I do make fun of them on occasion, but I respect the work of some of our national media columnists, and John Ibbitson is one. I often disagree with him, but he argues and tries to persuade in a challenging way. Today he does some hand holding of Atlantic Canadians, trying to convince us that the tough love coming from the Harper Government will make us better off in the long run, including the announced changes to the EI system. I'll include his full commentary at the end, and add another interesting take by a Windsor Star columnist who at least asks some good questions. Let's look at what Ibbitson is saying.
"But the plain fact is that with the population aging and economic growth
expected to remain sluggish for years to come, Canada just can’t afford
rural subsidies. Rural industries must be able and willing to pay their
own way."
This often gets tossed out when talking about EI and equalization, that there's an unfair redistribution of wealth from richer to poorer provinces. First of all there's no added tax on Albertans for example (who pay no provincial sales tax don't forget) to make Equalization payments. Federal income, excise, and employment taxes are collected from workers in the same way there they are in every other province. Yes with a booming resource economy, Albertans are making more money so the Federal take is relatively bigger. What Equalization (which is part of the Constitution, using very broad language) requires is the Federal government to share some of its revenues with have-not provinces. If the money didn't go there, it would presumably go somewhere else. The more important point is what the hell do wealthier Canadians think happens to EI payments? They don't end up in some secret Swiss bank account, or New York hedge fund, they get spent on groceries, fuel, mortgage payments, etc. the very products produced by those wealthier Canadians, adding to their bottom line. That's how economies work. (Henry Ford understood that).
Here's something that's just as important. Ibbitson says:
"Rural industries that lack the capital and incentive to provide
year-round employment drain more in government support than they
generate in revenue. They keep workers where they shouldn’t be, instead
of encouraging them to move to where the good jobs are."
It's not "capital and incentive" that prevents the creation of year-round work, it's ice and snow, the fact that tourists don't want to huddle in a bay-side cottage in February. It's hard to believe when you work in a comfortable office that the weather can affect the work you do, but it does.
And here's something for me that's badly understood. There are places like Maine that allow year-round lobster fishing for example, and the affect on the stock has been devastating, requiring new rules and regulations to allow it to recover. Canada's fishery is heavily regulated (not that well in many cases), to ensure the sustainability of the catch, not to ensure that fishermen can put their feet up next to the fire and collect EI. There are seasons and quotas, and that by definition means fishermen don't work year-around.
Ibbitson's solution:
"But market forces would ensure that Torontonians received their lobster
in a way that, properly regulated, would be better both for the fishery
and for the Maritime economy."
It was market forces that led to the decimation of groundfish stocks, that have brought tuna to the point of extinction from overfishing in the Eastern Atlantic, and I could go on.
Canadians enjoy (relative to incomes) the cheapest food in the world but pay the world price for almost everything else. Allowing farmers to have experienced seasonal workers (who can collect EI in the off-season), and fishermen to protect fish stocks, is part of what allows that to happen.
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/politics/john-ibbitson/why-atlantic-canada-need-not-fear-decline/article2444861/
John Ibbitson
Why Atlantic Canada need not fear decline
May 28, 2012
When Statistics Canada reveals the latest data on the country’s aging
population, Atlantic Canadians might be tempted to hang their heads in
defeat. They shouldn’t.
There is a positive future for the easternmost provinces, a future that
could prove the naysayers wrong. A generation from now, people could be
going up the road instead of down it.
Tuesday’s census could be the last one to show Atlantic Canada in decline, if Atlantic Canadians choose to make it so.
Along with almost every other developed nation, Canadian society is
aging, with the first of the baby boomers heading into retirement,
leaving an ever-shrinking cohort of workers to support the state through
taxes.
The good news for most parts of Canada is that our robust immigration
levels and welcoming attitude toward both temporary and permanent
foreign workers will mitigate the effects of a greying society. But
little of this is any comfort to Atlantic Canadians.
The chronically weak economy not only encourages the young to migrate
west, it deters immigrants. A region lacking young people or immigrants
lacks creativity, entrepreneurship, dynamism. And the Maritime
provinces, notwithstanding business powerhouses like McCains and Sobeys,
remain too rural, too small and too dependent.
The Harper government is determined to equip the Canadian economy to
handle its aging population, which is why it is raising the retirement
age for social security and why it announced new restrictions on
employment insurance last week, aimed at forcing seasonal workers in
fishing, forestry, agriculture and tourism to take other work during the
offseason or lose their benefits.
Nova Scotia Premier Darrell Dexter observed that seasonal work is integral to the region’s rural culture.
“If they see that as a problem, then they essentially see the culture of rural Canada as a problem,” he said.
But the plain fact is that with the population aging and economic growth
expected to remain sluggish for years to come, Canada just can’t afford
rural subsidies. Rural industries must be able and willing to pay their
own way.
That doesn’t mean Atlantic Canada needs to despair. In fact, there may never have been such reason for optimism.
Newfoundland and Labrador is booming as never before. It’s not just oil.
It’s hydroelectricity and nickel and other natural resources. It’s the
high-tech firms spinning off from these booming natural-resource
industries. No wonder St. John’s has a lower unemployment rate than
Toronto.
The shipbuilding contracts from the federal government will generate
billions in revenue for Halifax Shipyards, and billions more in spinoff
industries, creating thousands of skilled jobs. The region’s top-notch
universities will ensure there are workers to fill those jobs.
Provincial governments have started to get serious about encouraging
immigration. This is crucial to reversing population decline and to
generating economic growth.
And though you’ll never find a politician who wants to get re-elected
who’ll admit it, the employment-insurance reforms are good for the
region.
Rural industries that lack the capital and incentive to provide
year-round employment drain more in government support than they
generate in revenue. They keep workers where they shouldn’t be, instead
of encouraging them to move to where the good jobs are.
In a recent forum, Yvon Godin, a New Brunswick NDP MP, angrily asked how
urbanites expect to eat fish if there aren’t seasonal workers to catch
and process those fish.
But market forces would ensure that Torontonians received their lobster
in a way that, properly regulated, would be better both for the fishery
and for the Maritime economy.
Atlantic Canadians have a golden opportunity to exploit the region’s
natural and human resources. They need only ignore the old, closed,
fearful voices that promote dependency and cause decline. There’s a
future for region; all it has to do is seize it.
Because the numbers that will be revealed in the census will leave them little choice.
That doesn’t mean Atlantic Canada needs to despair. In fact, there may never have been such reason for optimism.
Newfoundland and Labrador is booming as never before. It’s not just oil.
It’s hydroelectricity and nickel and other natural resources. It’s the
high-tech firms spinning off from these booming natural-resource
industries. No wonder St. John’s has a lower unemployment rate than
Toronto.
The shipbuilding contracts from the federal government will generate
billions in revenue for Halifax Shipyards, and billions more in spinoff
industries, creating thousands of skilled jobs. The region’s top-notch
universities will ensure there are workers to fill those jobs.
Provincial governments have started to get serious about encouraging
immigration. This is crucial to reversing population decline and to
generating economic growth.
And though you’ll never find a politician who wants to get re-elected
who’ll admit it, the employment-insurance reforms are good for the
region.
http://www.windsorstar.com/business/work+these+jobs/6688587/story.html
Why not work these jobs?
by Anne Jarvis, The Windsor Star May 28, 2012 4:03 AM
May 27, 2012
Almost 17,000 people in Windsor and the surrounding area don't have a job. That's 10.1 per cent of the workforce, the highest unemployment rate in Canada.
When it comes to doling out the dole, Windsor is one of the most generous regions in the country, offering up to 45 weeks of employment insurance benefits.
Yet we import about 3,600 foreigners to labour largely in our flourishing greenhouse industry, where the Help Wanted sign is always out and companies can't hire enough.
If we took these jobs, our unemployment rate would plummet to 7.9 per cent.
We've been chasing BYD for more than a year and now we're buying their buses, all to try to land its assembly plant. Yet we have thousands of jobs in our own backyard.
Call me Marie Antoinette (as one columnist referred to federal Finance Minister Jim Flaherty), but why shouldn't we do these jobs?
It's a question so thorny, so fraught with political landmines that most politicians wouldn't touch it with a 10-foot pole: Why can't healthy, unemployed Canadians do certain jobs?
Don't expect me to agree with Conservatives too often, but the changes to employment insurance announced by Human Resources Minister Diane Finley last week make sense.
"The dichotomy we face is that in many regions where we're experiencing higher unemployment rates, we're also dealing with labour and skills shortages," Finley told the media.
There's high unemployment in P .E.I., but the province brings in Russians to work in its fish plants. Unemployment is 10 per cent in Nova Scotia, but Christmas tree growers have to bring in Mexicans. Romanians work at a chocolate factory in New Brunswick.
Farmers in B.C. can't even find students to work in their orchards.
And with the highest unemployment rate in the country here, greenhouse vegetable growers in Essex County bring in workers from Mexico and the Caribbean.
According to the government, in Ontario, 2,200 general farm workers submitted claims for EI while farmers were given permission to hire 1,500 foreigners.
You have to admit, this doesn't make sense.
And it isn't fair that some people work only part of the year and get EI the rest of the year - every year, as if getting EI is a part-time job.
The principle is you get EI when you can't get a job.
Under the new guidelines, people who don't collect EI often but suddenly find themselves unemployed can hold out for jobs "within their usual occupation" at 90 per cent of their former wages.
But those who collect it frequently or for a long time will have to settle for a "similar" job or even "any work they are qualified to perform" for 70 to 80 per cent of their old pay. Personal circumstances and the working conditions of potential jobs will be considered. You might have to commute an hour, maybe more in places like Toronto, where everyone commutes an hour.
That's hardly draconian. In fact, it's reasonable.
Out in the high-tech, thriving greenhouses of Essex, Kent and Lambton counties, where produce is big business - more than a half billion dollars a year, a major chunk of the economy here - there are jobs planting, tending and harvesting crops. The pay isn't great, and the work is demanding. But there are also skilled jobs and training and the chance to move up, says George Gilvesy, general manager of the Ontario Greenhouse Vegetable Growers.
"We're short of people for middle management, technical people to run computers," Gilvesy said. "There are a lot of skilled opportunities. There are great opportunities here. These aren't just jobs by default, if you can't get work elsewhere you get this. We need a good workforce on a year-round basis. We depend on a good workforce. There's capacity with the growth we have that if Canadians are going looking for work, they're going to find it."
The one thing that bugs me about this reform is that it's all aimed at workers. Flaherty infamously stated that "there is no bad job." Of course there is, plenty of them. And the government just created more; it announced that employers can pay temporary foreign workers 15 per cent less than the prevailing wage for Canadians. And why can't agricultural workers unionize to protect themselves in a field notorious for low pay and poor working conditions? There shouldn't be different classes of workers. Exchanging labour for money should be a fair trade, and there should be dignity in every job. If employers can't find enough employees, just like in any market, maybe they should also look at what they're offering.
ajarvis@windsorstar.com
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