Too Busy to Care

Many of us don't like living by rules imposed on high. Often, we are right.

And just as often we are ignoring the basic selfishness, greed and stupidity of man.

The Campbell government in its haste to cut through red tape - an admirable enough goal, if done judiciously, and this was not - decided in 2004 to downgrade safety regulations in the workplace to "guidelines." As if every employer has the welfare of his employees uppermost in mind when he begins each day. NOT!

The result has been tragic and predictable: deaths and injuries in the workplace, especially the forests, have climbed dramatically.

Look, we live in an adolescent culture that can't even agree to use traffic circles properly. I've seen police cars, trucks and private cars turning LEFT around traffic circles dozens of times. Here, that is. I've never see that in England or Italy.

As the Sun reported this morning, regulations are "prescriptive," guidelines are "interpretive."

Let's get these safety regs back on the books and stop allowing money hungry employers to "interpret" safety and kill our workers.

By some bizarre coincidence, this issue was dramatized by the case of a young female gas station attendant being sexually assaulted last night because the recommended new regulations have not yet been put in place.

You want to cut through the red tape, Gord? Get these regulations, old and new, on the books today.