March 2000
by Barry Stagg
As much as $1 billion in federal government grants may have been misspent in ways that descend from negligence and waste down through to fraud and outright scandal. The squirming and slithering of the federal Liberals, particularly the Prime Minister and his floundering protege, Human Resources Minister Jane Stewart, has been well documented in the press.
Given less publicity, was the government's decision, belatedly but responsibly, to set aside $50 million to compensate World War II veterans of the Merchant Marine. These dwindling few were the people who crewed the freighters and tankers that plied the North Atlantic during the war. Being torpedoed by U-boats sent from Nazi Germany went along with the normal viciousness of the North Atlantic seascape. These men were, for too many decades, ignored and treated with indifference, if not outright contempt, by the powers that be in landlocked Ottawa.
To the credit of Newfoundland's federal cabinet representative, George Baker, the veterans are getting their due. Of course, with World War II having ended some fifty-five years ago, the government has conveniently set itself a much smaller task with respect to compensation. Fewer and fewer of these veterans are in the land of the living. Would it have been too much to ask, for the flower child brigades of former Prime Minister Trudeau to have compensated these people thirty years ago when they were still large in number and had many years of quality living to go? Such is the callous way of federal politics in this land where much more concern is expressed by politicians for their own comfort and career security than is extended to those who actually put life and limb on the line for their country.
Common sense tells us that $50 million would have represented only the fiscal dandruff from the hairy mess of "Canada Works Grants" that the federal government somehow managed to squander in the latest fiscal fiasco. When everything that could possibly advance the political career of the local Liberal M.P. somehow or another gets funded, (applications optional apparently), then it is no small wonder that the government will have little money for legitimate causes such as looking after their old and ailing war veterans.
The very idea that the federal Liberals are now defending the whole grant process is offensive. Nothing is more obvious then the fact that these government grants are a pure political slush fund. In the realpolitik of the federal arena, the local M.P.'s are virtual gatekeepers with respect to the obtaining of these grants.
Federal government grants, both of the white collar and blue collar variety, have destroyed many more jobs than they have created. Any Newfoundlander who has lived through the days of Canada Works and all of these abominable programs can recall situations where municipalities and various organizations would turn up their noses at giving work to legitimate private tradesmen and professionals. Instead, they would apply for these contemptible Canada Works grants and then hire unskilled workers at minimum wage with token supervision. Work that would take legitimate tradesmen a couple of weeks of honest labour was stretched out for the standard ten weeks. Often, work was done in a shabby and barely adequate fashion. Thus the tradesmen went broke and his workers went without pay and eventually left for places like Toronto and Calgary.
Jean Chretien, Jane Stewart and that old Ottawa hand Brian Tobin defend a political way of life that essentially involves turning on and off a faucet that spews fiscal sewage. Look at the results and the repugnant inversion of priorities. Canada Works grants are given to the politically favoured while people who need real help because they deserve it, such as Merchant Marine veterans, are ignored and treated as if they did not count. That is the reality that the federal government has created. They have given birth to this fiscal and social illegitimacy where good men and women are thwarted in their efforts to make an honest living because the federal government is running a simple, putrid slush fund economy.
Why not change the moniker describing Human Resources Minister Jane Stewart to that of Slush Fund Minister? Better still, make the Prime Minister's name a little more vivid and accurate and let him be known as Chief Slush Flusher.