It is supposed to conjure up images of fat people cinching their belts as they forego that extra slice of chocolate cake.
When applied to government spending it is meant to reassure voters that nothing crucial is being cut — that, to use the words of Toronto Mayor Rob Ford, only the gravy is being eliminated.
The reality of restraint is rarely so simple.
In Ontario, for instance, it means that the Liberal government’s repeated claims to remedy nursing home abuses are probably doomed.
That’s because, as the Star reported this week, the government is unwilling to fund the kind of inspection system needed to ensure that long-term care homes are treating their elderly residents properly.
Over the years, Liberal health ministers have won kudos for their promises to fix nursing homes. Former minister George Smitherman even wept publicly, so moved was he by the plight of the province’s elderly.
But in the end, provincial oversight requires inspectors. And because of “restraint,” the government won’t be able to keep its promise of inspecting nursing homes annually.
It will be lucky if it can inspect them once every five years.
In Ottawa, the alibi of restraint has been taken to absurd lengths.
Here Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s Conservatives have engaged in a series of precision bombing raids, blasting out specific parts of the federal bureaucracy that they fear might get in the way of the government or its friends.
Why have they nuked the inspector-general of the Canadian Security and Intelligence Service — an official whose job is to ensure that the government knows what the spy agency is up to?
When Canadian Press reporter Bruce Cheadle first unearthed this particular tidbit, the official explanation was restraint.
The real explanation, presumably, is to make sure that the government doesn’t know too much about what CSIS is doing (particularly given its new mandate to use information gleaned through torture). That way, ministers can be provided with the cover of plausible deniability.
And, as in Ontario, federal restraint means scaling back health and safety inspections in everything from the environment to meat-packing.
The laws remain on the books. But if no one checks up on industry (which is being encouraged to self-regulate), such laws mean nothing,
Restraint is rarely applied evenly.
The Harper Conservatives are scaling back spending on national parks to save about $20 million. But at the same time they are planning to spend $25 billion on 65 new fighter jets.
My guess is that most Canadians would make do with one less jet in order to fund parks properly. But in this, as in so many decisions, the voters — once they have elected a majority government — get no choice.
In Europe, restraint means disaster. Spanish government restraint has put about 24 per cent of the country’s labour force out of work. Even this week’s decision by other European nations to bail out Spanish banks won’t solve that problem.
Indeed, by putting pressure on Madrid to accelerate its restraint measures, the bailout may make matters worse.
At least the Europeans now use the more accurate word, “austerity” — with its connotations of stone soup and ketchup sandwiches — to describe the continent’s situation.
Harper, incidentally, thinks that austerity and economic growth aren’t incompatible.
He thinks countries can have both and cites Canada as the example.
So save your stones. Stock up on ketchup. Restraint, or whatever you want to call it, may be ill-advised. But it’s not about to end.
Original Article
Source: the star
Author: Thomas Walkom
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