Embarassed
Dale Perkins, Victoria
Volume 26 Issue 1 & 2 | Posted: February 28, 2012
Listening to our Prime Minister Stephen Harper at the economic summit was an embarrassment.
Listening to our Prime Minister Stephen Harper at the economic summit was an embarrassment. Here is our highest elected political leader delivering platitudes that were common in another era to other political leaders and the elite of the corporate business world.
Painfully obvious to us listening back home was the fact that he just doesn’t get it, or he’s so ideologically fixed on the economic orthodoxies that were true in the 20th century. He doesn’t seem to realize that today those same economic concepts are widely understood to be bogus and are no longer relevant or appropriate. “Prosperity”, “economic growth” – words he uses to celebrate his vision of the brave new world of tomorrow must be jettisoned for the sake of a viable, livable world.
In their place we need to hear words like “sustainability” and “green economy”. They are pointing us in another direction and approach to living responsibly. And what did Harper hold up as the glorious future envisioned for Canada – major changes to our pension plan, unbridled resource extraction and trade, and a definite move away from services and entitlements to a new order offered by the likes of the Fraser Institute and other apologists of the private corporate world. What a travesty!
Dale Perkins, Victoria