The Dominion budget tabled this week (or “federal” as we now say, in emulation of the Americans) was full of restraint. We have been assured of this by every media source I’ve seen, and the notion gains additional plausibility from the mild endorsements of the Canadian Taxpayers Federation and other worthy, fairly independent monitors. “Baby steps in the right direction” was the message from another policy think tank, that focuses on family issues.
And that’s all very sweet. The ostentatious freezing of the salaries of prime minister, cabinet, members of House and Senate, will of course save very little money, in proportion to the whole. It is thus a gesture, a trick. Yet it sets the politically necessary example for what truly needs to be done: capping salaries throughout the public sector.
Which in turn is a gesture, a trick — a cover for the greater task of “downsizing” the whole cumbersome apparatus. Mechanisms are being put in place, to create civil service options: “Cut this, or cut that, your choice.” The government is approaching this as timidly as possible, for it is up against monopoly unions that can really ruin a politician’s day.
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“But through that “public service” came the self-serving blindness and arrogance of India’s “ruling caste.” These were people who did not have to stoop to pleasing the labouring masses, in the way capitalists must”
David Warren’s knowledge of India and Pakistan is enormous and in this and other articles he shows the “caste” system as being a slippery slope the elitist Liberals and Dems would take us down if we stop paying attention.
He actually grew up in Pakistan, I think, and it’s almost as if he grew up at the knee of Rudyard Kipling. Since he’s self educated with real world experience, he hasn’t suffered from going to Journalism School and being brainwashed into utopia.
In short he’s similar to another Canadian who’s also tremendously knowledgeable about current world affairs, Mark Steyn. Steyn also avoided the brainwashing of our Universites. These guys actually have worldly personal experience, very unusual in the MSM. Steyn has been warning that once Obamalinsky takes over the economy the statism can never get dislodged, which dovetails with David Warren’s warning of “My impression is that the Harper government is trying, against the odds, to make beginnings….the opposition does not come only from Parliament, but from massed vested interests which have themselves had generations to assemble.”
Steyn: “Once the state swells to a certain size, the people available to fill the ever-expanding number of government jobs will be statists – sometimes hard-core Marxist statists, sometimes social-engineering multiculti statists, sometimes fluffily “compassionate” statists, but always statists. The short history of the post-war welfare state is that you don’t need a president-for-life if you’ve got a bureaucracy-for-life.”
Ok, let’s cut the public service, but in a way that makes economic sense. Massive layoffs, or cuts to a pension scheme that many counted on for their lielihood after they retired, is not a solution. Changing the hiring process to eliminate the generous pensions is far more sensible.
But, let us also be very clear — if you cut public service pensions, than the extremely generous (far more generous than any other pension in Canada) of the MPs must also be cut. What is good for the goose is good for the gander.
Good points. Let’s agree what the MPs compensation package is actuarially costed out at. If that number is say $225,000, then let’s pay them say $200,000 all-in and then let them choose from a menu how they want to receive that in terms of salary and/or benefits.
Agree “massive …cuts… is not a solution” to civil service, let’s just whittle it back instead of growing it. While we’re at it let’s define conservatism as to how big should government be. How much of the GDP should the government be involved in? It’s about 40% aggregate now at all 3 levels. Let’s suggest it should only be 33% plus whatever we want to spend on military/nation building .. 3%?
Then let’s start talking about how that 33% should be split up among the 3 levels. For example Duceppe once said in a debate that “Ottawa has 10,000 people in Health Care who never see a patient”. Let’s move those jobs to the provinces and let them figure out what resources they need for what.
Lets do to MPs as Mikey did to his MPPs here in Ontario.,. Replace their gold plated pensions with RRSPs
As for federal civil servants, do what the socialist Billy Bob Rae did here in Ontario, force them to take unpaid days off (12 per year) for the next three years or so.
And for Gods sake, reveiw the federal transfer payment system.
David Warren is a person who never fails to impress me; his integrity, literary skills and moral consistency are character traits almost unknown in Canadian journalists. David Warren was one of the few people in published media that was courageous enough to name ‘Unca Mo” and his pals in the Liberano party in the ‘oil for $$’ set-up that the UN/Marice Stlong/liberanos/france/russia – Judy McCloud, Stockwell Day and Ezra (Western Standard) also spoke up- when Dubya /Tony Blair /Mr. Howard and some other just nations who were out of the $$ loop crashed their little $$ laundering ‘business’ by invading Iraq. The coalition of the willing invaded on behalf of the Iraqui people who were being starved and tortured by the thug, Saddam, the UN was supposed to be trading food and medicine for oil.
I agree with your talking points Nomdeblog.
UV if the transfer payments were stopped Quebec and mini Quebec (the Yukon) would collapse – it would be a good thing, IMO, since they both refuse to even try to support themselves. The Yukon is hoarding mega minerals that could support the territory in luxury, yet the Dipper lite gument here is up to their eyeballs in hoc to environmental wackos and demanding North American (Alaska/B.C./Alberta/Yukon) Indian people who ‘claim’ all the land in this territory and have blocked all mining and development (even farming and fishing). Nothing is produced here, the territory is totally dependant on money from Southern taxpayers. The gument pays all it’s employees min of $ 24.00 per hour (dishwasher) plus perks – BIG perks – all on your dime. People down south should be squawking…the Prime Minister has already warned the territory gument that the ‘party’ is going to end and to get off their lazy behinds and get to work producing ….our brain dead dipper Premier and the Fed M.P. just ‘party on’ like their is no end in sight. This will continue unless people start squawking. For the first time in our history, Canada has a Prime Minister who listens, the time is now.