Monday, September 15, 2008

Finally Some Support for the Self-Employed

It is nice to finally see some support for the self-employed, Today Stephen Harper announced another modest, pragmatic platform plank from Stephen Harper's Conservative party.

Under the plan:

  1. participation would be voluntary
  2. self-employed Canadians would have to sign up for the EI plan six months before making a claim
  3. details about premium amounts and required post-claim payments would be set when the program is implemented after review by the Canada Employment Insurance Financing Board.

Yet another family friendly announcement. I didn't realize that 2.6 million Canadians are self-employed, and that a million of them are women.

I never understood why self-employed people we not eligible for EI or parental benefits. Small businesses are the engine of our economy, it behooves all levels of government to support them and put in place the programs and incentives for them to succeed.

I haven't seen any word yet on whether this would also include who are employed by family members.

UPDATE According to the CBC self-employed people would be eligible for all EI benefits:
The self-employed business owners who choose to participate could collect employment insurance or parental benefits once they had worked enough hours to qualify, even if their business collapsed.

We're better off with Harper.

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

A truely great idea by Harper that is far over due.
Brilliant! 8)

Anonymous said...

Stephen Harper continues to prove that the other opposition leaders who pontificate that they are working for "families" and "ordinary Canadians" continue to blow smoke. The ONLY one actually doing anything for the ordinary Canadian is Stephen Harper and the Tories.

I would bet that the majority of Canadians had no idea that self employed workers could not get EI although they had to pay into the system. I know that from first hand experience.

Anonymous said...

A few comments:


1. Great move by Harper and the Conservatives. We shouldn't be penalizing entrepreneurs.

2. Kind of a tangent but it burns my ass something fierce when the Dippers keep referring to how much they can do for "working families". As opposed to what? The only real NON-working families are the ones who are sucking at the public teet and would be likely to vote NDP anyway... so what's the deal?

3. It's nit picky, I know... but you are making a repeated grammatical error. We're better OFF with Harper is the correct way to write it.

AnonymousCoward said...

Anon@1:49, I hang my head in shame. I cannot believe I made that same typo across so many posts.

I really, really, really can't.

Man, that's embarrassing :)

I think I fixed them all....

Anonymous said...

as a retired self employed man i laugh at your thoughts about this. who the hell do you think is going to pay. duh. the small business man. give us back a little more of what has already been taken?

AnonymousCoward said...

as a retired self employed man i laugh at your thoughts about this. who the hell do you think is going to pay. duh. the small business man. give us back a little more of what has already been taken?

Anon hmmm?

As a self-employed person you didn't have to pay EI.

In this plan you don't have to pay EI.

In this plan should you choose to pay EI you can. Like any other social safety net program you will pay into it, and if you have to take out of it you will get more then you likely put in. Assuming of course you haven't spent decades paying into it.

It is a social safety net that has not existing for self-employed people for far too long.

You should be happy that inclusion into the system is voluntary.