Premiers join forces against Harper government’s jobs plan

[mentalfloss]

Premiers join forces against Harper government’s jobs plan

The nation’s premiers are presenting a united front on the federal government’s proposed Canada Jobs Grant, demanding that existing skills training programs be protected and the right to opt out of Ottawa’s plans.

The unanimity, reached after several hours of talks at a Council of the Federation meeting Thursday, represents a small victory for Ontario and Quebec, which have demanded the proposed program be changed.

The Canada Jobs Grant, announced earlier this year, would provide federal money to companies to train workers for specific jobs. The employers and the province would have to match the funds.

The goal is to make sure people are trained for available jobs, rather than simply given training in general.

However, Ontario has argued that the federal government must not divert cash from existing training programs – especially those that help vulnerable people, such as disabled or First Nations workers – to pay for Canada Jobs. Quebec’s government has said that the grant represents federal meddling in an area of provincial jurisdiction and other provinces have fretted over where to find the provincial money to match the federal dollars.

..

The provinces want the flexibility to create different iterations of the grant in each jurisdiction.

“The point of the devolution of these programs was to meet the needs of different regions, of different jurisdictions, and using the experience of the provincial governments and territorial governments that understand what their populations need in terms of skills training,” Ms. Wynne said.

If an arrangement cannot be made, the communiqué says, the premiers want the option to pull their provinces out of the jobs grant without losing any federal funding for training.

..more..

Premiers join forces against Harper government’s jobs plan - The Globe and Mail

 

[Palindrome]

Paying corporations to "train" workers just means giving corporations free labour. They take the money as long as the program lasts, then let the employee go and find another trainee. I'm not surprised if the provinces don't want to funnel their meager retraining budgets into the pockets of the people who need it least.

 

[tay]

At the time, the transformation of the city’s downtown core into a pseudo war zone seemed like the worst aspect of the Harper government’s handling of the G20 summit in Toronto in June 2010. But perhaps just as insidious was Stephen Harper’s personal role at that summit in pushing the developed world to abandon stimulus spending and veer sharply towards austerity.


That embrace of austerity has led to deep government spending cuts, with devastating consequences particularly in some southern European nations. Canadians have suffered too.

Harper likes to boast that he’s shepherded the Canadian economy to a full recovery from the 2008 crash — even though 1.4 million Canadians remain unemployed. Our employment rate is stuck at 61.9 percent, down from 63.8 percent just before the crash, notes Jim Stanford, economist for the Canadian Auto Workers.


This explains Canada’s poor ranking in a recent OECD Employment Outlook report, where Canada ranks 20th out of 34 nations.

Similarly, Canada’s Parliamentary Budget Office estimated last fall that Ottawa’s spending reductions will cost Canada approximately 125,000 jobs in 2016. (Reports like that angered the Harper government, which last spring ended Parliamentary Budget Officer Kevin Page’s impressive stint in the watchdog job.)

The embrace of austerity at the 2010 Toronto summit was a dramatic reversal of the stimulus spending that the world’s rich nations had quite effectively adopted to counter the devastating 2008 financial crash – in line with the lessons taught by the great 20th century British economist John Maynard Keynes.

Keynes argued that, when businesses are unwilling to invest during a major downturn, the only solution is for governments to invest, and on a massive scale. This insight sharply contradicted the dogma of austerity that prevailed after the 1929 crash, prolonging the 1930s Depression. Although fiercely resisted, Keynes’ insight was eventually accepted.

But right-wing economists, including Stephen Harper, have long bristled at Keynesianism — with its important role for government — and opposed its revival after the 2008 crash. (The minority Harper government only introduced a stimulus package in Canada because the opposition threatened to topple it otherwise.)

By early 2010, Keynesianism was losing ground on the international scene. But it was the G20 summit in Toronto later that year which “above all” resulted in the world’s rich nations changing course and embracing austerity, according to a recent article by British financial journalist Martin Wolf in the New York Review of Books.

Harper played a key role in that lamentable change of direction. At his urging, the G20 nations agreed to commit themselves to halve their deficits by 2013 – a draconian approach that returned the developed world to obsessing about deficits and ignoring unemployment.

Ironically, the high unemployment produced by austerity reduces tax revenues and increases social spending, making deficit-reduction difficult.


more

Harper helped push world toward austerity » StraightGoods.ca