Employment Insurance Canada - A Crown Corporation

The life insurance industry is filled with good people who believe in their work and their companies, but who may never have challenged the assumptions underlying their efforts. 
Andrew Tobias, The Invisible Bankers, Everything The Insurance Industry Never Wanted You To Know, p. 65

It all starts at the earliest school experience. The rights of private property and how capitalism is the most efficient system ever devised. You have get them young. You pretty much buy-in to all the propaganda, since you have nothing to compare it to, and any alternatives are certainly not allowed to be discussed. Soon you are out in the real world, and you start to notice things aren't quite right.

Adam Smith would approve, read the text...

For example, there are three burger joints in your "hood" and they are always empty most of the time. Think of that carbon foot print for a moment! You crawl on saturated freeways, full of empty cars, all really going no where in particular. You fly on business, and notice that there is a constant line of half or emptier jets all going to the same place. Now you start to wonder at the plain insanity of deregulation, and pondering back to 9/11 on and of the wisdom of deregulation, and the brilliance of "open skies" Great idea that was...

Soon the factory you work for is ripping the machines from the floor and shipping them to Mexico or China. Your worthless globalized ass is now unemployed. You have paid into employment insurance for years and now you have to apply for it! What the fuck kind of insult is that? The Oracle of Ottawa has a future solution for this. And it will no doubt happen when the NDP forms government. Or sooner than you think!

Soon to be just a bad memory.....

The solution is a Crown Corporation for Employment Insurance. From your first job, you are their most important client! All the money you pay for your employment insurance goes to Employment Insurance Canada. There mission is to protect you and help you to realize your maximum potential over the period of your working life. When you become unemployed, your first check will be in the mail automatically! No waiting period crap. You will also find information in the envelope of all the "out services" you can access right fuck'in NOW! Just like the pigs in suits! This will include several re-trainings over your working life...

Now, the mandate of Employment Insurance Canada is pretty wide open and the lads are ready to keep it wide open. For example due to such the large "group" of all the workers in Canada EIC will be able to offer insurance pretty cheap. Soon they will be offering full insurance packages and allied services.(i.e. estate planning..) For example you will be able to get life insurance, real cheap and very sweet. Of course the corporate pigs now selling insurance won't be nationalized, we the workers will enjoy watching them starve to death one by one!

Of course some of them will find little low profit niches that will allow them minimum wage. Capitalism in the clean up mode. Capitalism at the service of the people who created it and is supposed to serve. Now as time progresses, Workers Compensation and Canada Pension integrates into Employment Insurance Canada, with constitutional safeguards and protections. After-all the 19th century was two centuries ago....

Why Canadian Insurance Sucks!

But a thing cannot be its own symbol.
Karl Marx, A Contribution To The Critique Of Political Economy, p. 111

Most people hope that history in their lifetime will unfold in a gently upward linear line. There goes the Oracle of Ottawa confusing yesterday with today again. I was thinking of all the better things of yesterday and my mind crashed into insurance. Remember all the choice one had? Where oh where have all the Canadian insurance companies gone? Gone to corporate consolidation, every one...Many of the great and grand Canadian insurance companies of the past were set up explicitly to provide insurance at a reasonable rate for the "insureds" and the "annuitants", these companies were owned by their policy holders. Do you ever remember one of those grand old companies dragging or stiffing a payout? Thought so, neither do I...

What insurance should be...

Then around the 1980's it seemed that the snot nosed MBA geeks thought it would be a great idea to takeover by any means possible all these stiff competitors. And many started to vanish into the maws of the colossal corporate whores. If you want to follow along just go to Wikipedia and check out the List of Canadian insurance companies. Pretty interesting isn't it? If by chance you are an old school insurance nerd you will probably add the missing ones, I know the list is not complete and thanks in advance!

If you are the average-joe, anywhere in North America and especially in Canada you must have noticed the nasty turn of attitude and events with your corporate insurer. Upon reflection, I noticed a real change after 9/11, but the reason upon even more dangerous reflection had nothing really to do with it. This was also the time that the corporate colossal whores were just then discovering that selling insurance to asian barbarians, just out of their rice paddies is a very hard dollar indeed! Not to mention the the ever increasing grease required for the local party officials! But Canadian corporate insurance companies are a lot like American Republicans digging a hole, when it starts to fall in on you, you don't quit, you just go and get a bigger shovel!
Well guess what? You and I here in Canada are the shovels! Flattered? No?

Maritime Insurance -1786 -

In recent years this has caused a silent wall of horror stories in the large insured corporate groups here in Canada. It seems that the snot nosed geeks discovered that you could boost the bottom line by corrupting the people in the benefits office and splitting the huge difference with the guilty parties...Like when you take over from a competent insurer and then charge more for the life insurance and then lower the coverage without letting the insured know! If you not cheating your not trying, right? Then harass the life insurance holders with the smoking coverage, that they are paying a premium for, until they no longer respond and use that as the reason to charge more and lower the coverage again! (cover me...Lord) But the real gold is in the long term disability coverage! If you can get away without paying for the cancer types and the queers that go a downer because of terminal Aids you have a virtual gold mine! Especially if the group is over 10,000 members in size! The snot nosed geeks figured out a sure fire method here to.

N. Bowditch, The first American actuary...

What you do is simple and plain on the surface. You get all those worthless goners with cancer and Aids that are surely sandbagging the system and you require them to get their doctors and specialists to write up an essay on and about what was done on each visit! Of course the medical types have no time for this and when the required "essays" are not coming in you simply cut off the "insureds" pay and or benefits! Brilliant! They will usaully commit suicide all by themselves. Results? Bottom line fat as hell! Make sure all the "accomplices" get a free week end at that water front cottage! If you can corrupt the union garbage, bonus, let them have a taste to! LOL!! Too easy! (cover me...Lord)

But what is an honest man to do today? Well, the Oracle of Ottawa will not only bitch, but he will provide you with some good practical tips to survive the snake pit of corporate insurers. First thing, take only the absolute minimum from your employer. For decades this was the best deal for the average Canadian, but sadly this is no longer true. Do you have a father or mother, brother, sister or uncle, aunt that is a an Anglican Minister or an Ontario School teacher? Or is your spouse a federal or provincial civil servant? Investigate these insurance options. If you are not from this slice of the social strata fear not...

Investigate Fraternal Orders! They have excellent insurance! For example the Independent Order of Foresters! Another Fraternal order that I discovered and was really surprised by was the Knights of Columbus! They not only sell insurance but hold the highest A. M. Best rating, one of only two in all of Canada!! I always thought that they only held great fiddle contests and wicked bean suppers! It seems that the best insurance deals are discovered not marketed and sold!! Good luck and if you know of any other excellent deals in this mode pleases leave a comment!!

Who knew? The Knights are kicking insurance ass...way better than corporate insurance??

Dementia at Desjardins

But a waterfall cannot be created by capital out of itself.
Karl Marx, Das Kapital , Buch III, Chapter XXXVIII, Differential Rent: General Remarks, p. 646



As do many Canadians, I always look forward to the last Friday of the month, for the Report on Business magazine that is inserted  in the Globe & Mail newspaper. As the economy is coming back like a bandit, the good ole mag has begun to return to its former girth and pith. There is usually one great story that is read from front to back and read again later and enjoyed even more. This month was no exception, Quiet Revolution was a fascinating read. The design of the opening, with the picture of Monique Leroux, in her best Sunday muffin suit, posed as a worrying Joan of Arc, give me a warm fuzzy feeling all over... just like wetting my pants. The Fart Catcher communications type must have billed a fortune for this exemplary bit of propaganda!

Of course there was the sad part, the well written "box" on Alphonse Desjardins brought forth a tear, in that I have realized again how another great institution has failed me. And it will never return. There was much about the present managements awesomeness in its new acquisition of Western Financial out West. And its heroic rise from a near demise with the brush of  Asset Backed Commercial Paper. It is all so amazing, that this story was in the Globe & Mail Magazine, just now? Then I realized that the story was "planted" to help along a hostile takeover...engineered by a the best top flight Fart Catching firm money could buy.. And another tear as I realized that yet another institution, two in one day, has let me down.
 

I roll in my grave, tabernack!!

I had dealt with Desjardins for decades. Back in the old days, it was great! It was the place to go. It was tradition, it was justice, and above all it was value! The manager back then was a hell of a guy, tabber-wet! He knew his business, mode-zey! We talked stocks alot. He put together a small fortune, as have I, by making our own decisions. Great days.  But he retired, as he well deserved to. Then the marketing guys stepped in and dropped all the old Catholic names from the branch's. I felt at the time that this was a red flag, I was early and in the end, right again! My branch was the Ste-Genevieve, and I remember the first night in my own home that I got down on my knees to thank her for being able to own my own home, finally. The Caisse Populaire is not another bank...

Then the long slow downhill slide. At this time the quality of the management began to head south. The institution cut it ties with the past. The Death Wish marketing set in. I knew then that it was all down hill from here.  The final straw came at the time of my last mortgage renewal. I had a very reasonably priced mortgage insurance on the mortgage. I asked that that it remain on the remaining balance. At this time I was very near the end of the mortgage. But as I was paying the mortgage, I began to notice that the balance was not going down as fast as I expected... That was because the Haitian SLUT! princess slipped in a full life insurance policy and a disability policy! I was paying near $200.00 a month for insurance on a risk that I didn't have any more!  How perfidious is that? How scummy, how slimey, how low is that? It will never be forgiven!! 

Caisse-Populiare in Toronto, Ontario

At this time I began to notice certain ethnic types (Jamicans, Haitians) not resident of my "Hood" in the branch with freaking fist fulls of large denomination, but dirty cash, I am talking well in excess of, or very nearly, in the
ball park of ten grand...This raised not a flutter from the Haitian princess....The same loud skanky bitch's with amounts of money in hand that made no sense at all. And the guy from the armoured courier, walking in with that puzzled look, as he drops off another Bank of Canada wrapped (new bills) brick of 50's! ($250,000) Yes someone should know about this... CSIS was informed from a public payphone....(Yes, justice is very cheap.. you just gotta know how...)

Well it was at this time that I decided for my own personal safety, reputation and good name to terminate my relationship with this once fine institution by paying off the mortgage, never to return. To all you poor suckers that are being finely and properly served by Western Financial I wish you all the best. You are, if this hostile takeover goes through, in for an awakening most rude... But, as in most tragedies, this one too has a silver lining, You see the Caisse offered $4.40 a share for Western Financial, I bought a shit load of the stock years ago at a $1.00! And the branch has a new manager! I got a nice letter from him recently, hoping that we could "talk" sometime, signed; Ramjam Mohammed bin Shazaar...    Selah....