Who's in charge here?

>> Think Quebec's emergency wards are a mess? Just go down to your local employment centre

by PHILIP PREVILLE

At least a dozen times in the last year, Denis Langevin has accompanied someone down to a Centre Local d'Emploi (CLE), Quebec's all-in-one drop-in centres for welfare recipients, unemployed workers, and anyone else looking for either a job, government money or both.

Each case was the same: the person had decided to go back to school and was being kicked off welfare because full-time students are not eligible for the dole. Langevin would ask about job-training grants or bursaries; the welfare agent would reply that those programs are run by Emploi Québec--a separate government department, but located in the same CLE. Right across the room.

Each time, Langevin requested a referral to an Emploi Québec agent. Each time, he says, the request was refused. He had to file official complaints and wait for months before getting a second meeting with a different person at the same CLE.

"Later, I found out it was part of the deal when they merged welfare and Emploi Québec," explains Langevin, a welfare-rights advocate in Pointe-St-Charles. "The Emploi Québec people don't have to accept any welfare referrals before April 1, 1999."

Bureaucratic nightmare

This tale of bureaucratic ineptitude is only one of the many and varied nightmares currently emanating out of the province's CLEs. In Montreal, all the CLEs are in "temporary" locations, many in a ramshackle state of affairs. Welfare agents, with an average caseload of 450 people each, have become impossible to reach, and welfare recipients are increasingly frustrated. On welfare-cheque day, the first of every month, many CLEs hire additional security because the tension runs so high.

Meanwhile, the Emploi Québec staffers, unaccustomed to having welfare's hard-luck cases hanging around their offices, are claiming that their clients--who they view as a higher caste of the unemployed--don't want to come in to the CLEs. The welfare and Emploi Québec people are mutually distrustful of one another, despite the fact they're supposed to work together.

The response from the ministers responsible for the CLEs, André Boisclair on the welfare side and Diane Lemieux on the employment side, has been to clamp down on people talking to the media. "I'm sorry, you're going to have to call the minister's office first," Roch Corriveau, spokesperson for Montreal's regional welfare office, told the Mirror when asked to comment on the situation. "You understand, I'm just doing what I've been told."

Merger gone wrong

The situation is even worse when you consider that the CLEs were supposed to be a jewel in the Parti Québécois' crown of winning conditions. Emploi Québec was created less than two years ago when, after 30 years of high-level negotiations, Ottawa finally agreed to transfer all powers over employment training to Quebec City. The feds even transferred a bunch of its Quebec-based UI civil servants to the province.

It was Quebec's big idea to merge its employment and welfare departments under one roof. The idea: make it easier for welfare people to find jobs.

Langevin says he always supported the idea of the merger, but that the system has fallen apart. "This is a major embarrassment for Quebec," he says. "We finally manage to get some real powers from Ottawa, then we drop the ball. It's a total fiasco."

According to a recent La Presse story, pressure from both unions and employers has convinced the government to keep the two departments separate, even though they are in the same offices. Strangely, while both departments fall under the same ministry, that one ministry now has two cabinet ministers--Boisclair and Lemieux.

Problem? What problem?

It all makes perfect sense, says Nicolas Girard, Boisclair's press attaché. "Why not have two ministers? This is the government's way of saying that both employment and welfare are priorities."

Girard denies that employment agents are refusing welfare referrals and says the media is exaggerating the situation, though he admits that it has been a difficult year. "You have to remember that what's happening now is the culmination of 30 years of negotiations. There are going to be snags along the way as we implement the merger. We're still figuring out what works best."

But when you spend 30 years negotiating something, you'd think you'd have some idea of what's going to work and what's not.