To the editor,
Was it six months or a year ago? Just when were the workers, those who put it “all on the line,” manning the cash registers, delivering the mail, the food. They were heroes, real “working class” heroes.
Those that kept the economy moving in the time of COVID, kept food on the table. Nothing was too good for them!
But like a tide that reaches its peak and begins to recede, this “working people as the heroes of the day” has started to fade. There’s a whiff of all this from across the eastern border where nurses in Alberta are being subjected to a three per cent cut in wages. These are the over-worked health-care workers who have been on the front line of the whole COVID crisis. They’ve already taken a five per cent cut — what more insult can be heaped upon them?
But then we are dealing with Jason Kenney, so what does one expect?
And it doesn’t end with Kenney and his UCP. There’s, of course, the Taxpayers Federation, the same outfit that pays no taxes, railing on about Justin Trudeau’s overspending. Just recently, Cathy McLeod weighed in about a proposed stimulus by the Trudeau government that “might not be necessary.”
It’s never necessary if the stimulus goes to the working people rather than fund a big tax break for the needy wealthy.
Look, let’s not pretend this deficit is a good thing, but we’ve been there before, especially after WWII, a period which Canada and the whole of the Americas experienced a great spurt of growth.
It’s said that F.D. Roosevelt, bowing to pressure from the right, cut off the taps of stimulus in the middle to late 30s. This caused the U.S. to slide back into depression. This was all solved by the onset of WWII. Of course, one could not rely on war accompanied by a mushroom cloud or two to solve present day economic problems.
We need a recovery from COVID, but it has to be a just recovery. Fear of the deficit could make any gains for the working people null and void.
For those “working class heroes” for whom “nothing was too good,” it could turn out to be just that — nothing.
Dennis Peacock,
Clearwater, B.C.