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I read the employment statistics released today by Statistics Canada, and I am dismayed to find out that Saskatchewan is the only province to have experienced a loss of its labour force in the last year ending March 2001. It means that Saskatchewan is continuing to lose its work force at the time when First Nations people are increasing dramatically and comprise 10% of the total population, when First Nations people include some 80% of the inmate population, when our young First Nations people skip school and walk the streets in greater numbers.

Something is terribly and socially wrong, and there is no doubt that our native and non native leadership is at a loss in addressing our social and economic concerns. I just watched the CTV morning news and I hear that the unemployment rate is going up while at the same time there is evidence that wages are going up as well. And then I hear professor Jack Mintz(1) telling us that we have to 'wholeheartily embrace' Globalization for the survival of our own Canadian sovereignty, a sovereignty which comes with more police power and less individual rights, and at the expense of the most vulnerable people, the aboriginals, the children, the old and the disenfranchised.

In general, we have an ossified leadership void of any innovative ideas beyond their interest to protect themselves by increasing our Gross Domestic Product (GDP) at any social cost. And our government shows its insipidity as honourable Jean Chretien, honourable Herb Gray and honourable Brian Tobin respond to the charges against the Prime Minister in the Shawinigan's affairs. And then we have Roy Romanow, our sanctimonious constitutional patriot, who after having downsized the Saskatchewan people, the Saskatchewan economy, and Saskatchewan health care, is rewarded with the retirement task to head a Royal Commission on health care.

Paul Romer says that the new economy is an Economics of Ideas and away from the precise prediction of the rate of growth of the GDP. And this is the economy our leaders must whole heartily embrace, and this is not Globalization, but an economy where we "design policies to improve the quality of peoples lives(2)."

References/endnotes

Relevant political and economics articles http://www.ftlcomm.com/ensign

1. Professor Jack M. Mintz and Globalization: another sanctimonious leader joins the ranks of Jean Chrétien and Roy Romanow, by Mario deSantis, April 5, 2001 http://www.ftlcomm.com/ensign/desantisArticles/2001_300/desantis352/mintz.html

2. Note: This interview with [Paul Romer] will appear in a book titled Conversations with Economists: Interpreting Macroeconomics, edited by Brian Snowdon and Howard Vane that will be published in Summer, 1999 by Edward Elgar. http://www.stanford.edu/~promer/Int_re_macro.html