Carol's Posts

We hear much about what hindrance regulations can be these days.  How less regulation will help our economic engine roar to life and spread wealth throughout the land.   If you allow yourself to be swept up in the message it can feel as if you are listening to a sermon based on the story of Davey and Goliath. Upon closer inspection, you can see that the roles have been reversed and there is much of an advertiser’s edge to the claim that cutting red tape is the cure for our economic problems.

The Harper government’s budget and the fallout from it will be felt for quite some time as job losses become reality.  That new reality will be highlighted by the decreasing ability of our public servants to do the work we count on and will show up in ways people don’t consider when everything is still theoretical.

The brouhaha that flowed from the Auditor General’s report on April 3^rd can be called appropriate when one considers the history of this issue.  The out-of-whack estimates for the costing of these fighter jets and the concentrated effort on the part of the, then minority, Conservative government to hide all information about the purchase from a parliamentary committee were among the reasons that the government was, historically, found in contempt of Parliament.

Two weeks ago the Canadian Food Inspection Agency (CFIA) was in the news for doing its job – warning Canadians about a recall on frozen ground beef products from a plant that produced approximately 40 percent of all those products in Canada.  The beef was spread all over the country due to a production model that sees fewer producers who service ever larger portions of the national market.  Lucky for Canadians, we had a strong public health policy being enforced by a well-funded agency that was doing its best to warn consumers about the problem.

When the Conservatives mounted a campaign to get their majority government they certainly didn’t run on attacking pensions and crippling health care.   It was less than a year ago and much has changed in the Conservative’s perception of how well Canada is doing.

If you recall, New Democrats said we wanted to fix Old Age Security to address senior’s poverty.  Stephen Harper did not counter with plans to increase the age of eligibility or hobble services and transfer payments that support most of the social safety net many seniors rely on.