I would like to reply to Andy Thomsen’s letter regarding government spending. I am all in favour of reining in government spending, but not on the backs of employees.
If a fireman risks his or her life rescuing people on a daily basis then they are deserving of being well paid. I don’t think that carpenters risk their lives on the job on a daily basis. I think that people should be allowed to earn a living wage no matter what job they do and all this talk about reducing people wages is, in the long term, only going to worsen the situation. If we were to reduce everyone’s wages, how would the taxes be paid to maintain the services we need? Who would be able to buy homes, cars and send their kids to college or university?
It used to be that one income was enough to raise a family, now it takes two incomes just to get by. Maybe Andy doesn’t realize, but incomes have not kept up with the cost of living over the years.
But what I really want to discuss is the waste of government spending. Every day I read articles about government mismanagement of our money, and yet they continually give themselves raises in either income, tax-free allowance or their own gold-plated pensions. I think that it is time that we as Canadians started to really question how our governments actually spend our money. The federal auditors report comes out every year, and every year there are numerous reports of financial mismanagement on the part of the government, but yet we either ignore these reports or just accept it.
So my suggestion here is instead of trying to claw back the workers’ hard-earned income let’s look at where money is really being misused. It is not on the salaries of workers, but on the way that the governments of all levels misuse our money. We need to hold them accountable for their misuses, and if need be, take to the streets to do some protesting of their waste. Canadians should stop being so complacent and start standing up against government financial misuse.
Ron Evans
Oliver