National EI Standard no mistake

Ignatieff's first mistake?
Robert Silver

Andre Pratte is a very, very smart man. Unlike some of Canada's columnists who I routinely mock on this blog, Pratte is not somebody who I dismiss lightly.

His column this morning, titled "Ignatieff's First Mistake" on the other hand, is not his best work. In fact, the rather harsh conclusion he draws (that Ignatieff's EI proposal isn't well thought through and therefore a big mistake) isn't supported by anything he puts forward in his column. That doesn't make his conclusion untrue (though I disagree with it), it only means what he argues doesn't support his conclusion.

So what's his argument today? That Ignatieff's proposal to create a national EI standard is a light-weight mistake.

He starts the column by admitting that:

a) EI is a very complex program (true that); and

b) that it would cost roughly $1-billion to temporarily standardize the national eligibility level at 360 hours (again, as was acknowledged by Ignatieff yesterday and was confirmed by TD, so also true).

He then gives a brief history of EI and concludes that if EI is in crisis, it is because of changes made to the program by the Chrétien government in 1996. 13 years ago. Again, factually true. Of course, the world has changed slightly in the last 13 years, never mind in the last 13 weeks.

But even if it is all the Chrétien government's "fault" (whatever that means), does that mean Ignatieff has an obligation to defend the status quo? Does that mean that even if there is an improvement to the current system that objectively should be adopted by the government, he should keep his mouth shut because the Chrétien government changed the system back when the Maple Leafs last had a winning record (give or take a year) and we were in the midst of a decade of economic growth?

Why? Well Ignatieff is a Liberal and therefore must defend and freeze in time anything previous Liberal prime ministers did forever more.

How silly.

But then Pratte points out (getting I presume to why he thinks that this is Ignatieff's "big mistake"), that Ignatieff is proposing a "temporary change" and, don't we all know, governments never adopt "temporary" measures in the midst of terrible economic crises. I mean, how can Ignatieff possibly be trusted to roll-back these "temporary" measures once the economy turns around? Won't governments face too much pressure to maintain these benefits once introduced?

A fair point. This argument could of course be used against all of the current, short-term stimulus measures that Barack Obama, Stephen Harper and pretty much every leader in the free world has taken over the last year; how do we trust that we will return to economic sanity once the crisis lifts? And if you accept this argument, that once a government does something popular, it will continue to do it forever more (and this is a bad thing), that would lead one to conclude that every action that every government has done in the face of this economic crisis (or at least the populist/popular ones) was a mistake.

That's a position, maybe even a defendable position - a big maybe - but is that really what Pratte is arguing? Don't do anything on EI during the crisis because how will you ever roll it back once the crisis lifts? Is that really an argument, or at least his argument?

I don't think so.

Therefore, what is Ignatieff's big mistake? The one that leads to a harsh conclusion from Pratte: "Let's hope that the Liberal Party's platform promised for June is better thought through than his EI proposal"?

I have no idea because Pratte certainly didn't provide one in today's column, which is nothing more than a laundry list on why EI is complex and therefore paralysis should reign supreme in the midst of a growing problem.