Western Producer staff
It is the time of year when many Canadians, by tradition, instinct and conviction, look around and marvel at the blessings in their lives.
On many Prairie farms this season, the year-end exercise of taking stock of last year’s progress was more pleasant than in many recent years.
True, farmers must cope with continuing policy uncertainty and a sharp reduction in government support. Yet in many cases, soaring commodity prices have more than compensated, raising farm incomes (and spirits) to impressive heights.
Read Also
Proactive approach best bet with looming catastrophes
The Pan-Canadian Action Plan on African swine fever has been developed to avoid the worst case scenario — a total loss ofmarket access.
Amazing, the difference a few years can make.
Not so long ago, sagging spirits led to rural depression, indications of increased stress, suicides and much general sympathy for the rural #plight. That sympathy often was translated into cheques which kept many farmers in business.
Now, rural optimism is the prevailing mood being picked up by pollsters.
Perhaps it is time for farmers to return some of that sympathy to other groups now suffering the pain of economic and job uncertainty.
The much-hated civil service of Canada would be a good place to start.
They are the workers Canadians love to hate, although their efforts pave the way for provision of the services Canadians receive and enjoy from government.
The Canadian government is one of the few employers able to brag about cutting 45,000 jobs and win public applause and calls for more, more, more.
Each of those 45,000 federal employees (and tens of thousands more provincial civil servants losing their jobs as governments ‘downsize’) is a bread-winner, has a family or a budget, does a job.
Perhaps Canadians no longer can afford the taxes needed to pay them, but should we applaud their demise?
A few years ago, some of these despised civil servants were the very people who processed the programs and the cheques which kept thousands of farms afloat.
These thoughts were stirred a few weeks ago as I sat in my rural West Quebec church and heard about an area man, Milton, in his 30s, who committed suicide after receiving a government lay-off notice from his maintenance job.
Other pressures were at play, no doubt, but the prospect of unemployment and greater poverty appears to have been the trigger. He left a wife and two children.
The next week, there was news of another suicide.
Then, in mid-December, United Church moderator Marion Best distributed a pastoral letter to all her churches, supported by church leaders across the country. It talked about the implications of “the growing war against the poor in our society.”
She said better-off Canadians should not be immune to government efforts to “unravel” the social safety net. “In many provinces, the cuts are happening with little thought to how people will cope.”
During the trade war, Canadians, through their tax dollars and their civil servants, supported farmers as they suffered through tough times.
Now, many of those civil servants face the same uncertainty.
