- Harper Shun Rationality Like the Plague

Submitted: 7:42am, PST, 6 Dec.'10 CBC News

Ottawa spending billions on consultants: union, December 6, 2010 Julie Ireton, CBC News
http://www.cbc.ca/world/story/2010/12/04/consultants-union.html

Harper, Flaherty, Day, seem to always be deficient in one area when they are they are hyping the purpose of their actions, that is Cost-Benefit analysis.

For Harper who touts himself as a economist by training and the Con party that touts themselves as being fiscally responsible, this deficiency is shocking, not to say hypocritical.

The explanation is that their policies are ideologically based and not economically based, the driving force is what is good for the promotion of Con'ism and keeping Harper in power and not what is good for Canada and all Canadians. They shun rationality like the plague.

The question: Is what Harper doing more cost efficient, all-told, and if it is, is it providing Canadians with a better service, keeping in mind the Civil Service do not simply provide a service, per se, but play special and unique function as part of the social fabric of our Nation, making transparency and non-political interference paramount.

Harper and the Con's are waging a war against the civil service. There are a number of reasons, not the least of which is Harper's need to reduce transparency and increase partisanship.

"According to Liberal Sen. Roméo Dallaire, more famous for his peacekeeping service as a general in Rwanda, a “draconian” current of partisanship now runs through Ottawa, quite unlike anything he has seen in his many years in the capital. Dallaire told Maclean’s the “brutal” atmosphere runs counter to the public-sector ethic of transparency and objectivity."('The war on the civil service', Nancy Macdonald McLean's 3 Feb,'10)

What better way than to get rid of the non-parisan, transparency inducing civil service and replace them with Con supporters. Not only does it 'pay back' and insinuate a group of people who are glad to be partisan but it actually assists in disseminating and implementing, at the most basic level, non-legislated political policies and agendas of our current government that Harper would rather the good people of Canada not be made aware of.

But then there is the optics of getting tough on government spending by pointing to the civil service pensions and engaging in what is essentially union busting.

The bottom line is, simply, we let Harper and the Con's get away with it. For example, one might think that Ottawa region, being a civil service town, would not elect Con's - however, they elect John Baird.

Lloyd MacILquham cicblog.com/comments.htm