Gov’t words, deeds at odds
A recent study by the Europe-based International Trade Union Confederation found that next to Brazilians, Canadians are the most optimistic about their national economy.
About 61 per cent of Canadians who responded to the group’s survey believed their country was moving in the right direction. But even though Canadians are optimistic about their own well-being, they aren’t so confident about the welfare of their children, with 77 per cent suggesting things would get worse. Canadians also aren’t particularly confident that the government is acting wisely. Although Ottawa has preached austerity, a healthy majority of Canadians haven’t bought the argument. Only 11 per cent agree that paying down debt, lowering wages and cutting public spending will save the country, while 52 per cent want governments to invest in job creation and support decent wages to increase its revenues and then pay off debts.
Considering the overall pessimistic tone of this study, one might suspect Prime Minister Stephen Harper would be ready to shake things up to instil greater confidence. Instead he told a Calgary radio station late last week that the minor shift of cabinet responsibilities he engineered last week to adjust to Bev Oda’s untimely exit was all the country could expect for at least the rest of this year.
Although Mr. Harper had considered proroguing Parliament and establishing a new agenda, he felt things were ticking along about as he had hoped. This view was strengthened, one suspects, by Statistics Canada figures on job creation released Friday that indicated not much had happened.
Although the private sector was cutting jobs, it’s likely because the construction season had begun earlier than usual due to unseasonably warm temperatures in winter and spring and had now caught up. The public sectors, however, temporarily expanded by nearly 40,000 jobs, shared almost equally between the health and education sectors.
Similarly anemic jobs numbers in the United States were greeted by pundits writing President Barack Obama’s political obituary.
In spite of recent polls indicating the NDP is on the rise, and an editorial in the conservative British weekly The Economist criticizing Mr. Harper’s government for being undemocratic and distant from the electorate, he seems justified in his confidence that a course change is unneeded.
But it’s difficult to reconcile his confidence with the government’s deeds. Thousands of public sector employees have been either dumped or warned they are about to go, yet last week — as Globe and Mail columnist Jeffry Simpson pointed out — federal cabinet ministers fanned out across the land — from La Tuque, Que., to Kenaston, Sask., to Abram Village, P.E.I. — to hand out money.
Perhaps it is the discrepancy between the message about tough times and ministers traversing the country handing out money like lottery winners that has Canadians convinced of their own security but concerned about their children’s future.
The next generation doesn’t yet have a say. The editorials that appear in this space represent the opinion of The StarPhoenix. They are unsigned because they do not necessarily represent the personal views of the writers. The positions taken in the editorials are arrived at through discussion among the members of the newspaper’s editorial board, which operates independently from the news departments of the paper.