Cuts for cash: it can only spur mangers to propose even deeper cuts. Only a nasty neoliberal would use the profit motive to conduct what is supposed to be a rational, considered appraisal of departmental services and staffing needs in the Public Service. And how much is the per diem fee for the consulting firm? $90,000, as I recall. Think about how smugly hypocrtical this exercise really is too: who cut the GST by 2%, obviating a simple source of tax revenue, who blew the Liberal surplus, and who ran up the PS by 33,000 employees and wages by $5 billion since 2006?
So now that we know who's really responsible for this mess and who's going to pay for it - us - consider the real, economic context for the cuts for cash program: the fact, for instance, that even many neoclassical economists are now saying - with the EU on the brink of disaster and the world economy slipping - that this is not the moment for austerity measures but for initiating reasonable stimulus combined with moderate debt reduction. And, finally, ask yourself who benefits from a program that reduces the federal deficit? Certainly not ordinary Canadians, several thousands of whom will now be added to the ranks of the unemployed, and certainly not the general, industrial economy, which really requires job initiating strategies from government. That's right - only the financial sector with whom the Harper Regime, like the Obama and Cameron administrations, is in bed ideologically.
We can look forward, it would seem, to prolonging the recession in which we are still enmeshed despite the spin out there that we're not, and if the Canadian housing market explodes, as some outside Canada are predicting for 2012, we may have much more than a recession.
Yes, it might be the end of the world in 2012.
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