Premier Darrell Dexter talks with reporters before the throne speech at the Nova Scotia legislature in Halifax on Tuesday, March 26, 2013.Andrew Vaughan/The Canadian Press
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Nova Scotia Premier Darrell Dexter is trying to be constructive with the Prime Minister, but Stephen Harper is making it very hard.
Short of calling the Prime Minister a liar, the Atlantic premier characterized Mr. Harper as "disingenuous" for advertising a new federal government program – the Canada Job Grant – on television, suggesting the provinces were all in favour of it.
"I'm trying to be as polite as possible," Premier Dexter told The Globe and Mail in an interview, "… they are advertising like it's a reality but none of the jurisdictions have agreed to implement it."
The Premier is conscious of maintaining a civil relationship with the Prime Minister. Last year, Mr. Dexter chaired the premiers' group – the Council of the Federation. He said the council worked hard to avoid situations "where we are constantly beating up on the Prime Minister." In fact, Mr. Harper avoids meeting with the premiers as a group. He has preferred one-on-one encounters with them.
According to Mr. Dexter, however, there have been few encounters or little consultation over the new Canada Job Grant program, a central plank of the 2013 budget.
"They essentially came to the provinces and said we want you to implement this and carry the administration of it. Well, we don't agree with your program," Mr. Dexter said. "Why would we agree to take on the administrative burden of implementing it?
"It's something we don't necessarily agree with, something you didn't consult us about. So that's a bit disingenuous …," he said.
The new program will try to better match workers to jobs by giving up to $15,000 for individual Canadians to get job training. The Harper government wants it in place by April 2014 but still needs to negotiate with the provinces.
Premier Dexter says provinces don't even know the structure of the program and believe that it may be aimed at larger companies and not at the small and medium enterprises, many of which are in the Atlantic region. The program would require an employer to put up $5,000 to train a worker, with the federal and provincial governments each committing $5,000.
"We believe that in the Atlantic, in particular, there will be a lot of companies who simply won't be able to qualify," he said.
Then there's the other issue of changes to the employment insurance system – again these changes were made without consultation.
This week, the Prime Minister dismissed Atlantic premiers' accusations that the federal government's new changes were directly targeting seasonal workers – a large number of whom work in the region.
"Let me be very clear in terms of any misinformation, there is nothing, absolutely nothing in our changes that targets seasonal industries or seasonal workers or requires anybody to leave their region to get a job," the Prime Minister said during a scrum with reporters following a funding announcement on Prince Edward Island.
Premier Dexter doesn't buy it – "I'm not going to waste my time disagreeing with him because that doesn't get us anywhere," he said.
Rather, he and his Atlantic colleagues are proceeding with a "pan-Atlantic review" of the issue "to understand the impact that these changes would have."
At their recent meeting, the four premiers called on the federal government to suspend its changes, arguing they targeted seasonal workers by requiring claimants to accept a job for which they are qualified within 100 kilometers of their home.
They argued that no research was done on how this would affect jobs and employers in the region, who depend on seasonal workers in the fish, forestry, agriculture and tourism industries. The premiers asked, too, that the federal government provide any data it has concerning this issue.
So far the federal government has not been forthcoming with any data.
Says Premier Dexter: "What do they have to lose unless they do fear what our work would do is underline the things that we have seen happening on the ground?"
Jane Taber is the Atlantic bureau chief.