To the editor:
Our finance minister’s commentary on the nation’s economic challenges may alarm Canadians of a certain age. They grew up in a world of hope. Cars and furnaces would be fueled by nuclear batteries the size of a fingernail, and they would last a lifetime.
The world’s oceans would be harvested, consigning world hunger to the history books. Illness was reason enough to provide an accessible health care system, with science poised to defeat even the worst disease. Robots would do dangerous and menial tasks, leaving for their human masters time enough to enjoy the experience of just being alive.
Just imagine it, and it could happen. That was the promise. To say that things didn’t work out as planned would be an understatement. Energy proved neither cheap nor inexhaustible. We are destroying our oceans with estimations that their bounty will be fully depleted by 2050.
The trend towards accessible affordable health care has been reversed, with no indication where the line will be drawn - if it ever is. Technology has continued in leaps and bounds. It has enhanced our lives, but it has also contributed to the above woes, and increasingly displaces the best paying less skilled employment opportunities.
With Minister Jim Flaherty’s recent statements, we see the childhood vision of many Canadians retreating further. The threat to the national economy of future labour shortages, we are told, justifies another watershed in public policy, this time mandating greater participation of seniors and the handicapped in the work force.
This comes at a time of great unemployment, with more Canadians out of work now than four years ago – during the economic turndown. Those that argue the policy is correct would have to at least admit the timing is terrible. But is there more wrong with this policy than timing? Mr. Flaherty’s policy will also make it more difficult to turn down a job and retain UI benefits.
“You do what you have to do to make a living”, he explained. In Germany where such laws already exist and prostitution is legal, brothel owners through an employment agency allegedly offered a female a position as a sex worker in 2005.
This scandalous story, the veracity of which is uncertain, did raise an important question -- how long would government be able to restrict access to lawful brothels demanding access to the database? Law abiding, taxpaying, brothel owners could go to court and force the issue, and who knows which way the legal winds would blow? In Ontario, courts have struck down the longstanding ban on brothels.
The ruling is under appeal even as there is discussion in Toronto respecting numerous night club/brothel conversions. I am not predicting government of Canada employment officers will someday recruit for brothels owners, but who would have believed a gambling casino would anchor an entertainment district in Thunder Bay?
An inexhaustible thirst to raise revenue and cut expenses can take public policy to places you might previously have considered inappropriate, or didn’t anticipate. Canadians of a certain age have learned to expect the unexpected and are not so hasty to rule this sort of thing out as they may have in the past. What is the new vision for Canada anyway? More seniors bell-hopping at the Holiday Inn? A get-tough employment policy on the handicapped? Just imagine it, and it could happen.
William Olesky,
Thunder Bay
