Risk & Business Magazine Cal LeGrow Fall 2016 | Page 26

‘GET IT’

BY: CHARLIE OLIVER

‘GET IT’
HOW OFTEN
HAVE I HEARD
‘CHARLIE BYE,
WE’RE IN A PICKLE’
OR ‘THE ARSE IS
OUT OF ‘ER’. THESE
COME FROM
VOICES ALL OVER
OUR PROVINCE,
SUMMARIZING
OUR ECONOMY.
26

|

FALL 2016

“GET IT”

I

am pretty comfortable saying we
all ‘GET IT’. Every single soul in our
province has been impacted. We also
‘GET IT’ on how and why this has
occurred. Yet in spending our time
blaming politicians, past and present, as
well as oil prices, government pensions
and benefits, education and health care
costs, and our own lifestyles, we are
leaving little time to focus on solutions.

We are funding, among other things,
roads, bridges, and ferries that are used
less and less, by less and less people.
Our choices are simple. We either pay
the increased costs (a grin and bear
it approach), cut the services (socially
challenging) or innovatively find the
balance we all seek. We are beyond the
time where we can have our cake and eat
it too, as we are running out of cake.

WE FACE A COUPLE OF
IRREFUTABLE FACTS.
We are an ageing, declining, urbanizing,
geographically diverse soul group.
Our government is characterized by
an excessive work force incentivized
by salaries and pensions that are not
sustainable. The per capita cost of our
government is at the breaking point.
Sorry to be so blunt.

Here is the good news. We are fighting
Newfoundlanders. The time is upon us
to focus on our common enemy, this
challenging economy. Rather than
fighting each other as to whom, why, what
and when (and yes we need to understand
the history), we need to collectively
spend less than we make. For some of us
this is impossible as the cupboards are
already bare. To all others, it is the call to