Wait for riches

The Free Trade Agreement and fantastic globalized trade improvements have given Canada greater prosperity. So say our Canadian corporate heads and our government leaders of the last 20 years. And that is true for about the 20 per cent upper-income part of our population.

Not so for the rest of us, and certainly not for the 20 per cent at the lowest income level and the poor. Wage levels, infrastructure, social assistance, unemployment insurance, minimum wages, housing assistance, Aboriginal needs, cultural funding, education funding ... all these are reduced to promote corporate prosperity and well-being.

Why? Because our governments, Tom D'Aquino, David Emerson, the Fraser Institute and their Canada-U.S. branch plant CEO friends insist that the Canadian poor must lower their short-term expectations. They must delay their self-gratification for some future nirvana when we shall all be competitive with Bangladesh and Shanghai.

Actually, we may all have to wait until we have killed the Taliban, Osama bin Laden, and all their angry, multiplying disciples.

Jacob Rempel