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PROBLEMS WITH ACCESSING ON-SITE 1994/1996 - BRIEF SUMMARY

On August 4th 1994 I started a full-time job, as a regular weekly-paid employee with Dean s Professional Painting Inc., a painting contractor in Ottawa. I did this because I could not get any work in professional engineering.

By the time I quit in early December 1994, they were owing me 5 weeks' wages (about $2,000) and other people working for them were in similar trouble. I visited my local Canada Employment Centre at the time and was told that the 17 weeks of insurable employment with Dean s was sufficient for me to qualify for U.I. benefits, which in turn meant that I was eligible for an ON-SITE placement to get back to work as an engineer.

So I quit and applied for U.I.benefits on December 5th 1994; on the application form I put down the reason I was leaving (i.e. bounced cheques etc.); further, Dean's admitted to a cash-flow problem on my Record of Employment from them.

Two weeks later I was told that I was ineligible for U.I. benefits - and hence ON-SITE - based on being a new entrant or re-entrant to the labour force - so that I then needed 20 weeks to qualify. A week or two later this was reduced to 18 weeks but this did not help the situation.

Subsequently, I was refused benefits after appealing to the Board of Referees (on February 23rd 1995) - again based on insufficient insurable weeks and notwithstanding the fact that Dean s were not paying me. (Eventually Dean s went bankrupt and I got paid, almost a year later, through the Ontario Wage Protection Plan).

So then I appealed to the Umpire, who ruled in my favour in August 1995,

Two months later, still having heard nothing about the U.I. benefits I was supposed to get, I asked my federal M.P. - Marlene Catterall - to chase it up. Two weeks after that (in November 1995) I received , over a 2-week period, 17 weeks of U.I. benefits and the accompanying U.I. Benefit Statements, the last of which simply stated that it was the last payment. There was no explanatory note with this concerning what I was entitled to, and no reference to ON-SITE.

My request for admission to ON-SITE was fully documented in my appeal to the Board of Referees - and in my subsequent appeal to the Umpire, but in the latter case was not even acknowledged in the Umpire's ruling (CUB 28929).

After much subsequent correspondence up to August 1996 - with the Umpire s office, lawyer Jonathan P. Langsner (of H.R.D.C. s Legal Services department), Marlene Catteral and another federal M.P. - Bob Wood - the problem was never resolved. At one point I stormed into Bob Wood s office in North Bay, Ontario (where I was living at the time) demanding that the nonsense be stopped but all that did was to get me into a spot of bother with the local police and the R.C.M.P.

I am forced to conclude that the whole mess was the fault of H.R.D.C. - their dysfunctional set of rules, sloppy and perfunctory work in my case, aided and abetted by lawyer Jonathan P. Langsner of their Legal Services department. The situation was not helped by M.P s seemingly being unable to do anything. The conduct of the police and R.C.M.P. was also not appropriate: instead of suggesting that I might get a criminal record, they should have questioned the people responsible for the situation and pressed for it to be corrected.

FULL REPORT AND SUPPORTING DOCUMENTS - CLICK HERE

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