Bill C 38 gives us a clear look into Stephan Harper's brain. It is a massive erosion of legislation that was designed to protect Canadians and the Canadian environment. Seventy pieces of existing regulation will be repealed or changed, all under a budget bill?
This is a sneaky, bullying attack on Canadian values and I do not believe that every day Conservatives will support this bill if they take a look at its contents.
The general idea is to make it easier for multinational corporations at the expense of environmental safeguards. Less regulation for pipelines to cross rivers and for miners to use lakes as tailing ponds. Effluent monitoring will be reduced, off shore drilling will be facilitated, limits to offshore dumping expanded. The National Roundtable on the Environment and the Economy will be axed.
Former fisheries minister John Fraser stated "To take habitat out of the Fisheries Act is a very serious error because you can't save fish if you don't save habitat, and I say this as a lifelong conservative. People who want to eliminate the appropriate safeguards...aren't conservatives at all, they're ideological right-wingers with very, very limited understanding, intelligence or wisdom."
Government seed inspection will be handed off to private industry.
The Canadian Food inspection Agency oversight is removed so industry to do its own inspections.
The Fair Wages and Hours of Labour Act is turfed, so not only will you work more for less you also get to wait 2 more years for your pension.
Thirty-one billion less dollars in health care transfers to the provinces and health ministers can exempt products from regulatory oversight at their discretion.
The Canadian Environmental Assessment Agency will no longer be responsible for nuclear safety.
The position of the inspector general that oversees CSIS will be eliminated to avoid further criticism of that body of spooks and their lack of respect for Canadian law.
You get the drift -- 425 pages of bad news. I'm nervous and it seems that Conservative MP Bob Zimmer is too. He was quoted in The Valley Sentinel as saying "May God continue to keep our land glorious and free!" I always figured that was an MP's job, does this mean he is abdicating to a higher power or is he working for the other team?
Brian Mckirdy
Valemount
