A few years back I attended a Maritime Print
Journalism program. I applied for an internship with CBC Radio and was given
the privilege of working alongside its broadcast reporters for the duration.
Shortly into that experience, I started to realize how little reporters really
know about things in our governments, at almost every level. I became so
disenchanted and disillusioned about the subject I swore I would never work in
that style of journalism again. True to my vow, I have kept as far away from political
commentary as is possible.
But every once in a while I just hafta take off my
self-righteous hat and get my hands dirty. This is one of those times.
Everyone has, no doubt, been reading or hearing
all about how the Canadian government is planning to axe an old Canadian social
programs standby – the old age pension, which has been given to anybody once
they reach the age of qualification, whether they have earned wages in their
lifetime or not. The powers that be have softened the blow by suggesting that
only those who will retire in 15 to 20 years will be affected. Apparently, the
researched projections predict the fund will be bankrupt at that time.
It’s a bloody shame, but not surprising at all.
Anyone with an ear to the ground has seen this one
coming for some time. Stephen Harper’s government has been chafing at the bit
to reduce outgoing monies such as the billions this pension represents, since
they became a majority government in our last federal election. Knowing its
tireless obsession with cutbacks to social programming in general, this has
been just one more in a long list of major changes in anything that even
slightly reeks of Trudeaumania.
As if that weren’t enough, I noticed over the last
few days something that honestly made both my eyebrows and blood pressure rise.
GM in Canada, which received a gargantuan bailout
of billions of our tax dollars just a couple of years ago, announced it had its
best year of profit ever in 2011. They are, by their own count, roughly ahead a
few billion more than what Stephen Harper’s Conservatives gave them. And they
even had the audacity to publicize it, as if to rub in that the monies they
received from us were without so much as an interest payment expected in
return.
Does anyone else besides me see the idiotic
hypocrisy of this situation?
Here, on the one hand, we have a government which
seeks applause for its hard line approach to cutbacks in spending, aggressively
and with no thought to those who have come to depend on social programs, making
cutbacks in those selfsame programs. Then they turn around and give, not lend,
but give a major corporation which isn’t even owned by Canadians, billions of
our tax dollars so as to keep open its assembly plants in central Ontario where
thousands of Canadians were employed. To boot, the one thing Stephen Harper did
get out of the deal was a load of GM stock, which, reportedly isn’t even worth
the paper upon which it is written. And I am pretty certain the workers didn’t
see any life changing raises in the last year, despite the red letter year GM
has had.
Essentially, the Canadian people have, once more,
come up empty handed. On both counts.
Seems to me this government operates as the
antithesis of Robin Hood, robbing the poor to pay the rich.
I haven’t seen too many reporters writing about
this over the last few days and I really wonder why either they have missed it
or don’t consider it important enough, if they did see it.
This is what I meant by the press not having any
real clout in our society.
Besides, we are all so busy just trying to stay
afloat, we don’t have the time to read this stuff, anyway. So I guess it’s a
losing battle.
Too bad. But maybe there’s more than one way to
skin a rabbit.
I wonder if I were to start a business,
incorporate and hire a whole lot of workers, I could ask Stephen Harper to give
me a big chunk of cash to pay them?
It’s worth a try.
Better still - why don’t we hire GM’s CEO to run
the country?
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