The Ignatieff Liberals say they are making no headway with the Harper Conservatives in making changes to employment insurance after they met on the issue for nearly four hours yesterday.
Changing the insurance scheme, especially addressing regional fairness, is a centrepiece issue of Michael Ignatieff's leadership. He agreed last June to help Stephen Harper avoid a general election in return for the creation of a special bipartisan committee to study employment insurance changes.
Indeed, the fight over this issue could be the trigger for a fall election, because Mr. Ignatieff has the opportunity to put forward a no-confidence motion in late September if he is not happy with the working group's results.
And, according to the Liberals, after three meetings the Tories are still dragging their feet.
"They have to come with a position," Michael Savage, the lead Liberal on the committee, said yesterday. "They know our position, and they need to come with a position. And if it makes sense, then maybe we can talk about something."
"So far, they are having a lot of fun with numbers," he charged, referring to documents released by government officials that the Liberals say misrepresent their position.
The Liberals are asking for regional fairness in a changed EI program, one that would create a uniform national standard and lower the number of hours required to qualify. They would like to see Canadians qualify after 360 hours of work, which would cost federal coffers an additional $1.5-billion a year.
The Harper Conservatives have said they want to expand EI to the self-employed. Yesterday, government officials presented some very rough estimates of what it would cost for self-employed Canadians to qualify for maternal and parental benefits. The plan presented to the group was estimated to cost about $500-million, according to one of the meeting participants.
But benefits for the self-employed is not the hot button issue. Rather, it is regional fairness, the issue that precipitated the creation of the special working group.
Conservative MP Pierre Poilievre, who is part of the group, said yesterday that he thinks progress is being made and he's feeling "very optimistic."
The group has agreed to meet for an entire day next week, he said. The Liberals, however, said this was their suggestion.