Demand res

hearing: scrap the bill

ounds at UI

September 18, 1989
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Vol. 52, No.33

— SEAN GRIFFIN

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New Democrat MP Ron Fisher, one of two NDP MPs on the parliamentary committee studying the unemployment insurance
Cuts, addresses a rally in Robson Square Sept. 11, called to protest Bill C-21. Fisher told the demonstration, jointly sponsored
by the B.C. Federation of Labour, the CLC, Vancouver and New Westminster labour council and the Coalition Against *’Free”’
Trade, that the “government did not want public hearings to take place’’ and “‘did everything they could to make sure that the
Canadian public was not able to have any say in what these changes (to Ul) were going to be.”’

Groups appearing before the Parlia-
mentary committee studying Bill C-21,
the government proposed cuts to unem-
ployment insurance, drove the message
home for the fifth straight day Monday:
Bill C-21 is unjust, it is an attempt to
reduce UI to U.S. levels and it should be
Scrapped.

Liberal committee member, Toronto
Eglinton-Lawrence MP Joseph Volpe,
told the committee as hearings opened in
Vancouver Sept. 11 that 39 of the 51
Submissions presented during the pre-
vious three hearings in Sudbury, Toronto
and Jonquiere, had opposed the pro-
posed UI amendments.

And that percentage of opponents
Tose even higher Monday as the first of

two days of hearings in Vancouver
Opened in the Meridien Hotel.

During the first day, the Business
Council of B.C. was alone in supporting
the bill among a list of interveners that
included groups as diverse as the Coali-
tion of the Disabled and the B.C. Federa-
tion of Labour.

“Bill C-21 is a bad law,” said Jim
Sayre, appearing for the Community
Legal Assistants Society.”

Representatives from women’s centres
and from the B.C. Human Rights Coali-
tion warned that the increased penalties
for voluntary job-leaving would increase
the incidence of sexual harassment and
human rights violations in the work-
place.

“There is little that can be done with
this bill,” Bill Zander, president of the
Provincial Council of Carpenters, told

the committee. “It should be scrapped.”

As they had done in hearings else-
where in the country, interveners chal-
lenged the government’s figures on the
impact of the bill and charged that the
Tories were putting the cost of deficit
reduction and job training on the “backs
of those least able to pay — the unem-
ployed.”

Citing figures from its own research as
well as from a study commissioned for
the Canadian Labour Congress by Glo-
bal Economics Ltd., the B.C. Federation
of Labour emphasized that 16,723 peo-
ple in B.C. would lose UI benefits com-
pletely as a result of Bill C-21 — more
than five times the number estimated by
the government’s impact study.

Federation president Ken Georgetti
charged that the changes to UI were the
“direct result of the Free Trade Agree-
ment.”

That point was underscored again and
again during hearings Monday as inter-
veners pointed to the substantially lower
benefits in U.S. unemployment insu-
rance and the calls by employer groups
to reduce the cost of Canadian social
programs to enhance competitiveness.

“The sweeping cuts in the unemploy-
ment insurance program proposed in Bill
C-21...mark animportant milestone in
the Mulroney government’s efforts to re-
shape Canadian social programs to the
American model,” the Hospital Employ-
ees Union stated in its brief to the com-
mittee.

Significantly, the submission by the
B.C. Business Council gave substance to
the contention of unionists and others
that “harmonization” of the UI program

see AIM page 7

TRIBUNE PHOTO — DAN KEETON

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5

Pharmasave striker Brenda Lipp (r) and self-described long-time customer and striker
supporter Bunty Waldner show solidarity at rally outside the drug store chain’s Surrey
Newton outlet. Story page 12.