The Carney government's focus on economic development and foreign relations to the exclusion of almost all else is seen again, as its war against the Canadian civil service -- and nearly every Canadian cultural agency in particular -- continues. CBC News reports that no less than 3000 Parks Canada staffers have been told their jobs may soon be redundant. Parks Canada is now busy laying off the wardens who protect wildlife in the national parks -- something one might think of as fundamental and irreplaceable. Jobs of more than half the Parks Canada staff are under threat in Prince Edward Island alone, where the role of the agency in tourism, culture, and history plays an immense part in the island's tourism industryA couple of years ago I wrote a piece for Canada's History on the reconciliation agenda at Parks Canada's Historic Sites Branch. One thing that was not really part of the story but which struck me repeatedly as I interviewed Parks historians, display technicians and others was their sense of how much of the institutional capacity of the agency had never been recovered after a round of funding cuts as far back as 2012.
These ones look more severe.
The Carney government talks a lot about sovereignty. But some days it is hard to say what we are going to be sovereign over, besides a bunch of new pipelines and data centres.
