Canada: Some Canadians wait up to eight weeks for unemployment checks

  As the Canadian Conservative government cuts back on government jobs there is a noticeable effect on some services including payments to jobless Canadians who collect Employment Insurance. Of course it is really unemployment insurance but the new positive spin Orwellian language  calls it Employment Insurance-as if one could not admit such an abomination as unemployment.
     At the peak of the recession Service Canada whose task is to ensure that Canadians receive their entitlement payments there were 3,000 term workers hired. However when the terms expired they were not rehired. Only about 450 workers remain and their hours have been cut from full to part time.
   Some people are waiting more than eight weeks for their first check to arrive. Service Canada promises to process claims within 28 days. However, there are now more than 80,000 claims that have gone beyond this promised deadline. Is anyone punished. Of course not.
  What the government is doing is closing about 100 processing centers and will end up with just 20 larger centralized centers. Of course at the same time this will cut another 600 jobs. Of course the Harper government is not cutting services to corporations. He is extending corporate tax breaks. He is also making sure that the reserve army of the unemployed is eager to take a job, any job, for it is becoming more and more difficult to get the unemployment payments to which unemployed Canadians are supposed to be entitled. For more see this article.