Time to marshall forces to face impending changes

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It's the calm before the storm. The turbulence brewing over Ottawa is set to spread throughout the nation, scattering the broken bits of Canada's poor and vulnerable form the Queen Charlotte Islands to the farthest reaches of the northern territories and the salty ebb and flow of the Atlantic Ocean.

It's time for reform.

Not only has Ottawa set the wheels in motion to revamp (and lessen its financial commitment to) the country's social security net, it has put the nation on alert at to its plan to impose some of the deepest cuts in spending that Canada has ever known. an ill wind is blowing and it may be enough to loosen the tenuous grip many of us have on the life preserves we're come to need for our very survival. The individual economic situations, good or bad, to which we've become accustomed are about to change. In Canada, there is no looking back.

"There is no doubt that we are going to have to look at real spending cuts - greater spending cuts than ever before," said Federal Finance Minister Paul Martin on Oct. 17. He promised he will be swinging the axe in all directions, sparing no one but perhaps seniors on fixed incomes.

In fact, there will be very few areas in our lives that will be exempt form cuts. Martin wants the 1996-97 deficit down to $25 billion. The 1993-94 deficit was $43 billion. It will be a long, hard row to hoe.

Programs we have come to depend upon will be reduced or eliminated. Never mind tightening our collective belt, we're facing a constrictive, restrictive future, and there's little or nothing that can save us from it. a memo released the day before Lloyd Axworthy, Minister of Human Resources and Western Development, released his discussion paper on social security effort, foreshadowed the coming federal government's budget intentions. The leaked document suggested the government's secret plan was to cut $7.5 billion from our social programs. Confirmation was fond in the discussion paper itself, with a sly one-sentence aside that said further cuts would be found in the 1995 budget, due out next February, if it were necessary to achieve the government's deficit target. There are no if, ands or buts about it, cut they will.

Has the call for public consultation in the reform process been a red herring and meant to keep a nation busy while the scythe is being sharpened in Ottawa? Does that mean we should stand back, thinking our future has been predetermined by a bunch of federal bureaucrats?

In the coming months, the nation's less fortunate and struggling, the unemployed and unemployable, single parents, working, poor, sick, disabled, and children are expecting the better able of us to take to the front lines. We will be expected to be the social activists who will fight for the preservation of programs, present the cjanges necessary to keep them from sinking into the quagmire known as federal social reform and budget. It's our obligation, our responsibility, to take on these duties without compunction or hesitation, because the people who are most in need of these programs are often the people without the resources to fight for themselves.

There's still time to say: "Look here, we will not become a nation of sick and weary, homeless and helpless. The health and well-being of our people is still a sacred trust that Ottawa can't shove under the carpet when it becomes a difficult burden to bear. We have a standard, and we won't stoop below it."