When the Globe and Mail “gets it wrong” they go all the way. I do love the corporate speak, “The Canadian government has a leadership role to play in encouraging Canadians to be adaptive to fast-changing economic conditions, to recognize that they will have multiple jobs or careers in a lifetime, and that they need to be agile, ready to be trained and retrained and mobile.” Editorial May 25th 2012.
What about the leadership role successive governments have taken when they have raped and pillaged the resources of ruralCanadaleaving no occupations or jobs with which the population can be gainfully employed? The under-employed and the unemployed have become the economic cannon fodder of the corporate and political elites of Canada.
A perfect example is the Gaspe region of Quebec. Over many years governments handed out cutting rights to companies without any expectations or guidelines toward sustainable silviculture. The result was much of the forest has been harvested a number of times and the quality of wood has diminished over the years. Now there is almost no good wood left to harvest and nothing left of an industry that was once vibrant and provided jobs for several generations.
But that wasn’t enough. The federal government in the 1970′s handed out fishing rights to fish packing corporations that sent large draggers into the waters around the Gaspesie. They virtually dragged all the living creatures up from the bottom of the waters that lie off the Gaspe coast contributing significantly to the end of the Cod fishery and depleting the stocks of many other species.
And what about the federal and provincial government’s commitment to mining in the Gaspesie? The story of the Murdochville Mine and the collusion of corporate and political leaders is a sad portrait regarding the rights of workers. On 10th of March in 1957 about 1000 workers of Gaspe Copper Mines (affiliated with Noranda Inc.) in Murdochville struck for the right to unionize. The awful strike lasted a total of 7 months and unfortunately resulted in an agonizing defeat for the miners. What was worse, the long fight in the courts led to the company being awarded $1.5 million in damages from the United Steelworkers of America. Many long months of conflict and violence initiated and controlled by the company and the Duplessis government forced the workers to submit to unjust interference and unsafe working conditions. They were eventually unionized in 1965.
In 2001-2002 when the mine was being closed down it took the company and the Federal government nearly a year to inform theprovinceofQuebec, the Town ofMurdochvilleand the population of the Gaspesie that the end of the mine was imminent. That squandered year significantly reduced the community’s ability to work towards diversification of the economy and provide timely efforts needed to prepare the workers for the end of the mine.
So what is the bottom line in this case? Over the years the fishers, the forestry workers and the miners have all been thrown out of work by lack of prudent planning and leadership on the part of successive federal and provincial governmental decisions that continually were made in favour of their corporate friends, many of whom returned the favour by supporting financially the government’s re-election campaign.
It is various governments that are directly responsible for putting rural people out of work. Now the answer as provided by the Harperites, the captains of industry, and the media that support the corporate and political elites is to offer a less than veiled rebuke to rural Canadians that they had better get their respective acts together. The E I changes are going to demand that rural workers just hop right down to the local college a couple of hundred kilometres away and upgrade their skills. They must become mobile. So what if they have lived in that region for generations, they will find living in the Alberta oil patch good for the soul. They may not find a house to live in as there are very few of them and cost hundreds of thousand of dollars to purchase but they might just be lucky enough to live with a few other hungry souls who also send their cheques back home to their families thousands of kilometres away. It matters not, as long as they are prepared to become a willing soldier in the new economic order. In one fell swoop the rural regions become further depopulated, families are separated and the hope of stabilizing one’s family life and engaging in meaningful employment vanishes.
Of course this scenario may not play itself out in the Gaspesie. With oil and gas exploration being the industry of choice for the Harperites, there may well be an upsurge in jobs in the region as the petroleum industry seeks to explore and exploit the riches and beauty of that region. There are many corporate leaders in that industry who even now fall asleep at night dreaming of all the oil rigs and tankers that will soon populate the waters along theGaspecoast. Of course, fishing will finally be dead and the inevitable oil spills, accidents of course, will happen, spoiling the pristine beauty of what was once a God given gift.
Aren’t we fortunate to have a government that respects and cares for its citizens?
