A 57 Billion Dollar Surplus for Canada’s Budget: The Government’s Massive Grab of Workers’ Money
By Gib McInnis
Global Research
May 05, 2015
Canada’s Finance Minister Joe Oliver delivered his budget in Ottawa on Tuesday April 21, and, as all budgets are political, this one not only sketched out the “major planks of the Tories’ fall campaign,” but its political nature is also characterized by what Prime Minister Harper has removed from it; a 57 billion dollar employment insurance surplus fund—as a result of a July 2014 Supreme Court of Canada ruling—thus allowing his government to circumvent the parliamentary system of budget scrutiny for such a large amount of money.
The July 2014 Supreme Court of Canada’s ruling between the Harper government and Quebec’s union Confédération des syndicats nationaux (CSN) was the result of the Harper government transferring $ 57 billion from the old Employment Insurance Account to the Prime Minister Office’s general revenues in 2010. Likewise, the CSN took up the battle on behalf of Canadians to prove that the Harper transfer was unconstitutional; however, the Supreme Court sided with the Harper administration, allowing Harper no less to decide what to do with the money at his own discretion, since the PMO’s budget is under no parliamentary scrutiny as is the annual budget of the government.
This circumventing of the parliamentary system of budget scrutiny by Harper has its roots in the late 1990s when Prime Minister Jean Chrétien increased premiums paid into the account while at the same time decreasing the amount paid out to workers. Chrétien’s decision led to a bloating surplus beyond what the Act called for, and this massive swelling alerted the then Auditor General Denis Desautels to go public. In a letter to Pierre Pettigrew, then Minister of Human Resources, dated July 23, 1999, Desautels stated, “I wish to draw to your attention that the surplus of the Employment Insurance Account has increased during the current year by $7.3 billion, to $21 billion.” However, nothing could stop the appetite of this government, and fortunately, Desautels did not give in. He eventually appealed to the Employment Insurance Commission for help.
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