Well the filibuster is finished and the Conservatives have gotten their way. There is nothing new in that. It is something we will have to face over the next few years. If this government wants to do something, it will do it. Still, the opposition did the right thing by opposing this bad bill, with everything it had. It is a bad law and a bad precedent for the rest of the economy.
This government is sending a signal that it is open season on pensions, wages and benefits. The Conservatives are saying that working people should be thankful for a job and to not question their betters over what pittance they are given. The strategy of the government is clear, scapegoat the last group of middle class workers in this country with good benefits, public service employees. It is pitting private sector workers, who have already lost their benefits against public sector employees who have not and using resentment as their weapon. If not stopped, the entire middle class will be reduced to an insecure future of few benefits, low wages and no pensions.
Meanwhile, the government is moving ahead with tax cuts to profitable corporations and for the investor class. It is simultaneously shrinking the middle class and enriching the ruling class of this country. Conservatives often like to say that socialism is shared poverty. It seems that conservatives don't mind shared poverty, as long as their friends in the owner class are exempted from it.
That is what we are fighting against. That is why the opposition must continue to oppose this government. That is why the filibuster, though doomed from the start, was important. It was a marker, given by the NDP to the working class, promising that their voice will not be silenced in the government's headlong race to the bottom.
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