Back to "The Real Unemployment Rate"
BACKGROUND
INTRODUCTION
What you will see on this page is written from my own personal perspective, but will also serve to remind the reader of certain things which have been reported in the media.
My purpose in doing this is to point out certain glaring inconsistencies in the way H.R.D.C. - and for that matter, the federal government in general - have been doing things, quite apart from dis-regard for the majority of people who are unemployed in real terms (as opposed to merely being "officially" unemployed).
The H.R.D.C. system, in its present form, still tends to favour those who have been lucky enough to acquire a consistent work record (which in this context means working for an organisation as a regular employee, with the usual benefits, which include being allowed to pay into the E.I. fund).
On
the other hand, it still dis-favours those most in need of assistance - in
spite of the work of the federal Standing Committee on Human Resources
Development, particularly over the whole of 1994 and early 1995 (which
culminated with the release of its Final Report - "Security, Opportunity
and Fairness" - on February 6th 1995).
For example, certain important programs are usually only available to people who have had some ”insurable” employment, and then only if in fact they are:-
(a) receiving regular Employment Insurance (E.I.) benefits, or
(b) are “Reach-back” clients, who remain eligible for the programs referred to for 3 years following expiry of their regular E.I benefits.
The
programs referred to are: “Targeted Wage Subsidy Program”,
“Self-Employment Benefits”, “ON-SITE” and “Job Creation
Partnerships”.
And as everybody knows perfectly well, the question of good, bad or indifferent luck in getting any work at all depends on who you happen to meet, and the prevailing workplace social climate and economic situation, as much as your own efforts.
For most of the time I have been in Canada since 1982 – that is, up until about 1998 - H.R.D.C. also had no system at all, worth speaking of, for recognizing effort at getting work - and in particular, it did not recognize skills up-grading on your own initiative and expense. Further, it did not recognize any voluntary work you did - even if this involved applying professional skills which you acquired at your own expense.
Employers, from my own experience, don't usually seem to care either and simply exploit the situation in order to cheapen people - or get cheap labour.
For example, anybody who has been unlucky enough to be down-sized at the wrong time, or been forced to leave a company on account of actual or impending bankruptcy, and who has constant difficulty thereafter getting any kind of work, is usually barred from any re-training programs - because of "lack of insurable weeks" of employment. I have had constant trouble with this since soon after I arrived in Canada from the U.K. in 1982. All this is actually serving to do is to ensure that the person affected never becomes a tax payer again - so that the government, in effect, shoots itself in the foot.
It is all
very well to argue that the provinces are responsible for people in such
circumstances. In practice they don't always do the job properly and this is
certainly the case in Ontario.
For instance, for a family of four in Ontario (like mine, for example), if the family income is more than about $1200 per month then you are excluded from Ontario social assistance - which simultaneously means exclusion from Ontario programs such as Ontario Works, which are supposed to help get people back to work and become tax payers again.
Further, H.R.D.C. and the federal government seem to ignore certain other rather obvious facts. For instance, if they removed the rules concerning weeks of insurable employment as an admission criterion to re-training programs, more people would become tax payers. It is true that this would mean more federal funds being needed for re-training - but on the other hand, less funds would need to be transferred to the provinces under the Canada Social Transfer.
The foregoing , at least in my own case, has been aggravated by other problems dealt with elsewhere on this site, including:-
(a) widespread and pejorative disinformation and lying about the characters of people who are unemployed
(b) 100 or more people applying for every job that becomes open
(c) general non-recognition of the true unemployment numbers, under-stated in media reports by a factor of about 4.
Now here are some other things which I find interesting:-
ITEM 1.
On the one hand, it is claimed that H.R.D.C. applied its rules "very consistently" in my own case - in such a way as to prevent me from working. There are some details of this elsewhere on this site. On the other hand, flexibility in job-creation grant rules was shown to certain companies. See RULES - FLEXIBLE - REFNO_66.htm
ITEM 2.
On the one hand, up to 1999, H.R.D.C. applied certain ill-thought-out rules which excluded me from an "ON-SITE" placement, and other re-training programs, as the means to become a tax payer again.
On the other hand, there have been many media reports about alleged E.I. fund surpluses - but nobody seemed competent enough to realise that these might be usefully employed to convert some more individuals back into contributors to the tax base. An investment of $10,000 - $11,000 of federal money (the amount involved in an "ON-SITE placement") will, if this results in somebody getting a $40,000 job, yield a return of over $100,000 to the tax base (federal and provincial, lumped together) over 10 years; the resulting return to the provincial tax base will mean that much less demand from the province for federal funds under the Canada Social Transfer.
Of course, nobody wanted to talk to ME about THAT. See, for example:
EMPLOYMENT INSURANCE - FUND SURPLUS REFNO_76.htm
ITEM 3.
On the one hand, H.R.D.C. had barred me from "ON-SITE" on many occasions.
In the last instance, this occurred between June 1998 and early 1999 (details and supporting documentation elsewhere on this site). In this case, the “ineligibility” was based on me falling outside the 3-year limit for funding under the "Reach Back" program and other "reasons" which they found convenient. Further, this happened after they had initially approved me for the program; two weeks later, I found out about this dis-barment from “ON-SITE” by accident and they never officially told me direct. Then when the errors were pointed out, they refused to do anything - so as a result, I was continuously unemployed for 2 years between finishing a computer programming course and starting a low-level job at JDS Uniphase in July 2000. Clearly, a very serious error was made and nobody had the slightest intention of admitting it, never mind apologise or attempt to correct it. There was every good reason to insist on the 3-year limit rule being waived, but they refused to listen.
On the other hand, H.R.D.C. routinely extended E.I. benefit periods for people who have been jailed, possibly for some heinous criminal offence. But of course, they wouldn’t talk to ME in 1998 / 1999, would they?
YOU
CANADIANS HAD BETTER SMARTEN UP! What do you want to do - induce me to
committ a criminal offence, so as to have yourselves an excuse to put me in
jail, just to make Corrections Canada and the legal system (lawyers, police,
courts, judges) look important? Especially avaricious, scheming, devious,
money-grabbing lawyers hell-bent on "justifying" their own positions
and employment at everybody else's expense?
See EMPLOYMENT INSURANCE - PRISONERS.htm
On the one hand, the federal government (through the Canada Arts Council) could give financial support to a call-girl "art exhibit" in Paris, France.
On the other hand, they wouldn’t talk to an engineer and software developer like me, merely wanting to get back to work and become a tax payer - in the face of the typical Canadian "no experience, no job" and "no job, no experience" stupidity trap, foisted on me and others by a bunch of oafs in the Canadian business community, H.R.D.C. and the Canadian legal profession. Canada and particularly Ontario have had a supposedly "booming "economy in recent times (before early 2001, for instance), but on the other hand they just ignore the majority of unemployed - to the point of pretending that they don't even exist -just drop them down a "memory hole", by quietly consigning them to H.R.D.C's "Not in the Labour Force" category.
Then everybody complains about the incidence of families in poverty.
Of course, when someone like me pointed out the absurdity of this, all you got back was bullshit.
The reason: there is a general attitude in Canada (based on tradition, incompetence and disinformation) that people who are unemployed or (Heaven forbid !) are on social assistance - don’t count, “have no voice” etc. So then everybody pretends that they can just ignore people in this position, like myself, based on the arrogant assumption that we and our will just “go away and die.”
I've no objection to the Canada Arts Council but as far as I'm concerned this is an insult to the intelligence of an imbecile. See CALL GIRL EXHIBIT - FUNDING.htm
ITEM 5.
Of course, it seems that if you are a friend of the P.M. - as opposed to some down-trodden unemployed person like myself, whom nobody wants to know, then you can get what you want - never mind what the usual rules might be. (Everybody thinks that if you are unemployed, then they can just do what they like with you and get away with it. NOT ANY MORE - THE INTERNET HAS CHANGED THE RULES OF THE GAME. Do you think people would want to immigrate to this "wonderful" country, if they knew this sort of stupid stuff was going on? And do you think they would want to come here, if they knew they were going to be discriminated against in the work place on account of "lack of Canadian experience"? And if this "lack of Canadian experience" was going to block them in terms of having their foreign qualifications as engineers etc. recognised in Canada? All it's doing is stopping them paying anything into the tax base. Think about it.
See MONTREAL FIRM - FRIENDS OF PM.htm
New para concerning ITEM 6 added Dec. 09 2003:-
ITEM 6.
Worse, some companies that received job-creation grant money from HRDC subsequently went bankrupt and created no new jobs. The problems seem to have occurred partly because of a lack of proper vetting procedures, or staff shortages at HRDC which by default allowed abuses to occur.
See BANKRUPT.htm
Now stop and think for a few moments about the following list of topics, with respect to what they really mean concerning how they apply to people out of work, in the presence of a large ratio of job applicants (100 or more) to positions open:-
RETIREMENT - SAVINGS INCENTIVES
GOVERNMENT - PUBLIC CONFIDENCE IN
How, for instance, are they supposed to contribute to the tax base?
How are they supposed to save for retirement?
If, due to never being able to get any work, they can’t save for retirement – or, more to the point, for the time when they become physically and / or mentally incapable of working – what are they supposed to do? Become homeless and “live” on the street, and perhaps put their families out on the street, so as to make an excuse for everybody else to criticize them for being a “ mess”, being “disorganized”, or “…not managing their affairs properly…” ?
Doesn’t it occur to anybody that if
you are not to be subjected to incompetent and fraudulent criticism, in
the situation just
referred to, then you have to PLAN FOR RETIREMENT?
And
how are you supposed to do THAT, without MONEY to set aside for it?
And
where do YOU get MONEY from?
BINGO!
WORK! RED-LETTER DAY FOR
YOU! YOU
GOT IT! GO TO THE TOP OF THE CLASS!
ITEM
6.
I find it interesting that federal M.P.'s such as Diane Ablonczy should be criticizing the operation of H.R.D.C. as being like that of a "power cabal", with the attendant near-certainty or absolutely certainty of abuse. Diane Ablonczy was referring to the problems over administration of and accounting for federal job-creation grants to companies, which dominated the news for several months starting early in 2000. She, of course, was quite right. At the same time, I believe that she and other federal M.P.'s were and are not aware of other problems which are arguably far more important - because they have been covered up. I believe also that she and everybody else have been mis-led by the usual official Statistics Canada / H.R.D.C. figures concerning the numbers of unemployed, which (as shown elsewhere on this site) amount to a massive under-statement of the problem and a consequential massive and un-recognized potential source of tax revenue - from a large group of people, numbering something over 3 million, which "polite" society chooses to ignore.
So was H.R.D.C. being run like a "power cabal", as Ms. Ablonczy seemed to suggest? Maybe.
At the same time, I must point out that the problems described have been around for far longer than Jane Stewart has been Minister of Human Resources Development. Therefore, replacing Jane Stewart with someone else will not solve anything. What has to be done is to correct the problems properly, once they have been defined.
For my part, I got no cooperation from previous Ministers in response to bringing problems to their attention; I am hopeful that The Honourable Jane Stewart will be different, and will see this as an opportunity to take the lead in initiating big and necessary changes. It’s about optimizing revenues for the tax base, remember.
Here is an example of what Diane Ablonczy had to say, in February 2000: see DIANE ABLONCZY, M.P..htm
I would add some things to what Ms. Ablonczy and others complain about, concerning H.R.D.C.. Apart from the problem size understatement phenomenon, based on what I have seen going on, the major additional problems with H.R.D.C. could be summarised as:-
(a) As already stated above, H.R.D.C. has no system at all, worth speaking of, for recognising effort at getting work - and in particular, it does not recognise skills up-grading on your own initiative and expense . Further, it does not recognise any voluntary work you do even if this involves applying professional skills which you have acquired at your own expense. (Employers, from my own experience, don't seem to care either and simply exploit the situation in order to cheapen people.)
(b) Dysfunctional rules which exclude large numbers of people from contributing to the tax base, by excluding them from retraining and job placement programs based on the "insufficient insurable weeks" criterion. The "Reach-Back" system with its 3-year limit criterion - introduced on July 1st 1996 - was and is only a partial solution.
(c) No system in H.R.D.C., that I know of, for making and recording exceptions for individuals, when dysfunctional system
(d) When a problem is pointed out, important facts concerning the individual circumstances (such as bankruptcy of an employer) were / are presumed not to exist at all just because they were / are not specifically recognized in terms of the Unemployment Insurance Act (Employment Insurance Act since July 1st 1996). The Charter of Rights provisions concerning right to life and security of the person have been / are also routinely ignored, just because they were not / are not specifically recognized in terms of the Unemployment Insurance Act / Employment Insurance Act. The negative and lasting impact on the tax base also has been / is routinely ignored, again because the Act did not / does not specifically recognize it as a significant decision-making factor (at least, in the context of a complaint from an individual).
They are ignored by lawyers and other officials within the H.R.D.C. system (notably H.R.D.C.'s Legal Services department), who then write tedious and irrelevant excuses on long legal paper to "explain" why someone "is not entitled" to assistance to become a tax payer again, based on "insufficient insurable weeks" of employment.
All it actually amounts to is mis-use of tax payers' money - to pay expensive lawyers, and other officials, to stop someone contributing to the tax base. From my own experience, it also seems that lawyers will never represent an individual faced with type of problem - because they are convinced that, because it is the government which sets the rules, then nothing can be done. This is just another way of saying that the government is omnipotent.
So what do we actually have here?
DICTATORSHIP. And who is this benefiting? Nobody, except
for a clique of officials and lawyers, with vested interests in protecting
their own positions, who are responsible for enforcing the existing dysfunctional
rules - and certainly not the tax base.
(f) Over-worked staff at H.R.D.C. See HRDC OVERWORK REFNO 91.htm This problem only came out into the open after several months of exposure, in 2000, of H.R.D.C's problems concerning administration of and accounting for job-creation grants for companies. It appears to have been caused by years of staff cut-backs and re-organisations. It could also have been responsible for some of my own problems, reported elsewhere on this site.
(g) Wastage of money within H.R.D.C., on lawyers and officials, to enforce dysfunctional rules at the expense of people trying to get back to work, to the detriment of the tax base.
(h) The mis-leading Statistics Canada / H.R.D.C. figures for the unemployment rate have caused / are causing everybody to fail to recognize the true numbers of jobs needed to solve the unemployment problem in Canada and to fail to recognize a potentially very large source of tax revenue.
This includes mis-leading the business community, the general public and the policy makers (including, but not restricted to, the Prime Minister, the Cabinet and the Governor of the Bank of Canada.)
CLOSURE
At this point I think I've said enough to highlight what the problems are and why they must be fixed properly. But if somebody wants to argue - then I have more topics listed for analysis and comment, and more media articles on file under these topics and the ones already discussed.
This also has obvious implications for immigrants to Canada, on a massive scale. In years to come, up to 300,000 people per year could be affected - but an additional set of issues is involved here concerning contracts of employment, recognition of foreign qualifications, professional competence and public safety (engineers, software developers, doctors for example). Therefore, I have dealt with it elsewhere.