Tony Clement is better at his job than anyone gave him credit for, it appears. Tasked with chopping 20,000 jobs from the civil service, he may have overachieved. According to the Treasury Board, which Mr. Clement heads, the actual reduction since 2010 now tops 25,000.
Wow. Now that's conservativism! Except...
It could also be that Mr. Harper is merely eliminating those employees who were hired to implement the great spending spree introduced in the wake of the 2008 economic crisis. Even at 25,000 lost jobs, the federal payroll is barely back to where it was when he became prime minister.
Now that's our boy. Reminds me of FR Scott's famous poem about Mackenzie King:
Only one thread was certain:
After World War I
Business as usual,
After World War II
Oderly decontrol.
Always he led us back to where we were before.
Is that the legacy of Harperism? A gigantic spin of the political wheel so that by 2015, give or take a few tens of billions added to the national debt, we'll be back where we were before?
"...back where we were before?"
Except with quasi-nationalization of the rail system, worse drug and prostitution laws and more surveillance-assuming the SC hasn't yet overturned those laws like it should. And the tens of billions in debt and no federal right-wing party. So not the same. Substantially worse actually.
Posted by: Cytotoxic | Tuesday, August 12, 2014 at 02:18 PM