Last Monday, B.C. teachers held a Day of Action in communities across the province to protest the B.C. government's decision to legislate a contract and put an end to their collective bargaining process. I was invited to speak to teachers at the Surrey rally, where I had the opportunity to share some of my analysis of the B.C. Budget (which readers of this blog are familiar with) and debunk some myths around the economic and fiscal context in which the teachers' bargaining process is taking place.

Person A: Knock, knock
Person B: Who's there?
Person A: John...er...Don
Person B: John...er...Don, who?
Person A: Don Drummond, it's my turn to create a crisis!

Whew, what a ride this whole Drummond frenzy has been! Starting months ago speculation began on what the report would contain. Groups gathered from all sides of the table to discuss the possibilities, fear set in when trial balloons were floated with severe austerity measures and huge cut backs, and now here I sit after a night of reading, tweeting, debating and trying to follow all the media at once with a desire for reassurance. Is Ontario really drowning in debt?

Last week, on Feb. 2nd, I drove up to London, Ontario, to shoot some film footage of the locked-out workers picketing outside the Electro-Motive Diesel plant for a documentary I am working on. The company, the only one to make locomotives in Canada, is owned by Caterpillar Inc., the world's largest equipment manufacturer. They had locked out the entire workforce of 450 workers on New Year's Day after demanding wage cuts as high as 50 per cent.

Le texte en français suivra.

Prime Minister Harper announced to his billionaire friends in Davos his intention to make changes to Canada's retirement system. True to form, Stephen Harper circumvented the parliamentary process to make an announcement that would radically transform our social safety net.

Stephen Harper took aim at some of his "complacent" colleagues meeting at Davos for taking their prosperity as a given and focusing too much on "entitlements and services" that they cannot afford.

But he also fired a few shots across the bow at complacent Canadians who might have thought he meant it when he said cuts to programs such as pensions were not on his agenda.

"We have already taken steps to limit the growth of our health-care spending," Harper told the blue ribbon crowd gathered at Davos. "We must do the same for our retirement income system."

The CCPA recently released a study I authored titled: The Cuts Behind the Curtain: How federal cutbacks will slash services and increase unemployment. The report examines all three waves of federal government cutbacks starting with the 2007-2010 strategic reviews, but also projecting the effects from the 2010 personnel budget freeze and the 2011 Strategic and Operating Review.