Public service job cuts are a self-inflicted wound that affects everyone

Indeed, in Mark Carney’s version of “nation-building,” we’re expected to respond to Trump’s job-killing tariffs with anger and raised elbows, even as we merrily dance on the graves of extinguished public sector jobs — like the 40,000 public sector jobs cut in Carney’s budget earlier this month.

Let’s start by acknowledging that losing a job is as devastating to a public sector worker as it is to an autoworker, with similarly demoralizing ripple effects throughout their families and communities.

But the loss doesn’t just affect the workers. It affects us all.

The notion that public sector job losses are of little consequence — or even something to be applauded — is based on the dubious assumption that we’re all better off with smaller government and a leaner public sector.

Business interests insist that the private sector generates wealth, while the public sector simply spends that wealth, draining the country’s resources.

It’s not hard to see why business interests relentlessly push this self-serving narrative, but it’s fundamentally wrong. The private sector has no monopoly on wealth creation.

The public sector is also a major contributor in the creation of national wealth, notes economist Marjorie Griffin Cohen, professor emeritus at Simon Fraser University.

Our public programs, paid for through our taxes, provide us with health care, education and social supports that equip us to be an effective and productive workforce, able to compete with the workforces of other nations.

Indeed, there’s ample evidence that countries with large public sectors and generous social programs — like the Nordic nations of northern Europe — do as well or better in international competitiveness than nations with small governments and lean public sectors.

Two Nordic countries rank in the top 10 of international competitiveness, according to the authoritative International Institute for Management Development (IMD), based in Lausanne, Switzerland.

By comparison, the U.S., with its low taxes and meagre social programs, ranks 13^th in international competitiveness. (Canada ranks 11^th.)

In addition to making our workforce competitive, our public sector significantly boosts GDP, employing large numbers of people in the “care economy.”

Canada’s broader health-care sector alone employs three million Canadians, who all pay taxes. By comparison, the broader oil and gas sector employs less than 500,000.

And, quite apart from wealth-creation and GDP bolstering, our health care, education and social support programs create enormous value, immensely improving the quality of our lives.

Yet Carney has halted plans to further develop the worthwhile new social programs — child care, pharmacare and national dental care — that were launched under Justin Trudeau’s government, with the support of the NDP.

Instead, as the budget showed, funds that could have enhanced and strengthened our care economy are to be diverted to military spending and tax breaks for the private sector.

As for the 40,000 public sector jobs cut, Carney insists they won’t negatively impact Canadians. But they will.

For instance, it might seem like no big deal that some 14,000 tax collection jobs will likely be eliminated. But that will almost certainly mean fewer complex, time-consuming tax audits of corporations and wealthy people, allowing these wealthy interests to pay even less tax, thereby depriving the nation of revenue and increasing Canada’s already extreme level of inequality.

The public sector cutbacks also mean reductions in a wide range of key services we take for granted — from food inspection to public health measures, including Ottawa’s surveillance of infectious diseases and biosecurity threats. Are these really areas we want to scrimp on?

Carney is clearly keen to equip Canada for war-fighting and resource extraction. But, strangely, public programs — despite how much they enrich us financially and socially — don’t seem to interest him much.

This article was originally published in the Toronto Star.