Tory MP’s bill targets extended EI for ex-cons
Postmedia News Feb 1, 2012
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By Jeff Davis
OTTAWA • A Tory backbencher is looking to snuff out Canada’s 63-year practice of allowing ex-cons to collect double the Employment Insurance of law-abiding Canadians.
It is wrong that criminals get “preferential treatment,” said Conservative Dick Harris, who introduced private member’s bill C-316 to strike down the practice. “Breaking the law is a choice … and this is about fairness,” he said.
Canadian workers who qualify for EI payments can collect for only 52 weeks. Convicted criminals, however, can collect benefits for twice as long — up to 104 weeks — when they finish their sentence.
The special consideration for convicts was implemented in 1959 by the Progressive Conservative government of John Diefenbaker.
Similar extensions are given to some unemployed Canadians who are pregnant, ill or injured.
Mr. Harris said he discovered that ex-convicts were receiving special treatment while doing some work for a constituent, who had taken some time off work while sick with cancer.
He found that she did not qualify for EI under the circumstances, he said, but that a former criminal would.
“The fact is that convicted felons get a kind of ‘time out’ for their time in jail,” he said.
The bill is at committee stage, and will soon return to the House for third reading after a report is written following committee hearings.
Opposition MPs warned that altering the law would drive up recidivism.
Without a little bit of money, said Liberal MP Rodger Cuzner, “you’d be breaking into buddy’s house next door, breaking into the pharmacy and selling [drugs], and using the tricks you learned on the inside.”
More on link
Postmedia News Feb 1, 2012
Article Link
By Jeff Davis
OTTAWA • A Tory backbencher is looking to snuff out Canada’s 63-year practice of allowing ex-cons to collect double the Employment Insurance of law-abiding Canadians.
It is wrong that criminals get “preferential treatment,” said Conservative Dick Harris, who introduced private member’s bill C-316 to strike down the practice. “Breaking the law is a choice … and this is about fairness,” he said.
Canadian workers who qualify for EI payments can collect for only 52 weeks. Convicted criminals, however, can collect benefits for twice as long — up to 104 weeks — when they finish their sentence.
The special consideration for convicts was implemented in 1959 by the Progressive Conservative government of John Diefenbaker.
Similar extensions are given to some unemployed Canadians who are pregnant, ill or injured.
Mr. Harris said he discovered that ex-convicts were receiving special treatment while doing some work for a constituent, who had taken some time off work while sick with cancer.
He found that she did not qualify for EI under the circumstances, he said, but that a former criminal would.
“The fact is that convicted felons get a kind of ‘time out’ for their time in jail,” he said.
The bill is at committee stage, and will soon return to the House for third reading after a report is written following committee hearings.
Opposition MPs warned that altering the law would drive up recidivism.
Without a little bit of money, said Liberal MP Rodger Cuzner, “you’d be breaking into buddy’s house next door, breaking into the pharmacy and selling [drugs], and using the tricks you learned on the inside.”
More on link
