Alan Pickersgill - The View From Here

(December 2) - The layoffs are still coming at us, fast and furious. Last week Linamar called out another couple of hundred people who used to have jobs. Their work is not going south this time. The economy below the border is in worse shape than ours. Linamar jobs are melting in the same puddle as the automobile industry.

Love it or hate it, this is the industry that brought relative prosperity to hundreds of thousands of families in southern Ontario. Many of them right here in Guelph. From Guelph Products to Linamar, Guelph workers make parts for cars. They make them for Chrysler, for Ford, for GM. They make them for Toyota and Honda. Wherever cars are assembled in Ontario, it’s a good bet that parts made right here go into them.

Linamar is the second largest automobile parts producer in Canada, second only to Magna. They are suffering now because General Motors and its cousins are suffering. There is a general perception that the American car companies are in trouble because they kept building cars no one wanted to buy. This is a simplistic truth that doesn’t reflect a complicated reality. Too many people south of the border couldn’t afford to buy the cars. They were overextended by a financial system that could not sustain itself.

What should the government do about it? Should it provide money to bail out the auto industry? The very idea makes a lot of people howl with rage. Many of them applauded last May when the province gave Linamar $2 million to develop solar powered electric lawn mowers.

Why can we give public money to create new jobs, but not to protect old ones?

Simply giving cash to the corporations is not the answer. What we need is an infrastructure renewal program that will create jobs and bring some purchasing power back to Canadian families.

Spend some money rebuilding concrete bridges and parking garages. They are starting to fall apart after forty years of being splashed with slush and rock salt. Give money to the cities to repair roads, sewer lines and other necessities.

Invest in public transit and new forms of personal transportation. Autoworkers can assemble electric cars if someone will pay them to do it. Federal regulators should end the foolish ban on them.

Co-ops and other non-profit housing projects across the country are in desperate need of repair, but they don’t have the money to do it. Start a program to upgrade existing housing stock and build new homes.

Loosen the EI system to help unemployed workers. Negotiate fair trade agreements that protect Canadian jobs while helping workers in foreign countries. When the economy gets going again, buy the things your neighbour helps to make. Look for the Made in Canada label.

This is the sort of stimulus the economy needs. Barack Obama seems to recognize it and has promised to go big when he takes office. Our government is keeping its head in the sand. It’s not that last week’s economic statement failed to address the crisis. It didn’t even make an attempt. In the face of the worst financial crisis in modern times, the Prime Minister and the Finance Minister are paralyzed. They don’t know what to do, so they do nothing. They hope the future will fix itself. It never does.

Stephen Harper, well known as a control freak, is losing his grip. By this time next week, we might see a government that more accurately reflects the will of the people. Sixty-two per cent voted against the Conservatives, but we still found ourselves under their rule. Most Canadians outside Quebec had either the Liberals or the NDP as their first choice. The two parties might now form a coalition. It could be the best hope we have of surviving this recession with the least possible damage.

One of two possible side effects will come out of these very strange two weeks. Stéphane Dion could escape becoming only the second Liberal leader who failed to become Prime Minister. Or Stephen Harper will be forced to mend his ways. To survive as Prime Minister he will have to negotiate with the opposition parties and stop making every vote an all or nothing vote of confidence. Can he do it?

One way or another, there’s hope for the country after all.

# posted by Alan Pickersgill @ 6:31 PM