Has the big beast had enough?

 Why do these lines of Yeats come to me now?

The darkness drops again; but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?

When John Baird made an announcement that really should have been made by the President of the Treasury Board, Stock Day, and when that announcement is such a blatant lie contradicting what Day has been saying, you need to ask why, and why now.

“We won’t see the massive cuts to the public service that happened under the last Liberal government,” said Baird. “I don’t envisage anything like that.”...As an example (of how important public servants are), he cited the 300 public servants who work at his former ministry, Infrastructure Canada. “We could not have done the economic action plan without them. They delivered it.”    

Sure.  Baird valued public servants so much when he was head of Infrastructure that he short staffed them while drastically increasing the workload.  They were then blamed for the slow process of loosening up stimulus funds.

The government body that oversees $38 billion in federal infrastructure spending has had its knuckles rapped for being poorly staffed and hiring unqualified employees.  Infrastructure Canada has had either no human resource plan or insufficient plans in the three years audited since the Conservatives came to power, said the report.  "The department has faced and continues to face a significant shortfall of staff," said the audit.

"My understanding of last year is they didn't add a single staff, net," said Kennedy.  "That is a recipe for bad performance. It's also a recipe for political interference. Shortcuts are taken when people aren't there and when people aren't trained."

Baird now claims there will be no cuts to departmental budgets, and spending will increase for defence, airport security, and law and order.  This certainly hasn’t been the case so far under Harper.


Although Demers (PIPS) says politically-driven public service cuts have been going on for many years, the process has accelerated under the Harper Conservatives. The 2007 federal budget mandated across-the-board savings of five percent in every government department.

Nor has the guy who actually is supposed to decide what to cut in the public service sent the same message.

Just days into his new job, Day cut 245 positions from government boards and agencies, principally related to the arts.  On the day he was appointed, he boasted of being the new Dr. No and warned of cuts to come.  The words of CON liars aside, logic tells us the public service has been, and will continue to be under attack.

Since the government has already promised that funding transfers to the provinces are safe and ruled out tax hikes, that leaves government programs as the obvious target to curb spending.

...Day earned a reputation as a zealous cost-cutter when as Alberta labour minister he was caught in a furor over hospital staffing when then-premier Ralph Klein's government attempted to chop public-sector wages. As a candidate for Canadian Alliance leader, he advocated cutting funding for departments like Health Canada.

So why send Baird out to lie on behalf of Day?  Day’s bragging of cuts is too recent for him to do a flip-flop, and he has reduced his feeble credibility to the negative zone over his non-existent criminal comments.

That still leaves us to wonder why Baird was sent by the master to make any comment on this at all.

The rough beast, perhaps, has been vexed to nightmare and is waking up.  Public servants are generally passive, grumbling from time to time about the little things, putting up with the partisan nature of their Ministers, adjusting after each election.  But push them too hard, from too many directions, and they will kick up more than a fuss.

In the past year, Flaherty has openly stated that their pensions and benefits are very generous and considering the context, there is little doubt these will be under attack.  Public servants are being forced to violate their own commitment to non-partisan service through pressure and instruments such as MEPs.  They are being muzzled.  They are being used as scapegoats while the political bosses who forced them despite their best advice walk away unscathed.    The list of public servants served up as fodder simply because they were doing their job and doing it well is lengthy.

Then, Colvin came along.  The moment I saw him on video, I knew he would be a catalyst for change.  Linda Keen was admirable, but so wonderfully tough she was viewed by some as abrasive.  Not so with Colvin.  He clearly didn’t want to be in front of cameras, he was obviously pained by the whole process, and he came across as very sincere.  His actions cost him.  Seeing Colvin take a beating day after day without quitting on his role as a public servant was not only inspiring to public servants, it also tweaked a little guilt each time their political bosses asked them to cross a line.

Then, along come Munir Sheikh.  Well, well, well.  Resign a gem of a job on principle.  A principle held dear by any decent public servant.

Public servants have to be wondering who is next, and what will be asked of them by this government.   They have to be waking up to the reality that they are nothing but a resource to be kicked around by this government, then tossed aside for political reasons.

Bad enough if your pay, pension, and benefits are threatened.  But when you are asked to toss aside your integrity by someone who doesn’t even give a damn about you, when you are used as the kicking boy, then you cannot go home each night feeling good about that eight or so hours of your life, day after day.

I’m guessing there are rumbling coming from the beast that is the public service, and Harper is realizing that this particular beast need only roll over to crush him.  Public servants have learned under this government the importance of saving e-mails and memos.