Tax and slash, Harper's hallmark
Recent federal funding cuts to a litany of social programs are just a sign of things to come.
Cutting funding for the national adult literacy program was justified by the Harper Conservatives as necessary to provide more services in the school system. If a student isn't fortunate enough to graduate high school, well – there's always the tar sands project in Alberta.
But getting one of those high-paying positions extracting oil from sand requires successfully completing relevant courses. If an applicant isn't proficient in knowing how to fill out an application or draft a resume, how then are they supposed to complete a course?
In Hants County adult literacy programs have been offered annually for many years in one form or another. But no more. Perhaps Harper's philosophy is that If you can't read or write, then you won't become a reporter and ask him a tough question in the Press Gallery.
The “cracks� youth have been falling through for generations has widened to a crevice. There is an enormous amount of potential being wasted because lack of proper training has disenfranchised countless youth and older Canadians with limited education.
One bitter irony is that seniors can attend university for free while young students have to get into debt up to their eyeballs to receive a degree with no guarantee of a job at the end. Recently the Province announced they would help such graduates with debt relief for a few months until a golden career lands in their lap.
Scrapping the national daycare project was another feather in the cap of our most Republican-like PM in history. A visit to the Windsor Nursery School will educate many skeptics of the necessity of such facilities, and how hard they must struggle to keep the doors open. In an age when it almost imperative that both parents work to keep the wolves from the door, subsidized daycare would create a lot of much-needed jobs for beginning teachers, and allow parents to pursue their jobs and contribute to the economy.
Local volunteer groups have taken a big hit as well after spending cuts left countless not-for-profit organizations without funding. Attacking volunteers strikes at the very backbone of society but the Harper Conservatives labeled these and other programs, “wasteful and ineffective.� Becky Mason summed up the situation when she told the Canadian Press, “Without volunteers, many services and programs simply would not be possible in our communities...The federal government should not take the commitment and contribution of volunteers for granted. With over $14 billion in services contributed annually by Canadian volunteers, there are too many financial reasons for the government to develop a federal investment strategy for volunteers.�
The Harper government has been accused of favouring big oil over the environment. Our PM is so frightened of what U.S. President Bush might think, he’s afraid to make a stand. Obviously Alberta stands to gain untold billions from the oil industry in that province, and trying to balance that economic engine with the need to sign on to the Kyoto Accord just isn’t possible under the current administration. It was only recently that George “Dubya� finally admitted that thousands of scientists around the globe were not all wrong with their ominous conclusions on the imminent effects of global warming. Now if Stephen Harper would just take a peek at what is happening in our not-so-frozen North, he might realize it is already too late to stop the effects of climate change, but not too late to implement policies that would at least slow the alarming rate at which this is happening.
What we have seen so far is a government hell-bent on cutting social programs so they can boast huge surpluses and keep pumping tax dollars into fruitless missions like Afghanistan where there will never be any victory, only more death and destruction.
