Conservatives in Canada / Cuts in social programs are changing the country

From the unemployed to low-income families and poor seniors, more people than ever are struggling with grim choices as they try to cope in the leaner, meaner Canada presided over by Prime Minister Stephen Harper.

Since winning power eight years ago next month, the federal Conservatives have chipped away at programs that helped define the compassionate, caring Canada built over the course of several generations.

“It is changing Canada,” former Saskatchewan premier Roy Romanow says of the current federal approach to social and economic policy.

“Unchecked, if we continue down this path, the big danger is a more regionalized and more unequal nation,” Romanow, who headed a royal commission on the future of health care in 2002, told the Star.

Social programs long valued by Canadians are in the Conservatives’ crosshairs.

Federal health-care spending is to be reined in. Canadians in future will have to work two years longer before receiving old age security — a measure Harper said was meant to address Canadians’ disproportionate focus on “our services and entitlements.”

And at a time when 1.3 million are without jobs, the federal government has toughened the criteria that employment insurance recipients must meet to hang on to their benefits. In all, only 37 per cent of jobless Canadians are eligible for EI benefits.

Chosen excerpts by Job Market Monitor. Read the whole story at 

via Conservatives dismantling social programs built over generations | Toronto Star.