If we truly care about the people in the province who will have lost their jobs, or be on a much-reduced income when the curtain falls, albeit temporarily, on this awful period, then we had better be prepared to share with them.
It is not morally conscionable to have the veil of COVID-19 lifted to reveal a scene where all those who had publicly funded jobs BC (before coronavirus) simply continue as before with the same income and benefits, and most of those who were not public servants are on the breadline.
Maintaining those public salaries and benefits from a continuum of much reduced to zero revenues derived from anything Newfoundland and Labrador trades is clearly going to drive us further into the financial abyss that has reduced us to sending begging letters to Ottawa.
Clearly we need a new political, social, and civic contract in which everything is on the table, including commitments to collective agreements, pensions, etc.
This will take persuasive, transparent, and effective leadership.
My hope is that such leaders are hiding their various lights under assorted bushels, but I doubt this. As a private citizen, I am painfully aware that the dialogues and solutions we need will not come from government given that their (politicians and civil servants) collective natural instinct is to preserve the status quo.
I am at a loss as to how we the citizenry might gather to craft a creative way forward that reverses the attempts at a way backward that we are currently locked into.
Perhaps this newspaper would care to host a virtual citizen’s forum to discuss such matters?
Bill Radford,
St. John’s
