Budget 2012
- Thread starter GAP
- Start date
- Reaction score
- 1
- Points
- 430
dogger1936 said:
Really! You should maybe check your stats. This is from Mar 2012
Nationally, the number of initial and renewal claims rose by 3,700 (+1.6%) to 242,300 in January.
Provincially, the number of claims increased 4.4% in Quebec, 3.9% in Ontario and 2.8% in New Brunswick. Claims fell 7.8% in Alberta, 3.2% in British Columbia, 1.4% in Manitoba and 1.4% in Nova Scotia. There was little change in the remaining three provinces
http://cthrc.ca/en/member_area/member_news/stastistics_ei_beneficiaries_increase_in_january_to_levels_of_june_2011
In Alberta, all 12 large centres had fewer beneficiaries in January compared with 12 months earlier. The largest percentage decreases occurred in Grande Prairie, Lethbridge, Cold Lake, Red Deer, Calgary and Edmonton. In Calgary, 9,700 people received benefits, down 34.1%, and in Edmonton, 10,600 people received benefits, down 31.3%. For the third consecutive month, Calgary and Edmonton posted the highest year-over-year declines among all census metropolitan areas.
http://www.statcan.gc.ca/daily-quotidien/120322/dq120322a-eng.htm
- Reaction score
- 0
- Points
- 160
My mistake...was looking at 2011...... :facepalm:
In Alberta, all 12 large centres had fewer beneficiaries in January compared with 12 months earlier. The largest percentage decreases occurred in Grande Prairie, Lethbridge, Cold Lake, Red Deer, Calgary and Edmonton. In Calgary, 9,700 people received benefits, down 34.1%, and in Edmonton, 10,600 people received benefits, down 31.3%. For the third consecutive month, Calgary and Edmonton posted the highest year-over-year declines among all census metropolitan areas.
In Newfoundland and Labrador, the number of beneficiaries decreased in all five large centres. In St. John's, the number of people receiving benefits fell 12.8% to 5,000, continuing a series of year-over-year declines that began nearly two years earlier.
In Alberta, all 12 large centres had fewer beneficiaries in January compared with 12 months earlier. The largest percentage decreases occurred in Grande Prairie, Lethbridge, Cold Lake, Red Deer, Calgary and Edmonton. In Calgary, 9,700 people received benefits, down 34.1%, and in Edmonton, 10,600 people received benefits, down 31.3%. For the third consecutive month, Calgary and Edmonton posted the highest year-over-year declines among all census metropolitan areas.
In Newfoundland and Labrador, the number of beneficiaries decreased in all five large centres. In St. John's, the number of people receiving benefits fell 12.8% to 5,000, continuing a series of year-over-year declines that began nearly two years earlier.
Brad Sallows
Army.ca Legend
- Reaction score
- 8,739
- Points
- 1,040
EI ceased to be insurance against unemployment long ago and became a wage subsidy (ie. financial assistance), and more recently a leave-of-absence (maternal, care of others) benefit. Where EI props up seasonal employees, it is a wage subsidy to employers who would otherwise have to pay higher wages to hang onto their employee base. The leave-of-absence benefit is self-explanatory; the customary expectation for centuries used to be that people dealt with their crises and planned life events from within their own resources.
- Reaction score
- 114
- Points
- 680
Brad Sallows said:
Except that, in the case of MATA for CF members, way back when I collected it (19ish years ago), the CF precluded my from getting another job while on maternity. They also called me back in to work a few times during that period. Perhaps the CF should have continued to pay me the entire time then? As long as someone did. Not allowed to work elsewhere etc = pretty hard to blanket state that I should cover it with my own resources.
Pig poop and pizzas: Your tax dollars at work
By David Akin, Parliamentary Bureau Chief
Article Link
OTTAWA - This week in Brandon, Man., the local MP, Conservative Merv Tweed, proudly announced that $57,000 in federal tax money would be spent to promote the use of swine manure.
That's right: Your tax dollars at work in support of pig poop.
Meanwhile, in Summerside, P.E.I., the local MP, Revenue Minister Gail Shea, was handing over $51,000 to the the Silver Fox Curling and Yacht Club so it could fix up its marina.
In Montreal, Transport Minister Denis Lebel had a cheque for $750,000 for a conference on "commerce and creativity." He also had $650,000 for a conference on sports tourism in Quebec City.
And in beautiful Chipman, N.B., the local MP, Fisheries Minister Keith Ashfield was pleased to hand over $20,000 so that senior citizens in that community can go swimming, bowling, reading and cooking with young people.
This, folks, is your tax dollars hard at work.
In fact, since the last federal election, there have been 1,566 cheque-handover announcements like these. Add up all the cheques and the total comes to more than $13 billion.
None of this is so-called "new money" but it's where the rubber hits the road, so to speak, for the annual federal budget cycle.
Here's what happens: The government tells Parliament that, for example, it will allocate $15 million to a program called "New Horizons for Seniors."
Parliament approves that big dollar figure but never votes on how the money actually gets spent. Instead, groups apply to bureaucrats for up to $25,000 each out of this pile of money. When the bureaucrats approve a grant, an MP is dispatched with a cheque to hand it over. That's what Ashfield was doing in Chipman, N.B., with $20,000.
In the past, this program paid $13,000 for senior movie night in Richmond, B.C., and $23,000 so seniors in Cayuga, Ont., could put on some skits about what it's like to be a senior.
I'm all for helping out our seniors. That's why I approve of pension splitting, a well-funded national health-care program and an indexed OAS and CPP. But I think seniors are like most of us: Skits, movie nights and bowling ain't a great use of federal tax dollars.
Then there's regional economic development agencies. When he was in opposition, Stephen Harper thought these were ripe for spending abuse and he mused about shutting them down. Since he came to office, he's actually created two new development agencies - one for southern Ontario and one for the far North. Collectively, those two plus the ones for Atlantic Canada, Quebec, northern Ontario and the West hand out $1 billion a year.
Again, MPs approve the big picture but never vote on the details like the announcement Thursday in a town near Rimouski, Que., where a cabinet maker got a federal handout. The firm, Miralis Inc., needed more than $300,000 in federal loans for a "commercialization strategy." Miralis was once named one of Canada's 50 best-managed private companies. If that's true, why wouldn't a bank lend them the money? Why are taxpayers on the hook?
At the same time, multinational food giant Dr. Oetker got $12 million to build a frozen pizza factory in London, Ont. Even though Dr. Oetker had international sales revenue in 2010 of nearly 9.5 billion euros, it got a federal handout.
It's a good thing this isn't a time of austerity in Ottawa.
end
By David Akin, Parliamentary Bureau Chief
Article Link
OTTAWA - This week in Brandon, Man., the local MP, Conservative Merv Tweed, proudly announced that $57,000 in federal tax money would be spent to promote the use of swine manure.
That's right: Your tax dollars at work in support of pig poop.
Meanwhile, in Summerside, P.E.I., the local MP, Revenue Minister Gail Shea, was handing over $51,000 to the the Silver Fox Curling and Yacht Club so it could fix up its marina.
In Montreal, Transport Minister Denis Lebel had a cheque for $750,000 for a conference on "commerce and creativity." He also had $650,000 for a conference on sports tourism in Quebec City.
And in beautiful Chipman, N.B., the local MP, Fisheries Minister Keith Ashfield was pleased to hand over $20,000 so that senior citizens in that community can go swimming, bowling, reading and cooking with young people.
This, folks, is your tax dollars hard at work.
In fact, since the last federal election, there have been 1,566 cheque-handover announcements like these. Add up all the cheques and the total comes to more than $13 billion.
None of this is so-called "new money" but it's where the rubber hits the road, so to speak, for the annual federal budget cycle.
Here's what happens: The government tells Parliament that, for example, it will allocate $15 million to a program called "New Horizons for Seniors."
Parliament approves that big dollar figure but never votes on how the money actually gets spent. Instead, groups apply to bureaucrats for up to $25,000 each out of this pile of money. When the bureaucrats approve a grant, an MP is dispatched with a cheque to hand it over. That's what Ashfield was doing in Chipman, N.B., with $20,000.
In the past, this program paid $13,000 for senior movie night in Richmond, B.C., and $23,000 so seniors in Cayuga, Ont., could put on some skits about what it's like to be a senior.
I'm all for helping out our seniors. That's why I approve of pension splitting, a well-funded national health-care program and an indexed OAS and CPP. But I think seniors are like most of us: Skits, movie nights and bowling ain't a great use of federal tax dollars.
Then there's regional economic development agencies. When he was in opposition, Stephen Harper thought these were ripe for spending abuse and he mused about shutting them down. Since he came to office, he's actually created two new development agencies - one for southern Ontario and one for the far North. Collectively, those two plus the ones for Atlantic Canada, Quebec, northern Ontario and the West hand out $1 billion a year.
Again, MPs approve the big picture but never vote on the details like the announcement Thursday in a town near Rimouski, Que., where a cabinet maker got a federal handout. The firm, Miralis Inc., needed more than $300,000 in federal loans for a "commercialization strategy." Miralis was once named one of Canada's 50 best-managed private companies. If that's true, why wouldn't a bank lend them the money? Why are taxpayers on the hook?
At the same time, multinational food giant Dr. Oetker got $12 million to build a frozen pizza factory in London, Ont. Even though Dr. Oetker had international sales revenue in 2010 of nearly 9.5 billion euros, it got a federal handout.
It's a good thing this isn't a time of austerity in Ottawa.
end
If the Tory EI reform plan is too radical, why did the Liberals go so much further?
Andrew Coyne May 28, 2012
Article Link
How mild are the Conservative employment insurance reforms? Even the opposition seems unable to muster much more than a frowsy “you could have consulted more,” its default response when there’s little political blood to be drawn.
How mild? Compare them with the last attempt at EI reform, the package of changes introduced by Lloyd Axworthy, the great stalwart of the Liberal left, in 1996. The current exercise would oblige EI claimants to be a little less choosy in the jobs they were willing to take, depending on their claim experience and how long they remained on benefit. Frequent users, in particular, would be expected to take a job paying as little as 80% as much as their previous employment, dropping to 70% after six weeks.
But if no such jobs were available they could carry on more or less as before: the same benefits, the same duration, the same frequency. By contrast, the Axworthy reforms directly reduced their benefits, again depending on how often they claimed, a system known as the “intensity rule.” From the standard 55% of insurable earnings, a percentage point was reduced for every 20 weeks of benefit received in the previous five years, to a maximum of five percentage points. Another reform clawed back benefits from higher income recipients at a steeper rate if they made frequent claims.
Mind you, the Axworthy reforms were small beer themselves compared to earlier reform proposals. The Mulroney-era Commission of Inquiry on Unemployment Insurance, headed by the former Quebec Social Affairs minister Claude Forget, recommended “annualizing” benefits, that is basing them on claimants’ earnings over an entire year, rather than the few weeks in which they might actually have worked: a sharp incentive to work longer before filing a claim.
And before Forget, there was the Macdonald Commission, headed by the former Liberal finance minister Donald Macdonald, which recommended setting employers’ EI premiums according to how frequently their employees made claims: a system known as “experience rating.” This is how unemployment insurance (as it is called in other countries) works in the United States, among other places. It is also the principle on which Workers’ Compensation operates in this country.
And before Macdonald there were other studies and reports, going back to the early 1970s, when the system really began to run off the rails. What had begun as a fairly strict insurance program in the 1940s had almost immediately started to unravel. Seasonal workers — that is, workers who become unemployed for part of the year, every year, not by some remarkable string of bad luck but by design — were first entitled to benefits in 1950. Initially they could only receive benefits for the part of the working season they missed: the 1971 “reforms” extended this to the entire year. Thus was born “Lotto 10/42”: 10 weeks’ work was enough, depending on where you lived, for 42 weeks of benefits.
The result was predictable enough. Workers and firms in seasonal industries found it in their mutual interest to time spells of employment and layoffs to the rhythms of the EI rules. Though anecdotes abound, the statistical evidence of this sort of mass gaming of the system is unequivocal. A famous study by the economists David Green and Craig Riddell found a huge spike in claims filed every year by employees with precisely the minimum 10 weeks’ work required: when the minimum was temporarily increased to 14 weeks in 1990, the spike moved with it.
So no one is in any doubt about what is going on. Differences arise over what, if anything, to do about it. If the costs of maintaining workers in unstable or seasonal employment were paid for by some bottomless cash machine called “the government,” then its defenders would be right to object to any reform. But in fact the costs are paid in other jobs.
While everyone pays the same premiums, not everyone claims the same benefits — indeed, workers in high-unemployment regions can claims benefits for longer, in return for fewer weeks’ work, than workers in other regions. Workers and firms with unstable employment records are in effect being subsidized by those with more stable histories: the former’s premiums are too low, relative to how much they cost the system, while the latter’s are too high — with all the consequences this implies for employment.
What previous reform efforts had in common was that they attempted to address this problem at its roots: whether by experience rating of employer premiums, or cutting benefits to frequent claimants (a form of experience rating), the aim was to reduce the subsidies to unstable employment. The current reform exercise, by contrast, tackles it from the back end. While encouraging claimants in seasonal industries to look a little further afield for employment, it does nothing to rebalance the skewed incentives that sucked them into those sectors in the first place.
It is a hard thing, as critics of the Conservative plan note, to ask workers in their fifties who have never done anything but seasonal work to adapt to something new. But those workers were just entering the labour force when the first reports were landing on ministers’ desks urging that the system be reformed, to little lasting effect (the Axworthy reforms were soon repealed, after the loss of 20 Liberal seats in Atlantic Canada in the 1997 election). Perhaps there is little that can be done for them. But we can at least try to prevent the same thing happening to the next generation.
end
Andrew Coyne May 28, 2012
Article Link
How mild are the Conservative employment insurance reforms? Even the opposition seems unable to muster much more than a frowsy “you could have consulted more,” its default response when there’s little political blood to be drawn.
How mild? Compare them with the last attempt at EI reform, the package of changes introduced by Lloyd Axworthy, the great stalwart of the Liberal left, in 1996. The current exercise would oblige EI claimants to be a little less choosy in the jobs they were willing to take, depending on their claim experience and how long they remained on benefit. Frequent users, in particular, would be expected to take a job paying as little as 80% as much as their previous employment, dropping to 70% after six weeks.
But if no such jobs were available they could carry on more or less as before: the same benefits, the same duration, the same frequency. By contrast, the Axworthy reforms directly reduced their benefits, again depending on how often they claimed, a system known as the “intensity rule.” From the standard 55% of insurable earnings, a percentage point was reduced for every 20 weeks of benefit received in the previous five years, to a maximum of five percentage points. Another reform clawed back benefits from higher income recipients at a steeper rate if they made frequent claims.
Mind you, the Axworthy reforms were small beer themselves compared to earlier reform proposals. The Mulroney-era Commission of Inquiry on Unemployment Insurance, headed by the former Quebec Social Affairs minister Claude Forget, recommended “annualizing” benefits, that is basing them on claimants’ earnings over an entire year, rather than the few weeks in which they might actually have worked: a sharp incentive to work longer before filing a claim.
And before Forget, there was the Macdonald Commission, headed by the former Liberal finance minister Donald Macdonald, which recommended setting employers’ EI premiums according to how frequently their employees made claims: a system known as “experience rating.” This is how unemployment insurance (as it is called in other countries) works in the United States, among other places. It is also the principle on which Workers’ Compensation operates in this country.
And before Macdonald there were other studies and reports, going back to the early 1970s, when the system really began to run off the rails. What had begun as a fairly strict insurance program in the 1940s had almost immediately started to unravel. Seasonal workers — that is, workers who become unemployed for part of the year, every year, not by some remarkable string of bad luck but by design — were first entitled to benefits in 1950. Initially they could only receive benefits for the part of the working season they missed: the 1971 “reforms” extended this to the entire year. Thus was born “Lotto 10/42”: 10 weeks’ work was enough, depending on where you lived, for 42 weeks of benefits.
The result was predictable enough. Workers and firms in seasonal industries found it in their mutual interest to time spells of employment and layoffs to the rhythms of the EI rules. Though anecdotes abound, the statistical evidence of this sort of mass gaming of the system is unequivocal. A famous study by the economists David Green and Craig Riddell found a huge spike in claims filed every year by employees with precisely the minimum 10 weeks’ work required: when the minimum was temporarily increased to 14 weeks in 1990, the spike moved with it.
So no one is in any doubt about what is going on. Differences arise over what, if anything, to do about it. If the costs of maintaining workers in unstable or seasonal employment were paid for by some bottomless cash machine called “the government,” then its defenders would be right to object to any reform. But in fact the costs are paid in other jobs.
While everyone pays the same premiums, not everyone claims the same benefits — indeed, workers in high-unemployment regions can claims benefits for longer, in return for fewer weeks’ work, than workers in other regions. Workers and firms with unstable employment records are in effect being subsidized by those with more stable histories: the former’s premiums are too low, relative to how much they cost the system, while the latter’s are too high — with all the consequences this implies for employment.
What previous reform efforts had in common was that they attempted to address this problem at its roots: whether by experience rating of employer premiums, or cutting benefits to frequent claimants (a form of experience rating), the aim was to reduce the subsidies to unstable employment. The current reform exercise, by contrast, tackles it from the back end. While encouraging claimants in seasonal industries to look a little further afield for employment, it does nothing to rebalance the skewed incentives that sucked them into those sectors in the first place.
It is a hard thing, as critics of the Conservative plan note, to ask workers in their fifties who have never done anything but seasonal work to adapt to something new. But those workers were just entering the labour force when the first reports were landing on ministers’ desks urging that the system be reformed, to little lasting effect (the Axworthy reforms were soon repealed, after the loss of 20 Liberal seats in Atlantic Canada in the 1997 election). Perhaps there is little that can be done for them. But we can at least try to prevent the same thing happening to the next generation.
end
As an offshoot of the budget, it would seem there's another cog in the wheel of correcting the fiscal situation on reserves.....but I can't see any of it succeeding if the trained people don't move off reserves to the jobs...there will never be enough jobs for all of them ON the reserves....
Workfare for reserves: Tory plan ties benefits for aboriginals to job training
John Ivison Jun 1, 2012
Article Link
The Harper government is planning a workfare program that would oblige young aboriginals on reserves to undertake job training in return for a welfare cheque.
Ottawa wants to take young natives off welfare rolls before they become too used to receiving social assistance.
The government already spends $400-million on a range of training programs but sources suggest new money will be earmarked to improve delivery of programs for natives on reserves.
That part of the plan is likely to be warmly received by First Nations leaders. But the government is keen to tighten up eligibility requirements, as it has done recently with the Employment Insurance program. Native chiefs are less likely to welcome the idea of young band members having their benefits cut if they don’t sign up for available training programs.
Jason MacDonald, director of communications for John Duncan, the Aboriginal Affairs Minister, said it would not be accurate to say income assistance will be cut off but would not elaborate on how the government plans to transition native youth into training.
He said the government is committed to working with aboriginal peoples “to encourage those who can work to access training and encourage their participation in the labour market.”
In the March budget, the Tories said they want to “better align on-reserve Income Assistance programs with provincial systems” in terms of compliance and program requirements. In provinces like Saskatchewan, income assistance is a program of last resort and requires able-bodied welfare recipients to look for work and take training courses when offered.
Yet, despite labour shortages across much of Western Canada, the number of aboriginals on income assistance remains stubbornly high.
Saskatchewan has an unemployment rate of 4.9%, yet 48.1% of natives on reserve are on income assistance. In Manitoba, which has an unemployment rate of 5.3%, half the on-reserve native population is on welfare.
There are pilot projects such as Active Measures in Saskatchewan — a tripartite initiative between First Nations and the federal and provincial governments — that aim to help people off income support by providing better access to career planning, literacy programs, training allowances, transport and child care.
Chief Felix Thomas of the Saskatoon Tribal Council said the Active Measures pilot still needs more funding to cover daycare, transportation and housing needs. But he said welfare rates have declined by 2% and he is encouraged by the involvement of companies like Potash Corporation, who have been working with local First Nations.
Working with willing bands is crucial. While the feds are keen to introduce a degree of uniformity across the system, income assistance is actually distributed by First Nations to their band members.
The government would not confirm any such plan exists but sources suggest First Nations will be encouraged to sign up for the program, attracted by the enhanced funding, but will be encouraged to cut off welfare for those refuse to accept training.
The federal government’s ability to unilaterally make any major moves in the realm of aboriginal social policy is limited. A federal court judge in the Maritimes issued an injunction in April that will temporarily prevent Ottawa from reducing social assistance rates for First Nations.
More on link
Workfare for reserves: Tory plan ties benefits for aboriginals to job training
John Ivison Jun 1, 2012
Article Link
The Harper government is planning a workfare program that would oblige young aboriginals on reserves to undertake job training in return for a welfare cheque.
Ottawa wants to take young natives off welfare rolls before they become too used to receiving social assistance.
The government already spends $400-million on a range of training programs but sources suggest new money will be earmarked to improve delivery of programs for natives on reserves.
That part of the plan is likely to be warmly received by First Nations leaders. But the government is keen to tighten up eligibility requirements, as it has done recently with the Employment Insurance program. Native chiefs are less likely to welcome the idea of young band members having their benefits cut if they don’t sign up for available training programs.
Jason MacDonald, director of communications for John Duncan, the Aboriginal Affairs Minister, said it would not be accurate to say income assistance will be cut off but would not elaborate on how the government plans to transition native youth into training.
He said the government is committed to working with aboriginal peoples “to encourage those who can work to access training and encourage their participation in the labour market.”
In the March budget, the Tories said they want to “better align on-reserve Income Assistance programs with provincial systems” in terms of compliance and program requirements. In provinces like Saskatchewan, income assistance is a program of last resort and requires able-bodied welfare recipients to look for work and take training courses when offered.
Yet, despite labour shortages across much of Western Canada, the number of aboriginals on income assistance remains stubbornly high.
Saskatchewan has an unemployment rate of 4.9%, yet 48.1% of natives on reserve are on income assistance. In Manitoba, which has an unemployment rate of 5.3%, half the on-reserve native population is on welfare.
There are pilot projects such as Active Measures in Saskatchewan — a tripartite initiative between First Nations and the federal and provincial governments — that aim to help people off income support by providing better access to career planning, literacy programs, training allowances, transport and child care.
Chief Felix Thomas of the Saskatoon Tribal Council said the Active Measures pilot still needs more funding to cover daycare, transportation and housing needs. But he said welfare rates have declined by 2% and he is encouraged by the involvement of companies like Potash Corporation, who have been working with local First Nations.
Working with willing bands is crucial. While the feds are keen to introduce a degree of uniformity across the system, income assistance is actually distributed by First Nations to their band members.
The government would not confirm any such plan exists but sources suggest First Nations will be encouraged to sign up for the program, attracted by the enhanced funding, but will be encouraged to cut off welfare for those refuse to accept training.
The federal government’s ability to unilaterally make any major moves in the realm of aboriginal social policy is limited. A federal court judge in the Maritimes issued an injunction in April that will temporarily prevent Ottawa from reducing social assistance rates for First Nations.
More on link
- Reaction score
- 1,027
- Points
- 1,160
GAP said:
Unfortunately most don't want to move off the reserves and work where the decent paying jobs are. They would rather stay where they are,get government money and live in squalor. They are offered so many advantages to better their lives and the lives of their families that most Canadians don't get and still we have this problem.
Perhaps some tough love is in order.
Long overdue
‘Fair wages’ come from laws of economics, not legislation
Andrew Coyne Jun 1, 2012
Article Link
Buried deep within Bill C-38, the omnibus budget implementation bill, on page 305 of 425, just before the bit about raising the retirement age two years and just after certain amendments to the Canada Labour Code, is the following provision: “The Fair Wages and Hours of Labour Act is repealed.”
Little else is said about it. The budget itself gave no hint that such a change was in the offing. Nor is any explanation provided. You would have to look elsewhere to discover that the Act is a Depression-era holdover requiring all businesses doing construction work for the federal government to pay “fair wages,” defined as “such wages as are generally accepted as current for competent workmen in the district in which the work is being performed.”
So far, so devious. A fairly important change to federal contracting practices, dropped into a mammoth omnibus bill, without notice or context, denying parliamentarians the opportunity to vote yay or nay on it as a separate proposition, but only as part of the government’s legislative agenda in toto. Indeed, parliamentarians might not even have been aware of it, had it not been spotted by the NDP’s Pat Martin, a former construction worker, who has been raising a stink about it ever since.
As a matter of process, then, the measure suffers from the same defects as the rest of the bill, about which I have complained elsewhere. But what about on the merits? Martin, for one, appears to believe the Act is all that stands between the Canadian worker and destitution, its repeal part of an insidious “war on labour” that will, according to a Toronto Star report, “keep wages low for a middle-class that has seen little improvement in income for decades.”
“In whose interest is it,” Martin thundered in the Commons this week, “to drive down the wages of Canadian workers?”
Okay, I’ll bite. How about: other Canadian workers? By “driving down” wages, of course, he means not artificially propping them up in legislation; and he doesn’t mean everybody’s wages, but only those favoured few to which the Act applies.
Canadian workers are also taxpayers, and as such deserve to get the best value for their money. The purpose of federal construction contracts is construction, the building and maintenance of public works, not to redistribute income from one group of workers to another.
More to the point, workers are entitled to compete for jobs. The practical effect of the Act’s insistence on “fair wages” is to limit competition on federal construction projects, restricting the business to a handful of large, established firms with highly-paid, usually older workforces, to the exclusion of smaller firms with younger employees. An Act that prefers the interests of the higher-paid to those of the lower-paid may be many things, but “fair” isn’t one of them.
But this isn’t just a dispute about this particular piece of legislation. More broadly, this is about differing visions of the economy, and how incomes grow over time. Do standards of living rise because we legislate them higher? Or does it depend on other things, like productivity?
Much popular thinking about the economy inclines to the former view. We grow richer, in effect, by overpaying each other, and overcharging each other in our turn. To leave the setting of wages to the market would, on this view, lead inevitably to a “race to the bottom.” Only by pegging wages above-market levels, whether directly in law, or by means of union representation, is there any hope even of maintaining such progress as has been achieved, let alone making further gains.
But if the pop economics story were true, it would be hard to explain why anyone made more than the minimum wage — anyone, that is, who did not work in a union shop. In fact only about 5% of workers in Canada make the minimum, while just 16% of the private sector workforce now belongs to a union.
Yet, far from stagnating, as the Star story claims, living standards in Canada have in fact been rising steadily for most of the last two decades: from 1993 to 2008, median family income grew by 21.5% after inflation. Incomes fell, it is true, in the previous decade, but for an obvious reason: the two bone-crunching recessions that began and ended it. When large numbers of people are earning no income — because they are unemployed — the median tends to lag a bit.
What that ought to suggest is that wages and incomes do not, in fact, fall to zero in the absence of some legislated floor — they are subject to the workings of other laws beside those of the state, including the laws of economics. Put simply, the amount of goods and services we can buy, whether as individuals or, in the aggregate, as a country, will depend on the value of the goods and services we can offer in exchange.
Or in even simpler terms: If we want to be able to buy more stuff, then either we have to make more stuff — that is, increase productivity — or charge more for the stuff we make. Rising living standards in Canada of late have been fuelled less by the former and more by the latter, namely by the higher prices we can command on world markets for the resources we export, notably oil. They have had rather less to do, I suggest, with the Fair Wages and Hours of Labour Act.
end
‘Fair wages’ come from laws of economics, not legislation
Andrew Coyne Jun 1, 2012
Article Link
Buried deep within Bill C-38, the omnibus budget implementation bill, on page 305 of 425, just before the bit about raising the retirement age two years and just after certain amendments to the Canada Labour Code, is the following provision: “The Fair Wages and Hours of Labour Act is repealed.”
Little else is said about it. The budget itself gave no hint that such a change was in the offing. Nor is any explanation provided. You would have to look elsewhere to discover that the Act is a Depression-era holdover requiring all businesses doing construction work for the federal government to pay “fair wages,” defined as “such wages as are generally accepted as current for competent workmen in the district in which the work is being performed.”
So far, so devious. A fairly important change to federal contracting practices, dropped into a mammoth omnibus bill, without notice or context, denying parliamentarians the opportunity to vote yay or nay on it as a separate proposition, but only as part of the government’s legislative agenda in toto. Indeed, parliamentarians might not even have been aware of it, had it not been spotted by the NDP’s Pat Martin, a former construction worker, who has been raising a stink about it ever since.
As a matter of process, then, the measure suffers from the same defects as the rest of the bill, about which I have complained elsewhere. But what about on the merits? Martin, for one, appears to believe the Act is all that stands between the Canadian worker and destitution, its repeal part of an insidious “war on labour” that will, according to a Toronto Star report, “keep wages low for a middle-class that has seen little improvement in income for decades.”
“In whose interest is it,” Martin thundered in the Commons this week, “to drive down the wages of Canadian workers?”
Okay, I’ll bite. How about: other Canadian workers? By “driving down” wages, of course, he means not artificially propping them up in legislation; and he doesn’t mean everybody’s wages, but only those favoured few to which the Act applies.
Canadian workers are also taxpayers, and as such deserve to get the best value for their money. The purpose of federal construction contracts is construction, the building and maintenance of public works, not to redistribute income from one group of workers to another.
More to the point, workers are entitled to compete for jobs. The practical effect of the Act’s insistence on “fair wages” is to limit competition on federal construction projects, restricting the business to a handful of large, established firms with highly-paid, usually older workforces, to the exclusion of smaller firms with younger employees. An Act that prefers the interests of the higher-paid to those of the lower-paid may be many things, but “fair” isn’t one of them.
But this isn’t just a dispute about this particular piece of legislation. More broadly, this is about differing visions of the economy, and how incomes grow over time. Do standards of living rise because we legislate them higher? Or does it depend on other things, like productivity?
Much popular thinking about the economy inclines to the former view. We grow richer, in effect, by overpaying each other, and overcharging each other in our turn. To leave the setting of wages to the market would, on this view, lead inevitably to a “race to the bottom.” Only by pegging wages above-market levels, whether directly in law, or by means of union representation, is there any hope even of maintaining such progress as has been achieved, let alone making further gains.
But if the pop economics story were true, it would be hard to explain why anyone made more than the minimum wage — anyone, that is, who did not work in a union shop. In fact only about 5% of workers in Canada make the minimum, while just 16% of the private sector workforce now belongs to a union.
Yet, far from stagnating, as the Star story claims, living standards in Canada have in fact been rising steadily for most of the last two decades: from 1993 to 2008, median family income grew by 21.5% after inflation. Incomes fell, it is true, in the previous decade, but for an obvious reason: the two bone-crunching recessions that began and ended it. When large numbers of people are earning no income — because they are unemployed — the median tends to lag a bit.
What that ought to suggest is that wages and incomes do not, in fact, fall to zero in the absence of some legislated floor — they are subject to the workings of other laws beside those of the state, including the laws of economics. Put simply, the amount of goods and services we can buy, whether as individuals or, in the aggregate, as a country, will depend on the value of the goods and services we can offer in exchange.
Or in even simpler terms: If we want to be able to buy more stuff, then either we have to make more stuff — that is, increase productivity — or charge more for the stuff we make. Rising living standards in Canada of late have been fuelled less by the former and more by the latter, namely by the higher prices we can command on world markets for the resources we export, notably oil. They have had rather less to do, I suggest, with the Fair Wages and Hours of Labour Act.
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A
aesop081
Guest
GAP said:
Another popular misconception fuelled by the MSM. The retirement age is not being raised by 2 years.
Colin Parkinson
Army.ca Myth
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I think it applies only to federal contracts, even then it seems to be only for major project, never seen invoked on any of the smaller contracts we have let.
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The law is repealed because it was replaced by a Policy Order drafted and brought into force in 2006:
Fair Wages Policy Order, CRC, c 1621
The new Policy Order is not just for federal public works cnonstruction projects but also extends into manufacture and supply for the federal government. It is not reliant on the Fair Wages and Hours of Labour Act.
Fair Wages Policy Order, CRC, c 1621
The new Policy Order is not just for federal public works cnonstruction projects but also extends into manufacture and supply for the federal government. It is not reliant on the Fair Wages and Hours of Labour Act.
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whiskey601 said:
But... but... if it's merely legislative housekeeping and makes no substantive change, that means all the complaints were just ill-founded incompetent whining. And no one ever does that on the internet.
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I realize that I inadvertently misspelled what may actually be the most accurate description of a 21st Century PWGSC project to build something without actually building something useful (or at all) - a "cnonstruction". For example, the shipbuilding program (so far). My apologies for outing the clever strategy.
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Sourced from the National Post, 5 June 2012, Link <a href="http://news.nationalpost.com/2012/06/05/opposition-parties-joining-forces-to-delay-passage-of-trojan-horse-budget-bill/">Here</a>
Details of Bill C-38 are <a href="http://www.parl.gc.ca/LEGISInfo/BillDetails.aspx?Language=E&Mode=1&billId=5514128">Here</a> with changes to the Canadian Forces Members and Veterans Re-establishment and Compensation Act <a href="http://www.parl.gc.ca/HousePublications/Publication.aspx?Language=E&Mode=1&DocId=5524772&File=1202#391">Here</a> (Original 2005 document <a href="http://laws-lois.justice.gc.ca/eng/acts/C-16.8/">Here</a>)
Details of Bill C-38 are <a href="http://www.parl.gc.ca/LEGISInfo/BillDetails.aspx?Language=E&Mode=1&billId=5514128">Here</a> with changes to the Canadian Forces Members and Veterans Re-establishment and Compensation Act <a href="http://www.parl.gc.ca/HousePublications/Publication.aspx?Language=E&Mode=1&DocId=5524772&File=1202#391">Here</a> (Original 2005 document <a href="http://laws-lois.justice.gc.ca/eng/acts/C-16.8/">Here</a>)
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Personally, I don't understand why those changes are not being reviewed by the respective committees applicable in each instance - environment, employment insurance, food safety, etc. They're only being reviewed by the finance committee. That doesn't strike me as thorough or prudent.
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Some clarity based on the carried senate motion wrt bill C-38 as detailed <a href="http://www.parl.gc.ca/Content/Sen/Chamber/411/Debates/075db_2012-05-03-e.htm?Language=E#21">Here</a>:
Bill C-38 will be studied by respective senate committees but not their equivalents in the House.
Bill C-38 will be studied by respective senate committees but not their equivalents in the House.
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