Letters to the Editor

Winnipeg Free Press - PRINT EDITION

Letter of the Day

Valuing our public sector

Posted: 05/30/2012 1:00 AM | Comments: 0

WINNIPEG, MB - Lord Nelson School student Sara Burazor helps Manitoba Education Minister Nancy Allan prepare a plant to be put in a garden infront of school on Monday, May, 28th, 2012.. Allan helped children plant and toured the garden created by students and teachers with support from a provincial Education for Sustainable Development Grant. Photo by Cole Breiland/ WInnipeg Free Press

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It's easy and simplistic to blame the public sector for all the economic ills in Canadian society, as Jock Finlayson attempts to do in his May 29 column, Cost of the public sector in Canada.

But simple and easy critiques are often misleading and always without content or context. The fact is Canadians decided a long time ago on a number of things we feel are important to us and should be provided publicly so they are available to everyone. Those things include clean and safe drinking water, a public and fully accessible health-care system, a high-quality education system from kindergarten to university, safe streets and communities, good infrastructure and a social safety net in case we fall into hard times. Finlayson may not think these services are important, but his members, the businesses of B.C. and their counterparts in Manitoba take advantage of them every day.

We've also decided in Canada to have a mixed economy, some private sector and some public. And together we all pay our fair share for the services we all enjoy in the public sector -- except for the very rich who pay little or no taxes and Mr. Finlayson's business members who pay far less than the rest of us.

Maybe we should be having a different discussion in this country, one about who is paying their fair share to enjoy the standard of living that all of us have worked for.

CANDACE MAXYMOWICH

Vita

Republished from the Winnipeg Free Press print edition May 30, 2012 A13

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