Employment insurance and Harper's flexibility fanaticism

As oil prices drop, rumours in the Maritimes are on the rise: the region's migrant workers, who send money home from their jobs "out west," might be coming home for good.

In 2012, the Conservative government made deep cuts to the employment insurance (EI) program. The cuts were meant to encourage workers in high unemployment regions to relocate to low unemployment regions, like Alberta. Now, having heeded the call for mobility, workers will return home to stubbornly high unemployment rates and a hollowed-out EI program.

Welcome to Harper's flexibility fanaticism.

The rise of this mobile workforce has paralleled Canada's bitumen explosion. The number of inter-provincial workers in Alberta -- those working in Alberta and living in another province -- surpassed the number of in-migrants in 2005. Between 2004 and 2009, Alberta's interprovincial workforce doubled from roughly 65,000 to 128,000.

In January 2013, the EI cuts drew three quarters of the Magdalen Islands' population into the streets. Their placards read "Non à l'exode!" in reference to the westward procession sure to follow the cuts. And follow it has.

READ MORE: http://rabble.ca/news/2015/01/employment-insurance-and-harpers-flexibility-fanaticism