Last month's appointment of a blue-ribbon panel to study employment insurance reform was a rather transparent ploy by the Conservatives and (especially) the Liberals to get out of the corners they had backed themselves into, and avoid a summer election. Still, the committee - made up of three Conservative appointees and three Liberal ones - presents an opportunity for the parties to demonstrate that they are capable of working constructively on matters of public policy.
Alas, it appears that may be too much to hope for. For more than a month, the committee did not meet at all. Now that it has begun its deliberations, the parties have already begun to publicly accuse each other of sabotaging its efforts.
Michael Ignatieff, the Liberal Leader, helped poison the air late last week when he complained that "the government has taken five weeks to get its act together on this" and questioned whether the Conservatives "give any real importance to employment insurance reform."
Yesterday, Human Resources Minister Diane Finley - one of the committee's six members - made matters worse by emerging from a Conservative caucus meeting with a gratuitous and inaccurate attack on Mr. Ignatieff. "Mr. Ignatieff and the Liberal members have publicly stated they are not willing to move off their 360-hour entry point for employment insurance," Ms. Finley said, complaining that Mr. Ignatieff is living in "academic fantasyland."
It is not clear what Mr. Ignatieff's background in academia had to do with any of this, but the bigger problem is that Ms. Finley misrepresented his position. Only a few days ago, the Liberal Leader told a newspaper reporter that he was "prepared to put some water in my wine" on this issue, suggesting that while he wants a national standard for EI qualification, it need not be 360 hours worked.
Much worse has previously been said by both sides about each other. But the posturing is particularly disappointing in this context. If the panel were to return in the fall with serious proposals for reform, it would provide a rare example of the sort of co-operation required to make a minority parliament function. If it instead dissolves into acrimony, it will be yet another example of the dysfunctional character of the current Parliament, and the unwillingness of its members to put the country's interests ahead of their own partisan ones.
