The Recession Lottery and the E.I. Nightmare

Holy Garden Gnome....where's a watering can when you need one? I see that our incompetent Finance Minister Little Jimbo Flaherty says the dismal economic news doesn't surprise him.

"This is to be expected as we go through the depth of the recession. But we've been through this before in Canada ... we know we will come out of this...This is a difficult time, it's going to be a difficult time this year. We anticipated that..."

When in fact Stephen Harper and his Con klowns didn't see it coming. Have no idea how bad it could get, or how long it could last. And because they're jungle neocons don't care how much pain it could cause. Even if that pain gets really bad.

The recession of the 1980s, for instance, began in July 1981. But the unemployment rate didn't reach its 13 per cent peak for another 18 months.

In the Great Depression, Canada's jobless rate didn't peak at 20 per cent until 1932, four years after the crisis began.

Which means that we could be facing years of mass unemployment and misery in a country without a proper safety net. Where so many Canadians are already so desperate they're hoping that a lottery ticket will save them.

With jobs continuing to dwindle, experts say lotteries, sweepstakes and other games of chance will cross the threshold from casual entertainment to last resort as more Canadians like Gonzalez desperately seek economic salvation.

How this could happen in my beautiful country I'll leave for another day. All I know is that the first priority for any Canadian government is to ensure the survival and the dignity of suffering Canadians. And right now that means overhauling our rotten E.I. system that condemns Canadians to poverty and humiliation.

Which is why I'm so happy to see the NDP propose this.

"Statistics show roughly 60 or 70 per cent of people who don't have a job aren't eligible in the system as it currently stands. That's a huge amount of people.

"If anything, we should be making it easier for people to qualify. We've paid billions into this fund [and] at the same time the government has made it harder for people to collect the benefits they've paid into."

And I only hope the Liberals will support this measure because if they don't they will wear this shame FOREVER. They helped create this E.I. nightmare so they have a moral responsibility to help put it back together.

And as for the Cons...if their foul alien ideology prevents them from doing the right and Canadian thing...then just bite the bullet and bring them down. And let Canadians decide who wants to protect them and who doesn't.

Who wants to turn Canada into a neocon jungle and who doesn't. At a time when unemployment and the E.I. nightmare could happen to ANYONE.

We're going into a dark tunnel and nobody knows how dark or how long it will be. But for me the proverbial light in that tunnel remains the same: a better, more human Canada with no time for Cons and their cruel, rabidly ideological policies.

Now more than ever.

Defeat them, crush them, finish them off...