IT IS TIME TO DITCH SOME GOVERNMENTAL ENTITIES...

 For example the Department of Veterans Affairs is long past its Best Before Date and so is Canada Post. 

DVA  for another time save for saying the Volunteer Veterans from WW II are fewer by the day and today are mostly no longer with us.

With regard to the Post Office though ...no one sends mail anymore.

When Justin Trudeau came to power in 2015 he promised faithfully ...as he did for several other things...to restore door to door mail delivery.  Seven Years later we are still waiting but this is one area where his inaction has proven to be a blessing.  As I said ...no one mails anything, anymore.  Computers / Internet have mostly replaced it.

We go to the local drop off box every other day ...sometimes longer and often there is zip there...not even a flyer.  And speaking of flyers ...if we did not receive them there would be virtually nothing left to get.  In fact, I just got in from checking out the box and there was not even a flyer waiting for me and I of course I had gone there yesterday. 

But the Post Office knows full well that no one is mailing letters any more.  In fact it was not that many years back when it started to cry the poors for that very reason.  It then went headlong into the parcel business buying controlling interest in Purolator in 1993.  Prior to that, Canada Post claimed that it had to be a Crown Corporation since no private body could be trusted with the delivery of Canadian's Mail from Coast to Coast to the USA Border.

With internet and the many modern ways of communication this argument no longer holds water. And to make this same claim for parcel delivery is utter hogwash.  In fact the parcel delivery business is full of private companies delivering here and there and everywhere....Fedex, UPS, Old Dominion to name but a few.  And that does not even take into account the delivery prowess of the Amazon Behemoth.

But despite this parcel pivot of Canada Post ...it still loses money - big bucks actually,  In 1918 it lost $270 million, in 1919 a further $153 million and for 1920 the Conference Board of Canada predicted a lose of a Billion Dollars.  I tried to find what the actual amount was online but was unsuccessful but tend to think the Conference Board knows a thing or two about profit and loss.

In addition according to Wikipedia, Canada Post employs a staggering 64,000 Employees.

Would it not be great for the hard-pressed Taxpayer to get back into their own hands some of that dough?

If a political party was astute enough to call for its end I believe that one promise alone would go a long way to getting it elected or re-elected whatever the case may be.

As I See It...

'K.D. Galagher'

 

ARE THE DAYS OF THE FAMILY DOCTOR OVER ?

 Well yes they are and they have been for some time now.

I drove past our Family Medical Clinic the other day and it looked like it was part of a ghost town.  In the past, the place would have been packed...but not since Covid.

It got me to thinking...if we the patient can get by without an MD's help for 2 years + maybe it is time to consider doing so permanently.

That said, I have thought for the past many years that MDs are no longer needed...better they go into Specialties which with advances in Medicine there are more and more of. 

I have not heard from my GP for sometime now even though I have several serious health conditions. One day I called for some advice and was told that my Doctor was working from home.  Begs the question does it not...how can a Doctor work from home.  Anyway that is what I was told.

Friends of ours with serious health issues do not even have a Family Doctor but have been assigned a Nurse Practitioner and they appear to be getting by okay...medically speaking.

And when I was attending at my Doctor's office...it would usually end in being given a requisition for some test or other or in a referral to a specialist.  Nurse Practitioners can do that as well at much less cost.

The other thing we use our GP for is for prescriptions but I would argue that Pharmacists could do that and in fact are better placed to do it. 

And as we all know, for more serious complaints the GP is by-passed in favour of going directly to Emerg. 

Canadians used to bragg about how great our Health Care System is and many still do despite international studies which show our system is the pits.  Covid has exposed this reality even more. 

We need to radically reform our Health Care System as Canadians collectively grow older.  We are in big trouble now ...just wait til us Boomers get into our late 70s and 80s.  

You ain't seen nothing yet !!

As I See It...

'K.D. Galagher'

INDIAN IN THE CABINET

 By, Jody Wilson-Raybould

Your Mother got this book for me for Christmas...I know she too reminded me that I am on the Right side of things so to speak as the name of my Blog attests.  So why would I ask Santa to bring me a book written by a former Liberal Cabinet Minister?

Good Question which I will try to answer and do not worry ...the following is not a Book Review:

You may likely think the Reason that I would request this book is to get the down and dirty on the Lavalin Affair which led to her ouster from Cabinet. But no you'd be wrong since I know as well as you do what transpired with respect to this Scandal.  And the same goes with the issue of learning the inner workings of Government since I am quite familiar with that too.  Trudeau Senior got it right when he said the ordinary MP was a nobody 50 feet off Parliament Hill.  Since then this can be said of Ministers of the Crown.

So why did I want to read Ms. Wilson-Raybould's Book?

It goes back to when I was but 11 or 12 years old when I first got interested in Politics ... I was well and truly bitten at a very young age.  It was then that friend Allan Armit and I began putting up Election Signs (sometimes taking a few down) and hanging out in Election Rooms and their in Back Offices.  The old pros did not seem to mind and even seem to get a kick out of it.

So I have been steeped in politics - Riding President for the Conservatives, In Organization for the National PC Party and then working for my Member of Parliament - George Hees when he was Minister of Veterans Affairs and Minister of State for Seniors.  But the one thing I lacked was to explore the insight of someone who came to power from the outside of Canada's Political Milieu.  Jody Wilson-Raybould possessed that something.  

She was not new to politics per se - since politics is everywhere but the politics she well knew was due to her active involvement and participation in Affairs of the Assembly of First Nations. She explains in her book how it was like Night and Day different from the way things are handled here in Ottawa.

She explains the difference as follows: 

The Liberal Party and indeed All Federal Parties focus is on keeping and holding onto power ...which causes them to move away from core values and principles they profess earlier on.

Indigenous Politics, in contrast, is focused on the collective way of doing things better - seeking consensus not division and one up-man-ship.  Securing the best outcome for their people. 

The former Justice Minister does not say so specifically but her analysis applies equally to any and all Parties throughout the world that labour in our ever-becoming more delicate Democracies.  The bottom-line here is that it would be far better we adopted the Indigenous Way of Conciliatory Politics. Sadly, it will not happen at least in my time.

To better illustrate what I mean here is to reproduce the following passage from her Book which deals with the time after she had left Cabinet and was sitting in the House of Commons as an Independent Member of Parliament:

Looking around at the empty posturing and game playing that is unfortunately all too dominant, I feel like I am in an environment that has lost its soul.  The sense of purpose that many hard-working and well-meaning members bring to Ottawa when first elected is obscured in an environment that feels more like the worst reality show than a place where people are truly trying to effect the best change for Canadians.

Amen to that.

Though I share Ms. Wilson-Raybould's opinion on this I do not though share her Progressive Views on many and numerous other topics.  For instance she states in her book that one of her proudest moments was in seeing the MAID Legislation pass into law.  MAID of course stands for  Medical Assistance in Dying which is anathema to me.  As a Christian I view life as Sacred and would think that given her Aboriginal Background that she too would be of that belief.

So I would never vote for her but do respect that when the time came to Protect the Rule of Law here in Canada she stood up to the Powers That Be and paid the price for having done so.  It also makes me wonder that had she come from the common background for politicians would she have made that same decision.

I fear not.

In closing it brings to mind an exchange I had with another at a Seniors' Discussion Group.  He had often razed me for being Christian while he professed to be an Athiest.  I could handle the razing and often the issue of MAID came up - he was a big proponent because he said no one needs to suffer pain as part of dying.  I said I agreed with part of what he said - in that no one needed to suffer pain and that medications have advanced to the point where that is not necessary.  He would shrug that off.

Move ahead a few weeks and he led of the day's discussion bemoaning the fact that his mother-in-lay in a nursing home had been cut off her pain medication because our Province made it very hard to prescribe due to its misuse in the streets.  "She was suffering" according to my friend and that it "was not right nor fair".

I shot up my hand and said to Him - 'you have the solution...it is called MAID'.

The colour drained from his face and he never raised the issue with me thereafter.

As I See It...

'K.D. Galagher'