Oh Canada (what next?)

Despite the sadness of the spectacle the political arena has presented in the last while here in Canada (i.e cracked out buffoons running the show, espionage scandals, fiscal snafu's, not to mention the continual funnelling of our ecological wealth at bargain basement prices), I am shocked and disgusted by the news this week of mass cuts and layoffs in our rapidly dwindling public sector, specifically the termination over the next two years of thousands of postal workers, ostensibly due to the "obsolescence" of paper mail and the alleged decrease in revenues. (Though of course the crown corporation's executives get to stick around and collect three figure incomes). 

College instructors who teach technical English to recent immigrants were also delivered a fatal blow this week because the Federal government deems that private and non-profit agencies will do a better (aka less expensive, but at what cost?) job at helping newcomers assimilate to our proud multicultural (equal opportunity?) society. Our immigration policies have always been a bit dubious, but come on! Are we really going to be taking this many steps back? 

It seems that every where you turn Unions are being busted with little support from the public as it seems most people fail to see the bigger picture: that unions protect the rights of workers and strive to maintain a quality of life that every body--not just specific workers-- should have access to. People fail to recognize that with every busted union (hello Ikea and it's 7 month lock out of employees), a minimal  quality of life (key word is QUALITY) is threatened for every one in society, not just the workers of a particular corporation, establishment, or government sector. 

The rhetoric of the "lazy" union worker is easy to buy into when most people do not have access in this day in age to the protections that unionised workers still (though decreasingly) have access to. And while its true that there are issues inherent to unions (I know, I am part of one, yes there are a few who atrophy from a lack of competition and rest on their seniority while passionate workaholics need to do their time and often lose their spark by the time they reach the ranks that afford security), these are always far less problematic and costly to taxpayers than the crimes committed by politicians and others of the white collar persuasion. 

Hey who needs mail when we have the Internet (look around at the ageing population)? Who needs unions when basic human rights are also outmoded? I guess I'm just a left wing nut case to still harbour the crazy ideal that the government should be working for the people. My bad. I imagine that it actually will make more sense for immigrants to take less specialized courses seeing as though their likelihood of getting meaningful work will be even less (we all know what "chances" a nurse from the Philippines has of actually practising in this country) as every one else's opportunities are increasingly limited and we will all be scrambling for the privilege to do shit service work at tiny wages with no protection or rights. 

There is nothing to fight for in a world where we are all dispensable.