The CCPA-MB will launch its report: Losing Ground: How Canada’s Employment Insurance system undermines inner-city and Aboriginal workers at 10 am, January 10th in room 104 at the Union Centre at Smith and Broadway.
The report explains how a succession of federal governments has effectively dismantled Canada’s EI program at the same time as economic and labour market policy has created a growing class of underprivileged workers who struggle with poverty, social marginalization, illness and uncertainty. Many of these workers live in Winnipeg’s inner city.
The Community Unemployed Help Centre (CUHC) collaborated with authors Ellen Smirl and Lynne Fernandez, allowing them access to inner-city and Aboriginal workers with firsthand experience dealing with EI.
Release of this report is timely as additional changes to EI go into effect this week that will place further restrictions on unemployed workers to obtain benefits without providing any additional support for training or job creation. Canadians have experienced over twenty years of successive cuts to the EI program and services that continue to have the most profound impact on inner city residents and those with less stable labour attachment.
Co-author Lynne Fernandez will be on hand, as will the CUHC Executive Director, Neil Cohen.
