Paint by Numbers — in Reverse

Today's press release from Ottawa starts to paint the NeoCon landscape by numbers — in reverse. Starting today, Harpo starts to erase elements of the Canadian picture with 5 curators eliminated from the National Gallery, and 50 scientists from Environment Canada.  OK, so the area of blank canvas is small...today. But wait for larger patches to emerge on Monday.

The NeoCons ideology claims that a smaller government is always better, and as a glib slogan, it doesn't sound too bad. It's in the details that the evil is to be found. Reducing the size of the Public Service may sound, at first hearing, a laudable aim; it's when the impact of the reductions hit that the Canadin public may finally awake from its media-induced slumber to realize that cutting the Public Service budget actually hurts real people performing real service.

Take the example of the slicing of fifty scientists from Environment Canada. That means 50 families have a month to find a new position to maintain their income. A hundred neighbours, at a minimum, will have their network of support strained. I don't know the details of the work these scientists were doing, but with 50 fewer brains at work protecting our environment, the restraints on businesses to do as they please in our environment have been slackened.

Five fewer curators at the National Gallery will mean fewer exhibitions in our Canadian culutral showcase. Five families may have to re-locate, if they can find work in their field in Canada; they may have to move to another country, as might the environmental scientists mentioned above. The potential loss to Canada is enormous.

But the NeoCons won't care. They don't care about the environment; they don't care about culture. (Harpo playing a Beatles' tune in public is about as high on the cultural scale as he goes. And of course, he couldn't bother to find a Canadian popular tune for his photo op.)

So, we have to care. It's up to us to put a stop to this ideological and fiscal madness.