Transport minister Lisa Raitt opines that Canada Post has "a responsibility to be self-sufficient." What the harebrained mandarin of things that move seems to have meant was that the post office must not run a deficit.
That got me thinking about other government agencies and which of them are self-sufficient. The armed forces sure as hell aren't self-sufficient. Immigration? I doubt it. Customs? I'd be surprised. How about the Queen's Printer if such a thing still exists? I know, what about the Mint? They print money, they must be self-sufficient, no? National Archives? I'm guessing no.
Then again I suppose if government services and agencies were self-sufficient we wouldn't need income taxes and excise taxes and resource royalties or any of that sort of stuff. Except we do and I'm guessing that's because there isn't hardly anything within the federal domain that's self-sufficient.
Oh well, somewhere in the recesses of those dank and curdled wee Tory brains I'm sure this is all plain as day.
5 comments:
Good to see more and more people are pointing out the obvious. Thank you. Here is my immediate post on my FB page:
sorry I can’t include the cartoon :(
Theo Nelson
December 13
So the geniuses running Canada Post are going to eliminate home delivery and layoff 8000 carriers while raising the rate in Canada rate from 63 cents to 85 cents. Wow. From where I sit, it would seem management is either not very good at forecasting revenue trends or they deliberately maneuvered themselves into this position so they could take this drastic measure to be profitable. I don’t know about you but I regard the postal service as a vital service, a utility as it were. Thus whether it is profitable or not should not be its primary goal. The service is the most important goal. If you cannot get your head around that concept, try this: Do we require the military to be profitable? No, we don’t. The government is in the process of saddling us with a 45 billion dollar expense to purchase the F-35 jet. It supposedly is to replace the F-18. Unfortunately it does not do that. It is not an interceptor. It is a bombing platform which is supposed to be stealthy. It doesn’t even achieve that. Yet, the treasonous CONservatives have no problem with saddling us with this cost.
With a service which is hugely beneficial to all Canadians suddenly profit is the only reason for its existence. To that, I say, “Fuck you to anyone and everyone who believes that!!”
Hey NDP! You want to be the winning party in the next election? Put in your party platform the plank that you will keep home delivery and include in it that all the new residential areas that have superboxes will get home delivery as well. Fuck neo-liberal economics. Quit being such centrist assholes.
Okay, I shall finish with another service I regard as essential. Hopefully this never happens to you.
The following goes out to my two buddies in transit - Brad and Jim.
We should obviously move the armed forces to a more businesslike, profit-centred model. The obvious Conservative model for an armed forces "run like a business": Have civilians pay for "protection".
I buy some alternate energy stuff from China ( led bulbs, controlers, triple pole double throw swithes etc.) Shipping is cheap , often free, throught Hong Kong, Chinese and Shanghi post offices. I think their rates are kept low as a government policy to encourage small business.
Couriers , on the other hand, are rapacious pirates. I paid $160 to ship a 2k wind turbine from Qing Doa to my door by surface. When I needed a $20 part 2 years later DHL charged me $120 .
Another concept that is being left out of the discussion that is also critical is "universal service". Any move or measure that negatively impacts an individual's access to this public service has to be withdrawn or somehow mitigated with some compensatory measure.
The USPS has provisions for door-to-door delivery for disabled individuals no matter where they live. And depending on the postal jurisdiction, measures are in place to provide homeless people with general post office boxes to receive their mail.
Tax money is no longer for public essential services, its for paying high salaries to politicians and senators and giving tax breaks to big oil. The rest of the mandate that was supposed to get a piece of the tax pie are now up for desolution. Medical services next, and lets see this morning James Moore informed canada fed tax money is not to feed the hungry children> will they lower taxes for us...uhmm No.
and if you live on the BC coast, you no longer have ferries as an essential service because coastal people need to become better swimmers:P(yeah I know its the provincial libs but still in light of the postal fight it was soo similar( and really worse)
its a crock, and the ideology somehow always gets people fired up as why should tax money be wasted on the citizens dammit. Thats money for politicians to play with:P
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