Brr, That Was a Chilly One!

February was one of those months that take your breath away. Sooo darn cold.   But time flies and before we know it Spring will arrive and many of us will be thinking about gardening. In the mean time I’ll continue to keep warm, keep reading, and keep playing tunes.

The news these days is so discombobulating and disheartening that it has seeped into my dreams, definitely not pleasant dreams. I feel a sense of relief when I wake up. Unfortunately I can’t wake up from real life. Hearing the US president, a man who wields such a terrifying amount of apparently uncontrollable power, spout his rhetoric on the media day after day is unnerving. It suddenly seems our good relationship with our southern neighbour may be in jeopardy. Relationships between the US and many other countries are getting somewhat shaky as well. Hopefully good sense will prevail.  

Perhaps this should be a wake up call for Canada - too many eggs in one basket, too many trade barriers between provinces. I know very little about interprovincial trade barriers so I decided to do a little research. If you don’t mind a bit of internet browsing here’s a link I found helpful - https://www.ctvnews.ca/business/article/how-interprovincial-trade-barriers-in-canada-affect-everyday-canadians/. It turns out there are so many rules, regulations, permits, educational standards, road safety regulations, food safety regulations, etc. that differ from one province to the next that doing business outside of your own province but within Canada can be slow, costly and/or prohibitive. As a consequence in many cases it’s  easier for companies to do business with the US! This makes little sense, seems like we’re cutting our own throats.

There’s a local issue we should pay attention to. Our county seems to be entertaining the idea of having a small nuclear reactor within its borders. The Canadian government tends to promote nuclear power as green energy but I think this is fuzzy logic. Uranium mining is certainly not green, reactors are super expensive to build, they are not likely to employ very many local people, spent fuel storage can be an environmental disaster in the making, and accidents do happen. I think caution is called for. It’s not wise to blindly accept ideas presented by those who profit from their implementation. Today I listened to a podcast about a nuclear reactor, invented in the 1960’s (!?), that uses spent fuel, recycles it over and over until its dangerous radioactive after life is reduced to about 100 rather than 100,000years. These reactors are being used in Japan but not in North America. If we’re building new shouldn’t we at least be building better? Podcast is by Cleo Abram, https://youtu.be/IzQ3gFRj0Bc?si=_nzlkiy0j0SGFbc9.

Public Services

Public Services

Year End

On our first mail day in weeks I held a stack of 6 weekly newspapers in my hands and asked my husband if he wanted to look through any of them. Well neither of us did so they all went into the fire starter pile. I got to thinking about those papers - all the potential revenue lost from time sensitive ads placed in those pages, the missed local news that was important for somebody to see, the community functions and Christmas markets people didn’t know about….

The mail carriers strike, especially for rural residents, hit hard. No newspaper (and for us no Woodlands Express delivery!) was only a small part of the disruption. No Christmas cards or packages, no online shopping, a huge problem for folks who don’t bank online, insufficient funds for charities hoping for Christmas donation cheques to arrive, late pension cheques… In the far north where people are absolutely dependant on mail service no mail delivery can cause truly serious, even life threatening problems.

As is true of all unfortunate events, someone profited. Christmas shopping in local communities may have, in many cases, increased. Alternatives to mail - UPS, Purolator (91% owned by Canada Post), FedEx - probably made a fortune. 

Where am I going with this? Like many others, I thought Canada Post received public funding. But no, even though it is a Crown Corporation, according to Wikipedia it derives all of its revenue from its services. In my opinion, mail is an essential service and, like health care, it should be bolstered by taxpayer dollars to keep it functioning. Along with this public funding it should have government oversight to ensure efficiency and avoid disruptions. Profit should not be its goal. It should provide good, uninterrupted service at a reasonable cost. Workers should receive a fair salary and CEO’s should not receive huge bonuses. But I guess I live in dreamland. An efficient public service may be an oxymoron.

How should our taxpayer dollars be managed? What is the function of Canada’s federal government? I am admittedly naive but I thought it was to build and maintain infrastructure, ensure that all its citizens are able to obtain essential services, lobby for Canada in the worldwide economy, provide Peacekeepers where needed in international conflicts (not war weapons), and ensure our sovereignty. I think I must be mistaken. It seems that taxpayer money is being skimmed from public services in order to fund more “important things” - ever increasing salaries for politicians, conferences held in lavish hotels around the world where never kept promises are made, foreign aid, tax concessions to foreign corporations who provide Canadian jobs but take profits out of the country, refund cheques for taxes that maybe shouldn’t exist in the first place, buyback programs to make sure the public is disarmed, an over abundance of bureaucracy, endless studies producing reams of paper with ignored problem solutions, and these days, reacting to the newly elected bully in the south. 

Poorly funded, inefficient public services provide a perfect storm for the rich to get richer. In comes the privately owned service and people become convinced that it might be better. But private companies are profit motivated and the public provides those profits, until they can’t afford the cost. 

And now a new Year Begins.

Here we are. Trudeau has resigned as liberal party leader, the government has been prorogued till the end of March. A new liberal leader will be chosen. A federal election is imminent. There’s an out of control megalomaniac at the helm of the incoming US government. The Premiers of our provinces are attempting to fill in for our lack of a functioning federal government. How’s all this going to turn out? 

North of 54

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January 14, 2025