Federal cuts taking toll on city, region

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 22/05/2013 (4767 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

As the federal Conservatives continue to hand out fiscal marching orders to government departments, the ongoing cuts to national programs and services are taking a tremendous toll on Brandon and western Manitoba.

The hacking and slashing began a year ago when the employees at the Riding Mountain National Park learned that 15 staff members would be affected by budget cuts — eight positions were to be eliminated, while another seven were to be reduced in term.

In addition to the staff changes, the federal budget cuts claimed Manitoba’s largest network of cross-country ski trails as the park was no longer able to maintain its 218-kilometre winter trail system.

Then in February of this year, we learned that eight district Veterans Affairs offices, including one in Brandon, would be closed — though the office in Shilo was to remain open. As part of a reduction that trimmed 78 government jobs across the country, Brandon’s two Veterans Affairs case managers are expected to get cut when the office closes next year.

A few months later, it was announced that Citizenship and Immigration Canada had decided to enact policy changes that would eliminate Brandon from the list of communities that hold citizenship ceremonies.

Over the past decade, typically two ceremonies have been held in Brandon schools each year — one in the fall and one in the spring.

Now, however, immigrants who are within a 300-km radius of Winnipeg will have to travel to the provincial capital to be sworn in as new Canadians.

And the hits kept on coming. Earlier this month, a Canada Post spokesman confirmed that all local-to-local mailboxes in smaller communities were being removed, leaving only forward mailboxes as the Crown corporation looks to centralize its mail delivery system.

As part of those changes, mail that was previously picked up locally and sorted in Brandon will now be picked up and transported to Winnipeg, where Canada Post has a large automated sorter. As the Sun reported, the change will likely mean that local letter mail dropped in Brandon will take two days to deliver rather than one.

The move was prompted after the Conference Board of Canada suggested Canada Post stands to lose more than $1 billion per year by 2020.

Though no local Canada Post employees will lost their jobs, according to Canada Post spokesman John Caines, it’s likely that these positions won’t be refilled once people retire or leave the corporation. It also could translate into delays along the postal chain.

And then there’s the latest unpopular announcement. As part of further nationwide cuts, beef grazing systems research at the Brandon Research Centre will be moving to Lacombe, Alta. As the Sun first reported, job cuts from the Brandon centre include a scientist — who has been offered a chance to transfer — two technicians, six general labourers and computer services staff. What will happen to the 800-head cattle herd is unknown at this point.

This is a highly disappointing blow to a beef cattle and forages program that has been part of Brandon’s federal research farm since it began 127 years ago. The research centre is one of the original five experimental farms established by the Canadian government in 1886.

As Winnipeg Free Press columnist Laura Rance noted on Saturday, there are 22 Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada positions being cut in Manitoba.

“The cuts come less than a month after the Canadian Forage and Grassland Association wrote to federal Agriculture Minister Gerry Ritz to say more forage research is needed, not less,” Rance wrote. “It’s been obvious for a while retiring federal scientists were not being replaced and the scientists still on staff were no longer allowed the funds to attend conferences to share their findings or interact with producers.”

Of course, for all these service cuts, there have been excuses and/or explanations offered.

In Riding Mountain during the shoulder season and off-season, RMNP Supt. Robert Sheldon said federal resources “will be aligned to better reflect the number of visitors.”

Services for veterans would actually “improve,” with the closure of the Brandon office, Brandon-Souris Conservative MP Merv Tweed told the Sun, as many applications and a lot of the services being requested “are being done so online, through email” — this in spite of the fact that the remaining older vets may not even have a computer.

Mr. Tweed was also “99 per cent certain” that Brandon would host citizenship ceremonies in the future, though he did not specify the source of his optimism.

The partial loss of postal services in Westman was considered necessary, and even reasonable, given that “more people are going to different forms of communication, as well as parcel and packages, as opposed to letter mail,” according to Canada Post spokesman John Caines.

As for the loss of the beef program in Brandon, Tweed was disappointed with the federal decision, but — again — optimistic that the BRC will gain more opportunities in grains and oilseeds in the future.

While our member of Parliament’s optimism may be well-founded, it’s difficult to look past the fact that Brandon and Westman is hemorrhaging federal jobs and services.

We see nothing particularly uplifting about that.