The latest round of cuts to the Canadian federal public service, including two senior managers at the National Gallery of Canada, are increasingly random and verging on the totally pointless.
With an enormous deficit to tackle, trimming jobs from all those sectors that conservatives (big "C" and small) distrust most (i.e. arts and culture, environmental policy, policy in general) seems like a total dog and pony show, and pretty far from a real and sustainable solution.
After cutting a major revenue source (the GST) and reducing corporate tax rates, both in the name of economic prosperity (and both being widely viewed as bad economic policy by REAL economists), Harper, Clement, Flaherty and co. have perhaps come to realize that it was not the best move to so boldly knee-cap the Federal Treasury for the sake of some pre-majority photo ops.
Canada, like all middle powers, needs to do better than just get by. We need to find a niche, to mark ourselves off from other middling Western nations, to aim to be innovative like Germany but with our own unique cultural quirks like Australia or New Zealand. Instead we're trying to emulate Britain, with their "austerity measures," and almost Thatcheresque contempt for public service and true commonwealth.
And although we were once firmly identified as the "good colony," the ever-reasonable Dominion of Canada, we attained our independent stature by staking out territory outside of conservative thought and beyond our colonial beginnings, to become an inclusive and diverse nation where difference was a catalyst for growth, and the public good meant something designed for the benefit of all citizens, not just those in Conservative ridings.
I think it is a sign of the times that Canada Post
locks out its employees, and the tone of political commentary and media coverage would have us believe it was the postal workers who had decided to single-handedly ruin our economic recovery. The public seems relatively indifferent, and as usual the Conservatives are more than happy to further debase an inconvenient piece of the democratic puzzle (still so puzzling to them, after all these years), by eroding the role of organized labour and collective bargaining within the public (and private) sectors.
So, where does all this leave us? With a need for patience and perseverance to start. We must fix our thoughts and sights on a better destination than this government intends for Canada. We must survive the next four years with our ideals intact. We must seek out non-partisan perspectives to cut through the pointless (and ultimately destructive) rhetoric that is chipping away at our public sector institutions, at our means of exercising our rights as citizens and workers and at our very idea of Canada as a country that creates something greater than the sum of is diverse (and sometimes almost incompatible) parts.
We must in short demand better next election. And between now and then, resist the temptation to surrender to bullying by narrow-minded partisans (from all parties), or worse than this, to surrender to apathy, because increasingly our progressive values are not the values of the day.
As a public servant, I have to believe in the possibility of a better Canada than the one in which I currently live.
