Knock on the door signals oppression

EI house calls latest foray in ancient tradition of official terror.

by Ish Theilheimer

The American folk protest singer Phil Ochs, whose flame burnt out in 1976 after a short career,  reminded listeners in one of his earliest recordings that oppression has always manifested itself through a knock on the door. The heavy thud of official knuckles has, across the millennia, brought terror and pain to families.

Now, in 2013, the Harper Conservatives have put their own stamp on this age-old means of intimidation. First, they put the fear of god into Service Canada staffers by firing thousands of their colleagues. The ones who were left understood that to keep their jobs, they will need to get tough. Now, random house calls to people claiming Employment Insurance (EI) benefits appear to have become routine.

If you lose your job, you are at high risk for getting a visit from someone asking questions as intrusive as whether you can prove your child is yours. It's no wonder there are near-riots in Atlantic Canada, which even in the best of times, has depended on seasonal employment. These are not the best of times there, and thousands have been left jobless due to mill and fish plant shutdowns.

Now they all await the knock on the door.

Given the current climate, Service Canada staffers don't want to make house calls in Atlantic Canada. "It's a health and safety issue," Don Rogers, President of the Canada Employment and Immigration Union told Straight Goods News. "They're pretty nervous as result of public pushback."

So is the government, which, at least temporarily, at least in Atlantic Canada, has suspended the house calls, according to Rogers.

The knock has a very clear message: Leave your seasonal work. Leave your homes. Go west and join the oil boom, live in a work camp, vie for scant and inadequate housing and social services in a difficult new place. If that new place is Alberta or Brad Wall's Saskatchewan, you won't have a lot of the workplace rights that you might have enjoyed back east in New Brunswick, Ontario, or Nova Scotia, so you'll likely have to work for a lot less pay than you'd expect.

Since coming to power, the Harperites have kept a constant pressure on Canadians — and thousands of foreign workers who never even get a crack at becoming Canadians — to work for less. Jim Flaherty's line, "There's no such thing as a bad job" resonates with the Conservatives' core voters, and that motto lies behind attacks on the trade unions, Old Age Security and, of course EI.

If you didn't get the picture the first time buddy, maybe the knock on the door will convince you.
 

© Copyright 2013 Ish Theilheimer, All rights Reserved. Written For: StraightGoods.ca