Inflation | Page 3 | General financial discussion | Discussion forum

Loonie said
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The rules say that you may qualify if "you have not turned down reasonable work during the 2-week period you’re applying for" (among many other criteria). This alone would disqualify anyone who was not willing to continue working at the lumber mill, and, thus, the complaint from the employer was not currently valid. 

I suspect Saver-Mom is not being given the full story.

Some of the mill's employees may not have returned. But, the mill is running at a reduced capacity with those who did return.

I suspect the mill has sold her siding to someone else who offered to pay the current price that's 3X or 4X the price at the time she place her order last year.

I hope you are happy with your augmentation, but it doesn't really have much to say about the issues at the mill, where the employer seems to be giving out excuses that are at best questionable. As far as we know, he didn't mention CRB, and that is the reason I didn't either until you experienced a need for augmentation.

In any event, there is more to the mill story than we have heard. At a minimum, we would need to talk to the workers to get a balanced view.

The fact that people have to be looking for work to get CRB is not relevant. If they have to do this to get CRB, and they are not working where employment is offered, then I have to conclude they are not getting CRB, so its existence is irrelevant. I think it's quite likely that some of them moved on, got a better or less onerous/dangerous job, went back to school, etc., but the employer continues to blame long-gone CERB.
CRB is a red herring in this discussion, and I should probably have just said so when you brought it up.

Loonie, it's your speculations about what the mill workers may have moved on to, that work may be seasonal, that the employer's "excuses" are "questionable", etc, etc, as well as that you personally know people who got CERB but not CRB (without indicating it's because they're not interested in working) that are the red herrings and irrelevancies here. But I actually don't mind at all, conversations expand, morph, etc, that's what's cool about dialogue, I'm happy to educate about temporary expanded EI due to virus that people transitioned to after CERB, etc, if I feel it's part of the overall picture. Plus your usual attempts to restrict what is and what isn't on topic are always entertaining, you rarely disappoint!

Loonie said
Nobody was asking for your "education" about CRB actually. It's just clutter. Anyone who wanted to know could have looked it up. It's not hard to find or hard to understand.

Looking for alternative explanations is a good thing. Always consider the source.
It doesn't matter why people don't get CRB. There are various reasons.

You rarely disappoint in your eagerness to twist conversations off-topic in order to promote your usual agendas. Nobody is obliged to entertain them or respond. If you want to "educate" the thin air, it may be an odd way to spend one's time, but it's up to you and the moderator.  

Loonie - this is not Russia, China or Turkey - we have free speech - not sure why you are so intolerant of Bill's comments. I found Bill's point of view reasonable and valid. I was not all that familiar with the CERB and CRB which seem to have been created overly complicated - so this gives me some info bearing in mind that some of what is in this blog (even your comments) may or may not be fully accurate.

Loonie said

We have covered the various possibilities underlying the lumber mill's comments about supply. If someone wants to discuss qualifications for CRB, they are free to start a new thread in which to do so.

There are lots of fascinating facts to be learned out there, but they don't all belong here.  

Of interest to some, perhaps related to your and others' references above to the lumber mills' comments about supply......The National Post has an article today (May 27) re the "Feds' $240M Mistake" ... "Ineligible Canadians will be allowed to keep CERB". So it is not a stretch that maybe the mill employees (and others) did not want to return to work because of the generous govt benefits which they will not have to repay even if they were ineligible. This will have an effect on inflation - which is the actual topic of this thread.

Interesting. In the same NP article is reported, “The generosity of CERB has already come under scrutiny with Statistics Canada revealing that Canadians experienced ‘extraordinary changes in their economic well-being’ during the pandemic as they gained thousands of dollars more from COVID-19 support payments than they lost in wages. During one three month period last year, young and middle-aged households generally gained around $3,000 more through support measures, particularly CERB, than they lost in earnings. At the same time, middle-income earners in the second-lowest quintile earned additional income at roughly $2,500.”

This and other inappropriate govt giveaways and spending will drive debt for tax-paying Canadians, and along with inflation will impoverish us.

As for the mill, they seem to have the manpower back now, but are also having wood supply problems. But Savesmore may be onto something about delivering to higher paying customers first...

Loonie said
I don't follow the argument that someone getting 2000/month from CERB is somehow getting more than if they'd worked. 2000/month is about 500/week, which is about 12.50/hour for a 40 hour week. That is significantly less than the minimum wage in Ontario.

I think that a better perspective is a 35-hour work-week, which equates to $14.28 / hour.

A minimum wage of $15 / hour means a 33.3 hour work week; a perfectly reasonable expectation.

Loonie said
I think a more accurate retrospective measure would be earnings from employment 2019 vs 2020-including-CERB or something along those lines.
I have no idea what that comparison might reveal. But what we do know is that the government had to make a decision in a hurry as a lot of people were going under fast. In retrospect, I imagine they might have done it somewhat differently, but it did keep us from going under more broadly, which would have had a cascading effect throughout the economy. If you let people just sink into a hole, they are going to cost the taxpayer in several other ways.

I can understand how quickly the government felt it needed to act. Unfortunately, the broad nature of the benefit took no account of need or financial position. While not an extravagant amount of money, it still rewarded those who were not as fiscally minded, saved, conservative, and prudent enough to live within their means.

Should someone who scrimps and saves for a rainy day be taxed to help someone who consistently spends every last dime of his paycheque?

How many live-at-home tweens and young adults took advantage of the expansive rules? Of course, there were many, many others for whom the money was an essential life-line and served the purpose for which it was intended. I doubt that there will ever be a complete reporting on how much was lost to fraud, dead relatives, incarcerated convicts, and others.

Loonie said
I don't follow the argument that someone getting 2000/month from CERB is somehow getting more than if they'd worked. 2000/month is about 500/week, which is about 12.50/hour for a 40 hour week. That is significantly less than the minimum wage in Ontario.
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It is not as simple as that.

The numbers mentioned by the National Post article are from March 2021 Statistics Canada release Household economic well-being during the COVID-19 pandemic, …, first quarter to third quarter of 2020.

The $3,000 and $2,500 statistics for second quarter of 2020 are household advantage amounts, not individual advantage amounts.

It is quite possible for the parents of the household to be still working from home fully and for a few of their children to be ahead from the CERB.

The children didn't earn as much as the CERB in 2020 before they were laid off. However, the children still qualified for the CERB as they each earned more than $5,000 in 2019.

Such a household would easily be thousands of dollars ahead from the CERB in Q2 2020. But, not unjustly so.