Ontario workers who lose their jobs next week will receive less employment insurance.

As of Saturday, Ottawa will cancel an extra five weeks of regular EI benefits and end a program that provided up to an additional 20 weeks of benefits for longer-serving employees.

For older workers who suddenly find themselves unemployed after years of long-term service this is a crushing blow, says Ontario’s Intergovernmental Affairs Minister Monique Smith.

“Pull that support from these families and it is a real hurt,” Smith said.

Last year, Prime Minister Stephen Harper enhanced regular EI benefits for laid off workers by five weeks in response to the crippling of Canada’s job market during the economic downturn. Ottawa also enhanced benefits for longer-serving employees by up to 20 weeks.

Five weeks of benefits roughly equals $1,768 on average — EI claims are based on 55 per cent of a person’s income. Twenty weeks is a lost $7,072.

As part of Ottawa’s economic action plan, the government introduced a $47 billion two-year spending program. It included spending on infrastructure and enhanced EI benefits. Its aim was to prop up the national economy, but the infrastructure taps will be turned off March 31, 2011.

Ontario is not the only province hurting from the end of stimulus funding. The EI clawback is nationwide.

Nova Scotia Premier Darrell Dexter told the Star the Harper government is “fixated on drawing very definite lines” on when the programs will end.

“There is always a drop dead date after which there will be no more help,” said Dexter. “This seems to function on the theory that recessions and their end somehow operate in that fashion when they don’t.”

Canada has had softening employment numbers as a result of the worldwide economic downturn. In Nova Scotia, the unemployment rate sits at about 9 per cent.

“This is of significant concern,” Dexter said.

Shutting down employment insurance benefits is not “the most productive way” to address the jobless situation, Dexter said. “This is a very uneven recovery,” he said. “It should be examined sector by sector.”

However, the provinces have always known this program was targeted and temporary, said Ryan Sparrow, communications director for federal Human Resources Minister Diane Finley.

“Canada is emerging from the recession quite strongly,” Sparrow said.

He said Ontario has recouped about 82 per cent of their job losses since the economic downturn hit.

But combine the EI enhanced benefits ending with the cancellation of $600 million in skills development training money as of this March and the road will lengthen for laid-off workers, said Smith.

Ontario used the $600 million in extra training money to fund the popular Second Career program along with some Ontario Works or welfare retraining initiatives.

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Ottawa is helping retrain workers, Sparrow said. In 2011-2012, $740 million will go Ontario’s way for retraining programs. And, in areas of high unemployment in Ontario, employees will benefit from the extra five weeks up until August, 2011, he said.

Ken Lewenza, the Canadian Auto Workers’ union national president, said the looming EI cutback will come as a “terrible shock” to Canadians.

Lewenza and Earle McCurdy, president of the Fish, Food and Allied Workers union, sent a letter to Harper in July pleading with him to bend the rules.

“In the short term, there’s an urgent need to extend the EI stimulus measures including pilot projects, beyond September and into 2011, for both existing and new claims,” the letter stated.

“This is vital to a sustainable recovery, as well as to unemployed workers and their families. (The) $57 billion in EI premiums borrowed by successive governments was supposed to be there for us in the event of a rainy day. It is now raining.”

Ontario’s argument with Ottawa over employment insurance inequities is long-standing. The federal EI fund is sitting at a $57 billion surplus and the Liberals say Ontario workers are not getting their fair share.

Only 30 per cent of unemployed workers in the province receive EI benefits compared to 56 per cent in all the other provinces, Smith said.

Repeatedly, Ontario has tried to negotiate with the Harper government and come to an agreement over the loss of the EI and training dollars but to no avail, Smith said.

“There just seems to be an indifference,” Smith told the Star.

Sparrow said the “lines of communication” are always open.

The recovery from the recession has not been even across Canada. Ontario’s manufacturing sector has struggled with the auto industry slowdown and the province has slipped into “have not” status when it comes to equalization payments. As of July, Ontario’s unemployment rate sat at 8.4 per cent.

A temporary legislative change introduced by the federal government last March increased the amount of weeks unemployed workers could claim in EI benefits from a range of 19 to 50 weeks. As of next week, if you lose your job those benefits shrinks back to a range of between 14 to 45 weeks.

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