Right in the centre -Time to re-evaluate

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Published on Friday, September 16, 2022

By Ken Waddell

Neepawa Banner & Press

Pierre Poilievre won the leadership contest in overwhelming fashion. He won 330 of the 338 seats across Canada. He won 70 per cent of the popular vote. His outstanding win shows that the Conservative party of Canada is very much ready for a change in how we do government.

I believe that many Canadians agree that governments need to  back off in a lot of areas.

I have been pondering some areas where we perhaps need to ask why governments do what they do.

Although it is a provincial, not federal, area, why do governments register marriages? I can see that church or faith based organizations might want to record marriages, but why does government have to do that? Why do governments  license marriage commissioners, priests and ministers? Any two people who wish to form a legal marriage can do so simply by living as a couple for six months. I am not hard set on the government registering marriages issue, but it seems like a waste of government time and resources.

In Poilievre’s victory speech, he issued a very catching phrase saying that Canadians don’t need the government to run their lives, they need a government who can run a passport office. He could have added to the list by including the immigration office, which is reported to be hundreds of thousands of applications behind. Canada Health is floundering in messaging and methodology. Why do we have provincial and federal food inspectors? Why can we not fix food inspection regulations so we can export food from province to province? Some would even argue why we need two levels in Agricultural departments, but perhaps that’s a step too far.

I have also read that a large percentage of the increase in jobs over the past two years has been government jobs. That is puzzling, as I am sure that increases in government employment hasn’t been in direct patient health care, which would have been more beneficial and acceptable to the public.

It’s a small thing, but why do we have to put down sex or gender on forms and surveys? If it doesn’t matter if you are female or male or another designation, why does it have to be asked on forms and surveys? Speaking of surveys, and no insult meant to anyone, but do we really need to have Statistics Canada? If a company or government department wants to know something, perhaps they could hire a private polling firm to find out what they need to know.

Pierre Poilievre is calling for smaller government and I agree. I personally believe we should sell the CBC and have constantly said so. I think a strong case could be made to eliminate, or very much scale down, the CRTC as well. Hundreds of people work at the CRTC, deciding who can and cannot broadcast on radio, TV and internet, as well as what they can broadcast. It’s expensive censorship at best and a waste of time and effort at most.

Governments should only do for its citizens what they can’t do for themselves, such as military and national defence, homeland security, policing, tax collection and international diplomacy. A case can be made for a food inspection system, but many government activities could be scaled back. As Pierre says, smaller governments make for bigger citizens.

It will be an interesting ride over the next two years as the Trudeau Liberals try to escape the wave of opposition headed up and represented by Poilievre. The people have spoken loudly, with both a protest and a warning.

Disclaimer: The views expressed in this column are the writer’s personal views and are not to be taken as being the view of the Banner & Press staff.