NiCHE, the Network in Canadian History and Environment, has a new article about about how the Carney government is decommissioning the Parks Canada library, a collection of some 200,000 items that includes:
everything from wildlife and vegetation inventories of national parks to visitor surveys, historical reports, early provisional master plans, reports related to the establishment of various types of protected areas by Parks Canada, and interpretive plans and reports dating from the 1960s onwards. There are also town and a range of other types of planning reports that address areas within protected areas and themes within those protected areas.
"Decommissioning" turns out to mean getting rid of -- shredding, if necessary -- for some paltry savings "to meet up to 15 per cent in savings targets over three years" in the government's ongoing cut our way to sovereignty initiative.
Amid the endless cutting of heritage, environmental, and cultural agencies of the federal government, it's important to remember that Mr Carney, smart and charming and articulate as he is, spent his career as a millionaire working with billionaires, and the billionaire worldview just ain't like ours. In a world where we need the Westons and Thomsons just to preserve essential items of Canadiana, it seems the cultural part of sovereignty just is not a public priority right now.
