A WARNING TO YOU ALL. IGNORE
IT AT YOUR PERIL.
EVERYBOBY, WAKE UP!
Serious management problems with
H.R.D.C. were reported in the media in late 1999 and early 2000 – just after The
Hon. Jane Stewart became Minister for Human Resources Development under the
Liberal government of former Prime Minister Jean Chrétien. Among other things these involved
job-creation grants to some companies that subsequently went bankrupt.
There are some details on this site.
Since this site was first
created in 1999 another serious scandal, known to Canadians as the Sponsorship
Scandal, was reported upon in the media during 2004, 2005 and early 2006.
It involved, among other things, payments totaling about CDN $ 100 million by
certain politicians to certain advertising firms for doing little or no work.
While the above scandals caught
the public’s attention, millions of Canadians out of work were being routinely
ignored.
THERE IS ANOTHER PROBLEM WHICH
IS ARGUABLY FAR MORE
IMPORTANT.
The true numbers of unemployed
in Canada amount to something over 4 million - but only about 25% of these are
recognised as such by H.R.D.C. (the officially unemployed). So the
problem is roughly four times bigger than the figures for official unemployed
would suggest.
For reasons which will become
clear when you read media articles that I have cited on this web site, I am not
sure that even Minister Jane Stewart was aware of what was really going on.
This still applies now (March 2006) to the new Minister and everyone else in
Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s new Conservative government (elected on January
23rd, 2006). Other relevant media reports have appeared since I
started this site in 1999. The problem is essentially rooted in disinformation,
from official sources, appearing in these media articles; this in turn seems to
be rooted in incomplete statistical data (for instance, no regularly-updated
breakdown of that group classified as Not in the Labour Force – and in
fact this group includes most people who are unemployed in real terms),
combined with persistent mis-describing of the people affected as …(having) given up looking for work…, ….(having)
dropped out of the labour force…, or ….(being) discouraged workers….
2004
NEWSPAPER ARTICLE - CLICK HERE
So we have to create something
like four times more jobs than than the figures for official unemployed
would suggest, in order to solve it.
We also have to stop lawyers and other officials putting
obstructions in the way of unemployed people who want to get back back to work
and become tax payers.
We need immigrants, to
counteract the effects of baby-boomers retiring. We have to eliminate the
bureaucratic obstacles put in the way of immigrants getting work in their
professions. Further, there must be enough jobs to employ them in addition to
all the people already in Canada who are out of work. Only if we do this will
they be able to contribute significantly to the tax base.
If we do not fix this, we will
be in far worse trouble over meeting the needs of the health care system and
other things, in the years to come.
How are we going to do it?
Russell Mills, former publisher of The Ottawa Citizen, had some ideas.
So do I.