Publius takes a look at the apparently intractable problem of ever-expanding government:
Having children spend a large portion of their time being indoctrinated in the latest environmentalist propaganda is not education. It does, however, give employment to teachers who have no real knowledge to impart to their wards. These warm bodies who are ignorant of math, science, history, literature or art are useful in that their pay stubs are revenue conduits for the teachers unions. The interests of the unions, in having lots of warm bodies in front of chalkboards, trumps the needs of children in receiving an actual education.Now firing the chalk wielding Greenistas seems like a sensible cost saving measure. That's waste being cut right their. The spin directed to the media will not be that an incompetent is being fired, no it will be that a trusted guardian of your children's future is being thrown out into the colds of the Canadian winter. There is no waste in government because every dollar spent is useful to someone, though not always the end user of the service.
This is why almost all campaigns to find savings in government fail. There will always be someone to yelp loud enough that some treasured aspect of our Canadian way of life if being threatened by the heartless right-wing barbarians. But let's say you get yourself a real cold blooded right-wing bastard in power. Sometimes it happens. He shrugs off the cries of the professional whiners and cuts with glee! 5% 10% 15% Perhaps even more!
Were I through some grotesque accident to become dictator of Canada, my first decree would be to abolish the parasitical public-sector unions. Those barroom Bolsheviks would fuss and pout, of course; but what do I care? I'm the dictator, remember?