Last week, a letter to the editor informed readers about the ever-growing danger of something bigger than just a nuisance wrapping tentacles around the sound wholesomeness of Canada. And that’s the smothering Nanny State.
Unlike a real nanny, who may care for children and keep the house ship shape, the Nanny State looms over the people like a vulture over prey, destroying freedom and the will of people to take responsibility for themselves and their actions. The letter last week said government officials troll through community papers looking for building code infractions to fine people. What the letter didn’t say is the agencies with the time to do such a task are not working to increase safety, but rather to pay for their own bloated departments with better than private sector benefits and wages.
It’s about control, not safety. The Nanny State has become so all-encompassing it’s hard to imagine life without it, but, so I’m told, people lived in the past without government edicts condemning levels of salt intake, state approved methods of stress management or trolls looking to nail community volunteers with fines. At one time, people took better care of themselves and relied on the government for less. The Nanny State doesn’t just impose itself on the workplace, or upon community volunteers, it seeks out and crushes freedom and common sense wherever it may still exist.
The fantasy that government can grow unhindered permanently is a scary prospect, reminiscent of the guiding outlook of failed states of the not-too-distant past. The idea that government should have its hand in every pot and its eye on every activity is a nightmare.
The people not in government become the ones called upon and coerced, perhaps by building code infraction fines, high taxes or other extortions, into paying for the bureaucratic beer belly of government.
If Canada is to remain a country of freedom, it’s time for some serious cuts and fiscal prudence, much more serious and much more prudent than were passed in recent provincial and federal budgets. From the state broadcaster to politicians’ salaries and ludicrous amounts of arts funding and even education, it’s not hard to see where the paring knife should start.
Sure some guidance on safety could be handy, but as anyone who has worked in any industry for any length of time knows, safety policy and practices seldom match up perfectly, there are exceptions to every rule and many safety rules are about appearances rather than actual safety.
So on this fine Canada Day long weekend, take a refreshing gasp of patriotic air, it may be the last before Nanny State suffocates the free-willed completely.
