“Here in Gander the biggest cuts we’re seeing are to Service Canada. We’re losing 30 jobs here. These people end up having to uproot their families and head to more urban areas like St. John’s or other parts of Canada. We need to consider not only the toll this will take on these families, but the economic impact for our community. This is a loss of about 1.5 million dollars a year to Gander’s local economy, and that’s just in salaries alone. When you’re out there trying to expand and grow by attracting new business to the community, it doesn’t give businesses a good sense of your profitability when the Federal government is out cutting jobs in the area. They talk about regionalization at every opportunity they get, yet they continue to remove jobs from rural areas. This is how our local economy goes down, and the long term effects of these cuts may be harder than we imagined. It’s very frustrating because the...federal government even refused to meet with us to discuss the reasons behind these cuts. Meanwhile they plan to add 30 new seats to the House of Commons. That’s 30 new salaries not to mention assistants and other expenses. It’s unfortunate that the government is taking this approach, and at the end of the day I don’t think they’re saving one dollar. To disrupt these families and take these jobs out of our local economies is nothing but politics at its worst.”
Mayor Claude Elliott – Gander NL
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