Need the heavy lifting workers

We're committing social suicide in this country. High tuition rates are the weapon of choice.

What are community college, tech school and medical and engineering grads doing carrying such high debt?

These types of skilled folk are among those most needed for our society and economy. They also establish themselves and their families in communities throughout the country.

But many are encumbered with student loan debts for years - if not decades - after graduation.

While paying off their student debt, these people aren't having kids, aren’t buying homes and all the domestic accoutrements and aren’t buying higher scale vehicles.

In other words, paying debt caused by higher than necessary tuition rates is keeping a whole population from fully participating in society. Some specialized students often have to work in other fields as they wait to get into medical or engineering courses, or to support themselves even while in school.

Tuition fees and student debt cause us to be more dependent on immigration for population growth, and they hobble our local economies.

There has to be a way to free these ambitious young people from the socio-economic and even biological shackles of academic debt.

Reduced or waived tuition rates geared to the long-term are key to a sustainable future.

Economic suicide

We're experiencing the wages of long-term economic suicide and genocide, as well.

Remember the old song and dance about the “rust belt” economy?

This lie was precipitated for the past three decades, devastating whole cities and towns, by all manner of folks for various reasons. Apparently, we were supposed to be running around fixing each other's computers.

Then came NAFTA. Now we're looking down the barrel of Kyoto.

The latest “rust belt” victim locally is Trenton, where a 135-year-old steel working industry has been pronounced dead - again. The jobs are off to Mexico.

It is part of a pattern. We've seen in recent months announcements of the closures of the Maple Leaf poultry processing plant at Canard and of the Dartmouth Moirs chocolate plant.

It is the self-fulfilling prophecy of the “post-industrial era” for North America.

My take of this - particularly the “rust belt” aspect - is it has all been academic racism; not just snobbery against heavy industry and the work that keeps it going, but racism.

Apparently, North Americans were too good in this “post-industrial era” to have to work in heavy industry. Lord forbid.

The big irony is it merely falls into the laps of the corporate greedy looking for a means and cover to justify hauling arse off-shore, where labour is cheaper and environmental regulations span from lax to non-existent.

Remember the Kyoto Accord? It plays into somebody's hands - and not necessarily the environmentalists'.

Our federal and provincial public sector unions have a major role to play in helping bring back socio-economic equilibrium. Private sector organized labour is too weak and too vulnerable to market conditions - real and imposed. Organized public sector employees have to put a moratorium on their demands for wage and benefit hikes for themselves, and focus on strengthening private sector organized labour.

With responsible industry and commerce and government, the public sector unions have to help create a society that's more self-reliant and economically sustainable.

Without the heavier private sector - the steel workers, poultry processors and chocolatiers - the public sector and the rest of us aren't sustainable.