EI update

Last week, news that a think tank deemed Employment Insurance biased against women, and now, Toronto Mayor David Miller has a bone to pick with the program.

The rules are overly harsh against Toronto, the mayor says.

36 per cent of unemployed Montrealers qualify for EI, whereas only 22 per cent of unemployed Torontonians do, the mayor claims. Since those people are generally pushed on to welfare -- a program the city pays a part of -- it's not hard to see why Miller's complaining here. It goes with his long-standing beef that Canadian cities are paying more than their fair share of society's infrastructure.

An interesting story, but I wish the mayor -- or perhaps, more accurately, the story in the paper -- listed a few more specifics about how and why, exactly, the rules are unfair to Toronto, according to him. That more unemployed people in Calgary (there's an oxymoron) get EI than do in Toronto is largely irrelevant. I want to know the reasons for it, if there are any.

Maybe I'll see what else I can find on Miller's views on the Internets.