I was having some bad flashbacks over the past few days after the Sask Party released their budget last week that included an unexpected, unnecessarily cruel cut.
But instead of cutting funding to public libraries and threatening to destroy a 100-year old, world-leading system like they did two years ago, the Sask Party targeted Cornwall Alternative School, a school-of-last-resort with a nearly 50-year history of helping kids who were unable to succeed in regular high schools for one reason or another.
Luckily, it didn’t take a month of province-wide advocacy to reverse the cuts as this time the Sask Party backtracked within a week.
It’s not a perfect parallel but it’s instructive to look at some of the similarities in these two cuts that ended up being reversed due to public outcry.
* Both cuts were relatively minor, basically a rounding error in the grand scheme of a fifteen billion dollar provincial budget. Libraries were cut by $5 million dollars, Cornwall School was cut by just under $1 million. But, at the same time, had they not been reversed, the cuts would’ve killed the things they funded, not just forced them to “tighten up their belt”.
* The cuts to public libraries were unexpected because the Sask Party was the one who had provided funding only a few years earlier to create a province-wide system; Cornwall Alternative School’s cuts were unexpected because they had an agreement with the province for funding through 2020.
* Even some activists who were ostensibly on the side of libraries groused that the only reason that libraries were saved is because middle class people showed up to protest while other services that were arguably of more benefit to the less fortunate among us – ranging from STC to paying funeral expenses for social services clients – either remained axed or only got a small portion of their funding restored.
This is, of course, bullshit.
It may have been mostly middle class people who showed up for the “Drop Everything and Read” rallies that helped scare convince the Sask Party to restore library funding, but, like Cornwall School, public libraries probably do more than *any other public institution* to provide a welcoming, accepting, trusting environment for people who have nowhere else to go. Those troubled kids who might tell a principal to “Go fuck himself” in a regular school setting could find a home at Cornwall Alternative School and that same kid who felt hassled, judged and mistreated by retail outlets, their family and even by social services, could find a level of comfort in a public library they might not find in any other part of their life.
* There’s a strange parallel in how the Sask Party seems to keep making (then reversing) these decisions without any consultation, warning or apparently looking at any sort of data which, no matter your political stripes, should give you pause.
* There’s also a parallel that they seem to target important services that disproportionately are used by people on the lower-end of the socioeconomic scale.
* To be fair, I suspect people involved in libraries and in the Cornwall Alternative School both know intuitively how important their work is but, I also suspect for that reason, we aren’t always the best political advocates, especially with a government that doesn’t see the world through the same lens.
* Part of that different view is that the value of the work the public libraries and places like Cornwall Alternative School can’t be easily measured in terms of quarterly reports or annual budgets or even four-year election cycles. Those positive impacts happen over lifetimes but, with that said, there are clear long-term economic impacts in terms of reducing crime, social services costs, welfare benefits and so on *if* you are willing to take the long view.
* This recurring pattern of attacking services that help people in our society who struggle the most and are least able to defend themselves makes me wonder how many people who sit in our Legislature (on both sides of the aisle) regularly interact with anyone who in any way, shape or form, would be someone who might even need a place like Cornwall Alternative School?
And though I think of the NDP as much less likely to attack the less-well-off among us, I think about this question in regards to their MLA’s too. Now, I don’t know every MLAs’ bio inside and out but here are some names that jump to mind. NDP Leader Ryan Meili lived and worked as a doctor in Saskatoon’s inner-city so he’s the first name that jumps to mind. Heck, he wrote a book about how society needs to change its focus to proactively addressing the root causes of social issues instead of reactively paying for them.
Who else? On the NDP side, I think they have a handful of former social workers, a teacher who worked with inner-city students (not to mention that NDP MLAs tend to be more likely to represent inner-city urban neighbourhoods or from northern communities where they’re more likely to interact with people who are on the lower-end of the socioeconomic ladder.)
On the other side of the aisle, someone like current Social Services Minister, Paul Merriman who was Executive Director of the Saskatoon Food Bank must’ve left his office to interact with the people using the food bank occasionally, right?
Heck, an article I dug up from 2009 has a quote from then-ED of the Saskatoon Food Bank, Paul Merriman, where he says:
The students say their sample size of 50 households per neighbourhood is too small to be considered accurate but Merriman says the group’s findings [that lower income people donated more to the Food Bank than more affluent people during a charity drive] aren’t that startling.
He says lower- and middle-class neighbourhoods have a long tradition of giving to the food bank.
“They understand the value of it,” he said. “If they were ever on the food bank or some kind of assistance and they got off it, the first thing they want to do is give back.”
In comparison, he says people in upper-class neighbourhoods or communities in rural areas are less likely to be familiar with the effects of hunger and urban poverty.
“It’s not in their face, so they don’t feel they have to give as much,” Merriman said.
Who else on the Sask Party side? Again, I don’t know their bios very well but Mark Docherty jumps to mind having worked at the Paul Dojack Youth Centre, Thunderbird Lodge among various other similar human service organizations. Scanning through their caucus bios quickly, Christine Tell was a psychiatric nurse then a police officer and I suspect that brought her into regular contact with less fortunate people. Don Morgan was chair of the Legal Aid Commission. Joe Hargraves was a corrections officer. Fred Bradshaw was on the founding board of the Northeast Early Childhood Intervention program. Muhammad Fiaz volunteers with an organization called Humanity First. Nadine Wilson was a social worker and corrections officer. Tina Beaudry-Mellor served on various boards including Regina Transition House and the United Way. Todd Goudy is a Baptist pastor.
* So yeah, that was painful to wade through all the Sask Party MLA bios (partly because there’s so many of them – the 2020 election can’t come soon enough!) but I’m actually a bit surprised at how many have had jobs and volunteer roles where one would assume they came into contact with people who come from less fortunate circumstances. I mean, that doesn’t tell you the whole story – just because you serve on the board of the Regina Transition House, it doesn’t mean you’re interacting with their clients regularly (if at all.) Same with jobs like police officer or corrections officer – there are two kinds of people who fill these types of roles and some are good and some aren’t so good.
* I guess that leads to my final thought – out of all the MLAs we have – most of whom are doctors or lawyers or farmers or businesspeople (yes, I know those last two overlap!) or other middle-class and upper-middle class professions, it’d be interesting to know who came from the most hardscrabble background (but I also know that doesn’t guarantee empathy and understanding. In fact, I’ll generalize that Sask Party MLAs who rise from lower circumstances probably see that as “pulling themselves up by their bootstraps” and wonder why others don’t do the same, disregarding other wider societal factors that may have helped them succeed – everything from supportive family structures to the general advantages of white privilege to the dash of luck/timing/coincidence that may have given them a leg up that someone else didn’t have.)
Anyhow, to end, I’ll say how fortunate I consider myself to work in a public library where, every single day, I get to know and interact with people from the widest range of citizens – from well-off retirees who happily chat about their latest European vacation to troubled youth who are the exact reason that a place like Cornwall Alternative School is so necessary.
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