Saturday, March 31, 2012

A penny for your thoughts

The current government is a master at deflection and wedge politics. In this budget they are attacking retirement funding, destroying environmental protection regulations, cutting funding to the National Roundtable on the Environment and the Economy, stifling dissent by attacking environmental charities who have spoken out against their agenda, attacking the unemployed, increasing the unemployment rate in Canada by laying off thousands of workers, and making it harder for Canadian retailers to compete with the US.   The National Council of Welfare will have $1.1 million cut, which eliminates this valuable agency standing up for social assistance recipients.  There's nothing targeted for the many thousands unemployed in Canada's manufacturing sector.  Workers, employers' contributions to group sickness or accident insurance plans will need to be included in an employees' income in the year the contributions are made and not in some cases when the benefits are received. This is expected to generate another $100 million a year in revenue for the federal government and will mean higher taxes for workers.

All of these attacks on the social fabric of Canada and all the buzz in the mainstream media is about the loss of the penny, and how we as Canadians can spend more money in the US.

The mainstream media has also, at least in BC, not given much time to the opposition leader to express his views, I am not sure about the rest of Canada--we live in isolation in BC sometimes. More air and radio time and press, has been given to the Liberals than should be warranted for a third place party. The radio, TV and press in BC appear to fawning over the government and not asking tough questions.

I was wrong about the government linking eligibility to life expectancy in this current budget, but I still think they will try to implement this idea in an upcoming budget.

How sad, when the current government is slowly and systematically tearing down our social fabric, we are distracted by the pretty penny.

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