4

--Page 2, Jammary 7, 1979 Sunday News,

‘speckulations —

by Peter Speck.

Sometimes I wonder ‘who's the master of the country -. the taxpayers or the civil servants. Recently the premier of the province laid down the law that no municipality was to raise the tax levy or their expense level over five per cent.

There were howls from every. municipality ~

imaginable at the arrogance of the provincial

government.

_ One particular... how!,. from a municipal civil servant whose name doesn’t matter very much (be was echoed by others, from ‘other municipalities) in- terested me. This man said that if the proposed limitations on nicipal spending were 16 come into effect, ‘the /public would have to ¢ of services’.

ct a reduction

at.interests me is what

he didn’t say more than what —

he did say. He didn’t say, for instance, -- that his municipality would lay off> any bureaucrats. He didn’t Say that the municipality would have to tighten its belt and come to grips with the rampant featherbedding

practises that make many municipal work practises a job of - and on - the tax- payers. -

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He didn't-say—anything about 4he arrogance of CUPE and. other -such unions, which continually threaten the taxpayers with withdrawal of services that the taxpayers have bought and paid for with hard- earned tax dollars. And he didn’t say a thing about the justifiability of the govern- ment’s position, and the taxpayer's complaints.

I'm worried - and I think, rightly so - that as the revolt against the © cancerous growth of the bureaucracy takes undeniable form and strength, and as the tax- payers of the municipalities and the country attack the waste and mismanagement and bungling of government in the only way they can - by withholding money - that the bureaucracy is going to do just that - withhold services from taxpayers - rather than come to the root cause of the problem - overstaffing and inefficient management.

Saddied with the politics of the civil service, traditions of never-firing- anyone and the very. strong and organized civil service unions, what municipal or

- governmental administ{yator

has the courage to lay off public servants and tighten up to supply the public, when the public are disorganized and _ not unionized? On one side he has the organizations that I have mentioned, fighting

- him every step of the way.

And they represent his colleagues and his secretary, and in many cases, himself. They are powerful, well- organized, very articulate, and he knows, if he is to stay in the public service that they are going to have to live together for a long time.

On the other side is the public: - poorly organized, forced to campaign on their own free time, and totally unfamiliar with the

burcaucrat's territory. Who ~ ev

a cS

Who is the master?

is he going to heed? Do I need to answer that?

This is a dilemma that confronts the taxpayers at

a

Save up to 50%.

on pretty party fashions

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every level of government. apd in universities and our school system, and any other | place where the government payroll pays the- piper. total of 43 per cent of the

gross

,

national product passes through the hand of the bureaucracy here in Canada. That is far too much. David Ingram, North. Shore tax expert, says bluntly that we have enough civil servants in Canada for a nation of 86 million people. .

In any type of bargaining Situation - between the public and the civil service, the public always comes off second best. After all, who represents our interests at” the ‘bargaining table? Any Situation where public administrators sit and negotiate salary and security and other such matters with public service unions is not a negotiating session at all, in my opinion. The public is not adequately represented in these ‘bargaining’

. sessions. |

I think, as I've said here before, that the civil servants are managing the govern- ment, and not. vice versa. The tail is wagging the dog. Ron Huntington, MP for Capilano, says that one theoretical solution to the problem of the fatness of the bureaucracy would simply be to reduee the spending of every level of government by 10 per cent. This, he says, mighteliminate10 percent of the bodies and 90 per cent of the fat.

I don’t think the civil service unions - whether they represent teachers, or janitors, or ‘bureaucrats’ - will permit this. They are so powerful, and operate with so little opposition, that I am afraid that the civil services will continue to lurch on in its over-satisfied and in- sulated way, and the 10 per cent will come off the dog - and not the tail.

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