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THE
REAL UNEMPLOYMENT RATE
-
AND WHAT IS REALLY WRONG WITH H.R.D.C, THE UNEMPLOYMENT SITUATION, THE CANADIAN
JOB MARKET, CANADIAN SOCIETY AND CANADIAN POLITICS - AND WHY REPORTS OF A
"BOOMING" CANADIAN ECONOMY ARE MIS-LEADING, IN CERTAIN CRITICAL
RESPECTS
1. With particular reference to H.R.D.C. /
Statistics Canada, there has been persistent and gross under-stating of the
true size and character of Canada's unemployment problem for at least the 21
years (as May 2003) that I have been in
Canada. It is shown on this site why the so-called and well-known
"official unemployment rate" is totally mis-leading to everybody,
including government policy-makers.
THE TRUE UNEMPLOYMENT RATE - CLICK HERE FOR DETAILS
2. There has been persistent
time-wasting and obfuscation by lawyers and other officials, at tax payers'
expense, directed at unemployed persons (myself in particular) seeking
re-training and job placements - based on dysfunctional regulations, and
refusal to recognise the persons affected as "unemployed" in real
terms (by simply classifying them as "Not in the Labour Force", among
other things). This amounts to spending tax payers' money, to prevent most
unemployed people from again contributing to the tax base.
The problems just referred to are being
aggravated because H.R.D.C. staff are over-worked, because of down-sizing since
1994 and reorganisations. As a result, extremely serious errors were made
(concerning myself, in particular) even with respect to the then-current set of
regulations. In early 2000, there were months of scandal and criticism of
H.R.D.C. Minister Jane Stewart in the media before anyone thought to write
about the staff overwork problem in H.R.D.C. ; this problem, and the
mis-reporting about the unemployment numbers already referred to, has existed
since long before Jane Stewart took office (and has clearly partly been caused
by H.R.D.C. staff being told to waste time applying ill-thought-out rules). If
you don't believe me then look at this:-
HRDC on brink of chaos: '98
audit - CLICK HERE
Further, amid this, the Canadian Charter of
Rights and Freedoms was being routinely violated, with respect to persons'
rights to life and security of the person and mine in particular - rather
obviously, if someone is being stopped from obtaining gainful employment - for some "reason" connected with
bureaucratic red tape, bigotry etc. - then they are effectively being deprived
of any control whatsoever over their personal affairs.
This was happening in spite of the efforts of
the federal Standing Committee on Human Resources on Human Resources
Development during 1994 and 1995 which led to certain reforms starting on July
1st 1996; this in turn seemed to be because nobody told the Committee the true
size of the problem, which in turn has led to a lack of appreciation of the
true numbers of jobs needed (which equates to, a lack of appreciation of the
amount of wealth needing to be created in Canada in order to eliminate
unemployment in real terms, and a corresponding lack of urgency on everybody's
part.) It is also obvious that the people who drafted the new rules, after the
Committee finished its work, were out of touch with some aspects of how the
H.R.D.C. system was working in practice.
As an example of an ill-thought-out rule, the
"Reach-Back" program imposes an arbitrary three-year time limit,
after someone's E.I. benefits have expired, beyond which the person cannot
obtain any re-training assistance - with no regard at all to the circumstances
of a case. In theory, this is supposed to help people who have had persistent
trouble getting work (including those on social assistance) - but in practice
still excludes a large number of people, such as those stuck with low-paid
and/or sporadic sub-contract work (or, worse, those who haven't been able to
get any work whatsoever).
Additionally, at least some of these problems have been
covered up at the highest level, in the manner just described: I have exposed
specific instances of this, which have affected me personally, on this web
site. These took place before The Hon. Jane Stewart became Minister for Human
Resources Development. I have been messed around continually, and am still
being messed around, by almost everybody since coming from the U.K. to Canada
in 1982 to work as a professional engineer. Quite apart from the social and
professional consequences for me personally, and being prevented from
contributing significantly to the tax base at the same time, my rights to life
and security of the person (under the Canadian
Charter of Rights and Freedoms ) have
been routinely violated - by people who deliberately obfuscated when they were
told about the problems. The details are given elsewhere on this site.
This had been happening against a BACKGROUND involving - AMONG OTHER THINGS - an E.I. fund surplus, flexible rules concerning H.R.D.C.
job-creation grants, H.R.D.C. funding for a call-girl "art exhibit"
in Paris (France), extension of E.I. benefit periods for prisoners,
job-creation grants to certain companies that subsequently went bankrupt,
R.C.M.P. investigations into questionable H.R.D.C. grant recipients, and
questionable grants to a Montreal firm run by friends of Prime Minister Jean Chretien.
Don't believe me? Would you prefer to think
that I am the one who has gone mad - so as to have yourself an
excuse for fobbing me off? If you think you can get away with THAT, then you'd
better change your outllook and review at least some of the evidence. Here it
is:-
I think you Canadians had better
smarten up and do things properly!
3. Why federal MP's usually cannot and
will not do anything to help you - despite their nominal role as your
representative in Parliament.
M.P.'s - STRESS /
INEFFECTIVENESS - CLICK HERE
The situation described clearly won't
do.
With respect to H.R.D.C. for example, if you
brought complaints such as mine to your federal M.P. they would apologise to
you, in private, for the situation - but then do absolutely nothing to correct
it in real terms, because their hands were tied by the existing legislation.
Further, it seems that they were tied down by other rules - unwritten or
otherwise - which nobody even wanted to admit exist. So thanks to H.R.D.C's
rules (legislation, which is falsely represented to me as "carved in
stone" and not subject to change), and M.P.'s apparent powerlessness, the
problems got "swept under the carpet" and nothing got done. I have
personally experienced this, on several occasions.
Of course, in this context, everybody
conveniently forgets that even legislation is subject to change, if it is found
not to be working properly. Why do you think we have bodies such as the
Standing Committee on Human Resources Development? On the other hand, until
recently H.R.D.C. seems to have had no system for recording problems and acting
to initiate corrective action, at least until they hired Tecsult Eduplus to
provide counselling to unemployed people. They also still never seem to make
exceptions for individuals when dysfunction has been proven by the individual
to have occurred.
Then everybody wonders how to solve the problems
with poverty in general, and child poverty in particular, in Canada - but don't
seem to connect these with solving the unemployment problem in real terms, as
opposed to dealing with people who are merely "officially"
unemployed. In Ontario, if you become incapable of looking after your children
properly, because of unemployment and all that it leads to, do you get any more
help with getting work / becoming a tax payer? NO! The Children's Aid Society, police, money-grabbing
lawyers and the courts stick their noses in!
Unless you see a psychiatrist. They can and
do refer individuals to special programs for people with disabilities, which
include mental problems among others. And the people who run these programs are
very helpful. But there is a catch: most hiring managers are typical Canadians
when it comes to dealing with people having mental problems - and don't want to
know that if someone has work then they will be perfectly O.K. Instead, they
just mindlessly assume that the person cannot possibly be any good and don't
give them a hearing. This situation is not helped by the stupidly frenetic
pace, in the average private sector work place (especially in the high-tech
industry), which means that as a rule nobody has any time for anything. Add to
this the situation where hiring managers typically get 100 or more applications
for every position advertised. Then what do you expect?
So the people who run the special programs
don't get much cooperation, at least from private sector business.
The root of the trouble actually seems to be
a very inefficient labour market - contrary to what we are led to believe,
based on most media reports and the usual statistics quoted. The numbers of
jobs being created in the economy is actually very small compared to the
numbers who in real terms actually need a job, but for some reason can't get
one.
This labour market inefficiency mainly seems
to affect those who have persistent difficulty with getting work - i.e. people
who are not even recognised as "unemployed" in the H.R.D.C. /
Statistics Canada figures and who are mostly barred from any re-training and
job placement programs, federal or provincial. Employers don't need 100 or more
people applying for every job vacant - for instance, in the high-tech industry.
5 or 10 would be more realistic. They would still get a choice over whom to
hire, would arguably get just as good a choice, and would have some time to
provide basic feedback to others. Those others would then have a better chance
of eventually becoming tax payers again, apart from other things. Then we might
eventually see less complaining, from the business community and everybody,
about excessive income taxes and business taxes.
The labour market is efficient only with
respect to those who are merely "officially" unemployed - or those
who are employed and doing well, and who get approached by people who want to
poach them from their existing employers by making them a better offer. Most
people who are unemployed in real terms fall into neither of these categories.
But it seems to me that no federal M.P. dares
to even raise questions in Parliament about this sort of thing - on account of
certain rules, unwritten or otherwise. This is not helped, of course, by the
mindless acceptance – amounting to defeatism and incompetence - on the part of
most people, concerning the so-called "inevitability" of unemployment
and social problems
How often has someone said to you, "there's so much of it going
on that you can't POSSIBLY do anything about it?" Who or what is
responsible for spreading this kind of defeatist and irrational nonsense? Who
was the last idiot who tried to look important by trying to tell you to
"be careful what you say"?
And this, in a supposedly "booming" economy!
4. There is a total lack of recognition in
Canada, by the politicians and everybody else, of the true numbers of jobs
needed to solve the unemployment problem in real terms, for the reason referred
to in para.1 above
5. There is a total lack of recognition in
Canada of the true potential losses to the tax base resulting from
unemployment, for the reason just stated.
6. There is a total lack of recognition in
Canada of what the true consequences for health care, education , the military,
security services etc. will be, on account of the unemployment problem if it is
not solved in real terms, for the reasons just stated.
7. The Canadian job market is appallingly
inefficient, in spite of what you see and hear in almost all media reports.
8. Why Canada is having trouble with attracting
immigrants in the numbers it says it needs.
If you have looked at paragraph 1 above and
gone to "The Real Unemployment Rate" page on this site, you will
already have some idea. Here is some of the evidence:-
IMMIGRANTS - UNDEREMPLOYMENT
- 1.htm
If you have looked at this, you will have
noticed the perceived problem with Canada's declining birth rate as being
one of the reasons why we need more immigrants annually. Of course, nobody
seems to wonder whether this is in fact being caused by conditions not being
satisfactory for Canadians to have children – i.e. unemployment, or the threat
of it.
Here's another one:- IMMIGRANTS - UNDEREMPLOYMENT - 2.htm
This article, based on information from the
same source as the previous one, emphasises the problems resulting from
foreign-trained immigrants having trouble with discrimination and getting their
qualifications recognised. I also find the following to be particularly
interesting:-
. . . " The findings show, researchers
say, that the government's goal of bringing in 300,000 immigrants to Canada in
the year 2000 ignores one of the chief problems with our immigration policy: how immigrants fare after they arrive.
"If you think of Canada as a company: when you hire new workers, most big corporations have orientation programs. They don't just turn the new employee loose in the organization and say to them, 'Well, find something useful to do," Mr. Reitz said. "Especially if they're from some far away place.
Like other Western countries, Canada uses a point system to weigh its immigrant-selection process in favour of skilled and educated foreigners considered most likely to get jobs once they get here. . . . "
Personally, I've told more than enough people
in positions of influence about my own needs for assistance - to get back to
work and become a tax payer, after arriving in Canada (Montreal, Quebec) as a
Landed Immigrant with a pre-arranged job in 1982. Without going into details,
the worst mistake I made was to have been enticed to go to Montreal, Quebec,
which I found to be nothing but a cesspit of corrupt business men with
political connections, high unemployment and corrupt / poor-quality lawyers on
the make at the behest of certain business men, at my expense. The twin evils
of dubious political leadership in Quebec and the Great Recession of the early
1980's, among
other things, were the root
causes of it. Did anybody help, when I complained about it? Not to a degree
which made any real difference. Those who did try to help me had very little
influence with respect to the size and character of the problem.
1.9 Why people thinking of immigrating to
Canada should not do so, until this stupid mess is cleaned up
BAD WORKPLACE MANNERS, TIME-WASTERS IN THE LEGAL PROFESSION, REFUSAL TO RECOGNISE
FOREIGN EXPERIENCE, BIGOTS , INCOMPETENCE ALL ROUND, DEFEATIST ATTITUDES. Plus
:- excessive competition for jobs and an inefficient job market, which is
causing gross and excessive emphasis on subjects of marginal importance such as
resume-writing, dress, interview techniques - at the expense of getting
Canadian work experience and work skills maintenance / enhancement.
Let’s be absolutely clear about this: you can give as much advice as you
like to people out of work, and add as much sophistication to the job-hunting
process as you like, in the name of “helping” people to obtain employment. But
no amount of such advice or sophistication will compensate for the obvious fact
that if there are 100 people looking for one job, only one person will get it.
Any approach to solving the problem which emphasizes sophistication in
how you approach employers, without doing anything to stimulate the economy to
create jobs in the numbers actually required, is both delusional and DANGEROUS.
I don’t need endless advice about how to look at my blasted navel, or how to
re-invent myself, and nor does anybody else in this position. DON’T waste both
YOUR time and energy as well as OURS on this stuff!
1.10 Mis-guided criticism, by Canadians, of
immigrants to Canada and why it is happening, and why it must be stopped.
I think by now most people will understand
what is actually wrong, but I'm going to say just one more thing. In
particular, there was an article in "The Ottawa Citizen" on March 2nd
1990, entitled "Canadians Don't Want Immigrants in Their Major
Cities". Quite apart from other things - perceiving them as a source of
un-wanted competition for jobs and all the rest of it - it seems from this that
most Canadians conveniently forget that they themselves are former immigrants,
or are descendants of former immigrants. The only exceptions to this are the
members of the "First Nations" - the descendants of the
"Indian" tribes who were here long before the first European settlers
arrived from Britain and France. I don't wan't to see or hear any more of this
offensive, mis-guided, pejorative, irrelevant and ill-thought-out crap.