Since coming to power, Harper and his Conservatives have been handing out pink slips and shutting down government services. In this province, every week brings another announcement of lost or transferred jobs and loss of federal services for people and businesses.
Many say Newfoundlanders are getting an extra fist in the kidneys for their overwhelming rejection of Harper and his right-wing values. And few Atlantic Canadians will forget Harper calling them a culture of defeat.
The Canadian Coast Guard search and rescue centre in St. John’s was the first major closure and the first of many cuts to the coast guard and DFO that involves safety and search and rescue in one of Canada’s busiest marine traffic regions. With the offshore oil industry, a large fishing sector and busy international shipping lanes in the area, marine safety is a daily concern.
Coast guard marine traffic centres in St. Anthony and St. John’s were next on the block. These offices track and provide radio contact for vessels at sea.
A coast guard patrol vessel, the Harp, stationed in St. Anthony, is being decommissioned. It provided service along the southern Labrador coast and the northern part of the island.
Another coast guard ship, the Sir Wilfred Grenfell, will be shut down for six months of the year. It does fisheries conservation and enforcement work. The move turns 20 people into seasonal workers, which the Conservatives have further targeted in changes to the employment insurance program.
Three labs, run by the Canadian Food Inspection Agency, will be closed and the 14 jobs moved to Halifax. One of these did seafood inspection for the regional fishing industry.
Even the drug-sniffing dog with Canada Border Services at St. John’s International Airport got his pink slip. Which, considering that Harper’s Conservatives are supposed to be tough on crime, proves that their ideology is a lie. Was hypocrisy invented by politicians?
But its changes to the licensing of fisherman and the employment insurance program seemed especially aimed at rural Newfoundland and Labrador, with its seasonal labour force in the fishing industry and the fledgling tourism economy.
Proposed changes to the licensing criteria for the fishery will see independent fishermen losing their livelihood and business as they will now have to compete with multinational food companies.
Traditionally, only people who caught the fish could hold a fishing licence. This ensured a separation between the harvesting and processing sectors. The end result will be the country’s fish resources being controlled by a small handful of multinational food corporations that would never get fishing licences under normal circumstances.
Changes to the employment insurance program are designed to penalize seasonal workers and industries. Cutting benefits to repeat users and imposing stricter rules for qualification all work against the fishing, forestry, agriculture and tourism industries and their workers.
Most of these cuts are not cuts or cost savings at all but a transfer of federal jobs, services and resources to Halifax, which will make doing business in Newfoundland much harder and increase risks in the areas of food safety, law enforcement and marine industries.
St. John’s Mayor Dennis O’Keefe says that the removal of federal government services and jobs will make the city little more than a colonial outpost — not of Ottawa, but of Halifax.
Original Article
Source: the chronicle herald
Author: GREG LOCKE
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