Unfinished Business

I read the paper every morning first thing and get a little annoyed if it is not delivered by the 5am time. This morning I had to put out the recyclables and noticed the paper had missed the step when the man threw it from the sidewalk. It was an omen because the minute I started to read the front section, back to front no less I became aware of the amount of work that had to be done to keep our City, Province and Country working.
The one article that came screaming at me was the prediction that our government was going to lay off many people from the environmental department. Several hundred food inspectors were on the block and with all the trouble we have had with our food supply this is criminal. We need more not less regulation and control as we have experienced huge problems with our food supply and to abandon this role would give the food suppliers a free hand in self regulation..Another area of concern is the Arctic environmental watchdogs who oversee the water quality around the tar sands and mining developments. This would give those multi national oil companies free reign to rip the guts out of the pristine north and leave a legacy of abandoned land and sick water and soil resources. Do not believe the slick adds of how the oil companies are leaving the area after rich tar sand extraction. Scientists say and the claim is not disputed that less than 5 % is returned to a reasonable state.

We can never permit for profit companies to do the right thing without regulations. Look at the well blowup in the Gulf. To save money they bypassed procedures. Only a small portion of the oil has been recovered and the rest lay at the bottom of the Gulf. In Cape Breton there is a place known well by me where by Dosco, a steel company got rid of its poisons by dumping them in a pond adjoining the Sydney Harbour. The company is long gone and this poison pond had sickened hundreds of people living near this pond. It will take over a $1,000,000,000 to clean up the mess. Who pays for this? We the taxpayers and who suffers are the folks living in the area.

Provincially we have Port Hope where during the war poisons were dumped int the ground. This was not ordinary poison bur radio active waste and again it will take a billion to clean it up. Attempts were made over the years and huge amounts were hauled up to Chalk River but the problem still exists.

City budgets, provincial budgets, federal budgets are all being finalized this time of the year. Watch the priority list. Federal MP pensions are huge, F35 fighters are not necessary as these are only offensive weapons and we have no enemies. More prisons are to be built even though our crime rate is at a 25 year low and still going down, huge monetary grants are given to oil interests even though they are filthy rich and have huge surpluses of cash.

One F35 less could give our first Nations people clean water. Stop the billion dollar expansions to prisons and the same people could have a home to live in and a school for their children. I don't mean to be cynical but this is madness and I wonder if people even care anymore because they feel so out of the circle of power.

There is always hope because we live in a vastly wealthy country filled with assets that the world needs and we are selling them off at bargain prices for short term gain. Lets hope that more sense will prevail and people will come first in the governments priorities of the future.