Minister John Duncan’s comment in a recent edition of The NEWS about what should or should not be the responsibility of the government when it comes to oil-spill response and clean-up (“...we don’t agree that government has to do everything”) is insulting.
I do not expect government to do everything.
As a tax-paying Canadian, I do expect my governments to work for the common good.
To me, that requires both individuals and corporations to meet adequate standards that protect public “commons” such as waterways, air, land and all who inhabit these.
That requires non-ideological, non-partisan evidenced based appropriate standards to be in place; an adequate number of public servants with the appropriate expertise and power to assess, enforce and implement these standards; and the individuals and corporations to be paying adequate taxes to ensure all costs for this are covered.
There is plenty of evidence to counter the false claim an individual or corporation’s single pursuit of profit maximization serves the common good. “Trickle down” economics is a fantasy.
There are numerous examples of both externalizing the social, political and environmental costs of their operations, if they can. The deep global recession triggered by a few private financial firms in 2008 is but one example.
It is up to governments to be transparent and accountable to their citizens to stop such abuse.
We currently do not have that.
I experience our system as highly immoral and secretive with government “shoveling up” our wealth to their influential masters — with us paying for it through our taxes as well as our de-funded public education, health care and social programs.
Rather than requiring profitable global corporations to pay their fair share of taxes, they use our tax-dollars to subsidize already profitable projects with most of the profits going out of country. How crazy is that?
Even Finance Minister Joe Oliver admits we are passing debts on to our grandchildren.
I thought all the “belt-tightening” since the 1990’s was to avoid that. Did I miss something?
We need a change.
Yvonne ZarownyQualicum Beach