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On Budget Cuts, Clarenville and Silence



Discovery Board "Closing", Employment Assistance Services (EAS) "New Delivery Model",  Service Canada Offices "De-staffed", School Board offices ????…


These are just some of the latest non-headlines that have not raised the ire of our local government in our town.  Essentially these all spell job cuts in the publicly funded sector and there are strong signals of more to come.  As we await budgets at the Federal and Provincial levels we are probably going to see more of less in Clarenville.  Unfortunately, other issues, like potholes in parking lots have taken the limelight.  I would argue that the Fed’s and the Province love our focus on our potholes because it keeps our focus off what they are up to!

Headlines & the Twitterverse are filled with announcements of government belt tightening at both the Federal and Provincial Levels these days.  The impact of these cuts is starting to be felt in government dependent towns such as Clarenville.  For the most part, these planned cuts/cuts have been met with relative silence from our Town’s leaders.

That’s too bad. 

Regardless of what you feel he worth of these former organizations/agencies have been, these organizations, in-and-of themselves, have been a source of high skilled, relatively well paid jobs that have been filled by relatively young & relatively skilled people.  These are just the type of jobs and people that this town needs to grow and prosper.

Further, each of these organization's clients will be affected is some way or another and that will impact their quality of life and potentially their employability in this region.

In this age of spin, you can bet that the Provincial or Federal Government will continue to look at government town’s such as Clarenville as preferred places to “re-evaluate spending priorities” (translation: impose spending cuts)  because these towns simply don’t have the political clout or the media presence capable of publicly analyzing the impact of the cuts and critiquing every such move.  Put simply: cuts in the rural areas are much easier to pull off.

Unfortunately, I cannot tell you just how many people have been and will be affected in Clarenville by this belt tightening, but rest assured that for every government job lost there is a ripple that flows out to private service businesses in our community and our region.  That’s bad news for all of us and something that we should be working harder against.  

Comments

  1. The most painful thing about this entire process is workforce cuts. I mean you feel so insecure, because you never know if the next company to start making staff cuts is going to be the one you are working for. I do not remember times when things were even more unstable. Payday cash loans services are must be booming theses days. I guess it is fair to say that we are officially back to recession...as if we have ever managed to get out of it in the first place.

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