Pauline Marois, while she confused the heck out of her constituents with her position on the student conflict about tuition ( you remember she looked hammered in the picture playing the symbols in the recent demonstration), asked the question ; Why can’t the provinces have responsibility over Employment Insurance?
The answer to that is both easy and obvious.
Firstly one can only imagine the level of extortion that would exist between the provinces and the federal government regarding funding for this file given all the recent Christy Clark caused hullabaloo at the first ministers conference.
Secondly and more important the provinces would not have a clue what to do when a person moved from one province to the next, got laid off and wanted to collect the insurance.
I imagine the conversation would go something like this” But sir you worked to majority of your time in Saskatchewan so I don’t see how you would expect us here in ( Insert the province of your choice) to finance your unemployment. Might we suggest you write those folks back home?”
The response from the folks back home would be ” We regret to inform you that you no longer reside in the province of ( Insert once again the province of your choice) might we suggest you appeal to those bureaucrats in the province where you now live?
Of course if your new province just happens to be Quebec you might get an answer like this” While we appreciate your claim for employment insurance is important to you, you must realize that we are in the middle of a referendum on which country you actually live, so until that is cleared up no claims will be processed. You should also realize that if we lose and Quebec remains in Canada there will be a further referendum delaying the processing of your claim even longer. Might we suggest for your sake and for ours, you pack your stuff up and move to the province of your choice?”
I think it’s pretty obvious why Employment Insurance would be a federal responsibility.
What do you think?