Quote:
Originally Posted by Calgaryborn
Certainly infrastructure improvements have had a factor in improving our quality of life and are even worth incuring some debt if they are long lasting. There is a tipping point though and our debt appeared to reach that in the early 90s. We have older infrastructure and closed hospitals to show for Canada's lack of physical responsibilty.
Also with more infrastructure has come more regulation......
Yes I think we are more likely to ask questions but, we do seem less likely to do something to change things. We all have known about the pension shortfalls but, have never demanded the government do something about it because we know it will cost us. We know wages are not keeping up with the real costs of living and haven't for thirty years; Yet we all carry way to much debt to consider the prolonged labour strikes it would take to gain the raises needed to maintain. In truth businesses couldn't provide the wages anyways because they are competeing against companies with lower wages in distant countries.
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Well, in a lot of cases, we have closed hospitals because of the ineptitude of many provinces building hospitals in every little Tom, Dick and Harry town that could never convince 2 doctors to come to their town, let alone come to their town so the hospital could actually be opened. Do some research on what Saskatchewan did towards those endeavors.
That I can speak of personally. A hospital was built in a town 10 miles to the east of where I lived. To this day, it has never even performed a routine tonsilectomy. You need 2 doctors (in case one has a problem, the other can take over) to do any kind of procedures and the town (think 650 people) was never able to attract one doctor full time, let alone two doctors full time. It is a quasi medical center now.
In regards to more regulation, yes and no to that. As I mentioned above, too many times infrastructure was built on the whim of certain politicians. Some regulations were and are needed. Trick is to get the right balance.
In regards to change, I see a growing trend towards the last two generations disenfranchising themselves, they seem to be on the outside, grumbling, but only looking in and in many cases not getting involved. If that is due to the fact that they are just plain disullusioned and don't see any hope for change, or perhaps that they don't see a way out of the rat race, I don't know. But I would love to see a ground movement of the young voting demographic getting out there and being involved like in the last election in the USA.