Safe and Secure

Yesterday, out walking Bernie (resident hound/lab/beagle/?) I ran into a woman I know from our wait for the bus to work.

Just another person in the 'hood I can count on to be a fellow traveller.

That's mostly the case, of course, but we do have Freedom Convoyers in our midst, including an unvaccinated neighbour and former nurse I talk to on the regular, avoiding the obvious for the sake of neighbourliness, but keeping my physical distance just the same.

Anyway, my bus stop acquaintance was out for a walk during her public service work day, her lunch hour, and we got to talking about how it is in government these days.

Crazy. Way too much work. Complaints from the public over the top. Everybody at their rope's end. Not enough staff. People off on stress leave, sick, retiring.

So, same old, same old, just that much worse. And, speaking of, I know pretty much for a fact, from the horse's mouth, if the Liberals put hate speech back in Canadian human rights legislation, there's no way staff will be able to keep up with complaints.

They can't keep up now, not by a long shot, it's already an impossible workload.

Canadians complain about everything. The Commission deals with an assembly line of whinging. And if that's not bad enough, Conservatives regularly spam the complaints system with claims their human rights are being abused by Justin Trudeau. Gun regulations, trans rights, abortion decriminalization, and on and on and on it goes, white Christian Conservative males are being pummelled, they tells us - pummelled.

It's criminal, really, because their brattishness delays the processing of legitimate human rights claims, which certainly do exist, but that's how Conservatives behave nowadays.

For a long time, actually. Decades. Since the Reform Party gave an official voice to the fascist assholes. Alberta Conservatives, for instance, are why the original gun registry costs were so high, the gun registry later destroyed by Stephen Harper after his party cheated its way to a majority, which it did thanks to its current leader, Pierre Poilievre.

Before that sad day in our electoral history, Alberta Conservatives used tactics provided to them by the American NRA to sabotage development of the gun registry and run up its costs to a couple of billion buckaroos.

Fascist brats, as I keep pointing out on this blog, but enough of them.

My bus waiting friend didn't mention being upset by the return to work three days a week come September, by the way. I know it's easy for me to not care, currently not working, although who knows what the future will bring, but I do want to note here for the record that I ultimately preferred doing my job at the office. I didn't have a choice at the time, because I was at the level of mailroom clerk, and inmates can only make human rights complaints by mail, but once I was back I realized I hadn't liked having the government in my home.

Yuck.

(I also don't think the government should be run out of private residences, but that's a whole 'nother thing.)

What she did mention was the fact she'd really rather not be working anymore but she's nervous about being renovicted from the home she and her son have lived in for 20 years now, so she's still at it, as are a few of her co-workers who had thought they'd retire post-pandemic only to find themselves too insecure financially to do it.

We should all be thankful, really. We need all the burnt out public servants currently still at it. The hiring process - when there isn't a freeze - is so byzantine it can take forever to bring on board fresh recruits. And it's not like the work load is decreasing.

Cue temp agencies charging the government more while their temps make less than the going rate and go to work sick because otherwise they don't get paid at all.

Also, I know I complain about Conservative governments, a lot, but I have good reason. They're saboteurs, their goal once in government to further disable public services such that Canadians who can afford to pay out-of-pocket welcome their privatization.

But really, none of us can afford for this to happen, no matter how rich we think we are, and it will be a disaster when Pierre Poilievre is PM. He'll raid our CPP, which is all many of us have by way of a pension, but such is the way of Canada that we're none of us allowed to feel secure unless we were born into the lap of luxury like that bloviating old fascist, Conrad Black.

It's natural Canadians want to own a home, preferably single, detached, but would we feel the need to put all our money into bricks and mortar if renting was affordable, renovictions not a thing, 2 and 3-bdrms widely available, if we could feel as secure renting an apartment as owning a house?

If we ALL, every Canadian, had a guaranteed liveable annual income at least by age 65?

It's a crazy way to run a country, leaving so many of us on edge, not knowing how long we'll be able to live in the apartment we finally manage to secure for our family. Intolerable, really. But the only world Doug Ford knows is the one of single detached houses in the suburbs. He thinks it's what everybody who's anybody wants, too. And to be fair to Mr. Mobbed Up to the Gills, it IS what a lot of people think they want - indeed, need - because Canadians are still conditioned from birth to believe home ownership is the only real financial security there is.

It's 2024, ffs, our world is burning where it isn't flooding, and for Conservative politicians it's STILL all about cars and 2 car garage piles in the suburbs.

Well they're out of date and we're out of time.

Please, stop voting for them.

Thanks for reading.