👀 💡 Here's a really small, human story about what the massive slashing of jobs from a national public service looks and feels like.
I lived in Ottawa during the massive publicservice cutbacks led by the Stephen Harper Conservative Party of Canada (CPC) government. This government administration was defined by its antagonistic opposition to the scientists and experts working within the federal bureacracy.
✂ Conservatives cut 26,000 jobs in the public service in less than four years, closing nine Veterans Affairs offices. The CPC banned terms like 'climate change' and muzzled researchers.
The way the CPC did the cuts was particularly insidious and terrorizing. Workers in the federal government were told that they all needed to re-apply to their jobs, and that they shouldn't assume they would have their jobs for much longer.
✂For example in a team of 10, two jobs were going to be cut. But who was going to be cut was unknown. The result was that everyone felt like they were next.
The CPC had whipped up so much public hatred about underpaid and overworked federal public sector employees, that this specific terror was must-see theatre for the CPC base. The cruelty of this process was the point.
The result was that nearly all public service workers in Ottawa felt like they were about to lose their jobs. The public sector is 20% of the city's workforce but its impact was felt by literally everyone in Ottawa.
And unfortunately, having worked for Conservative officials and lobbyists in my past life, one of the things I observed was their specific inability to think about second- and third-order impacts. Deeply felt Ideologies about 'government waste' and 'attacking big government' made it difficult or impossible for them to think about how crude, blunt instruments like massive, indiscriminate job cuts ripple out, and impact the wider economy.
The result was consumer spending in Ottawa contracted, shrank... and then disappeared overnight. Small mom and pop retail stores, residential services, and restaurants started going under.
Small-business contractors and consultants that worked with the public sector also went bust.
In the quiet bedroom community I lived in, populated mostly by federal public service workers and contractors, the residences literally emptied out. The 'for sale' signs went up. At one point, more than 200 places in my compact community of mostly executive terrace homes were vacant.
People like me had to literally flee Ottawa.
The stress was palpable in the air during the four years of cutbacks. The going out of business signs popped up everywhere.
A glut of homes for sale in Ottawa drove down the prices for those desparate to sell. The Ottawa residential market tanked, and many of us had to sell for way below asking.
There were no jobs so there were few takers even with these lower home prices. My community became a ghost town.
Make no mistake, the knock-on effects of massive government job cuts will be felt by *everyone*. Even you.
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