refused. But the Judge - Chief Umpire James A. Jerome - said, on page 2:
". . . . .While I sympathise with the claimant's concerns, I am confident that his concerns will be dealt with appropriately by the officials with the Ministry of Human Resources Development..."
So the judge sympathised with my concerns - but couldn't do anything because his hands were tied by the law, at the insistence of lawyer Jonathan P. Langsner. See HRDOC_22/HRD_22_1
22. So who and what was at fault in all this? Sloppy and perfunctory work by everyone involved, in H.R.D.C. - notably by Jonathan P. Langsner, the lawyer in H.R.D.C.'s Legal Services department. This was not helped by M.P.s ' alleged inability to do anything.
Further, I demand the removal of Mr.
Langsner from his present employ and his expulsion from the legal profession
- for lying and incompetence.
23. And what was the general background to all this?
The Standing Committee on Human Resources Development , which I had made submissions to, released its Final Report - "Security, Opportunity and Fairness" - on February 6th 1995. Between then and July 1st 1996, the legislators were at work finalising the then-new Employment Insurance Act.
And H.R.D.C. was paying for plane tickets for Maritimers to look for work in
Ontario. See HRDOC_23 This
appears to have been a sort of "pilot project", set up by the
H.R.D.C. office in North Sydney. Granted, this was an area in Canada having
exceptionally high unemployment, so I'm not going to object to any effort to
help the people affected. But "pilot
projects" such as this should be applicable to any group of people
experiencing persistent unemployment, and NOT just to high-unemployment areas
for the purpose of "buying" votes at election time. It's about
getting people contributing to the tax base, remember. I don't buy Susan
Church's arguments in her letter to me already referred to (Bob Wood's office;
see HRDOC_12 again) for this reason and others already referred to.
And they were paying for welders in Newfoundland to get training in order to work on the Hibernia offshore oil production platform project.See HRDOC_24
But of course, in 1995 / 96 H.R.D.C. would NEVER listen to ME !
In July 1996 the “Reach-back” program was introduced and is a
partial solution to the problem of non-availability of re-training referred
to in the previous paragraph. The events described on this page and in the
supporting documents all took place before it came into effect. My comments
apply to the situation described, the then-current legislation and
then-current Canadian social customs. Now (2003), there are
still very severe problems in
Canada with dis-informed social customs, more particularly in the
workplace, with respect to people out of work. As such, they amount to
tradition backed by incompetence - and fashionable social attitudes falsely
presented as “correct”, merely because they are popular and entrenched.
If you want to criticise my stand in all this, you'd better do some
homework. What is more, you’d better do it properly !
One final caution: DON’T
ANYBODY TRY TO FABRICATE AN
IMPRESSION OF BEING “CLEVER” IN FRONT OF THE REST OF THE DIS-INFORMED PEOPLE
WHO ARE ALL AROUND, IN ORDER TO “JUSTIFY” ANY MORE SILLY
ARGUMENTS CALCULATED TO AGAIN STOP ME FROM
CONTRIBUTING TO THE TAX BASE!