- This highlights some of the most serious faults with the extreme right wing, Harper and the Con’s approach to government

excerpt submitted to Toronto Star,Statistics at odds with people's realityStatistics at odds with people's reality, Sep 21, 2009 04:30 AM CAROL GOAR
http://www.thestar.com/comment/article/697978#Comments


- This highlights some of the most serious faults with the extreme right wing, Harper and the Con’s sink-or-swim, Laissez-faire, let the chips fall where they may, only the strong survive, hands–off by the government approach.

However, the whole purpose of a modern, democratic government is to help those that need help and protect those that need protection.

It is easy to say that the Canadian economy is shifting and must redefine itself. But, this macro-economic approach does not take into account the micro-economic suffering imposed upon the individuals and families that are losing their jobs. It does very little good to say that you can switch to another job and you will back working in a year or so, if they go bankrupt and lose everything they have worked so hard for.

Also, the macro-economic approach of looking at the GDP, as the single factor of economic well-being, as Harper has so been want to do, can be very misleading when looked upon at the human level, for precisely the reasons stated by this report by the Global Project on Measuring the Progress of Societies.

The GDP of Canada could be quite good, but it may be due to the very good performance of one particular sector, e.g. oil and gas, but other sectors could be doing very poorly like forestry and manufacturing. The Harper approach, “let the strong survive”. However, the whole purpose of a modern, democratic government is to help those that need help and protect those that need protection. Harper and the Cons are fixed in the capitalistic model of economic governance of a very much bygone era.

As long as Harper and the Cons are in power there is very little chance that there will be any Canadian government agencies belonging to the Global Project on Measuring the Progress of Societies.

Best for Canada is to simply give Harper the boot.