Getting laid off doesn't mean you're no frigging good, as you put it, it just means the government is cancelling whatever program or project or scaling back whatever activity your job was associated with. In the current round of cutbacks, for instance, it looks like the entire federal presence in Regina for agriculture is disappearing, including the few fragments that were left over after the previous restructuring destroyed a once fine, productive and useful institution, the Prairie Farm Rehabilitation Administration. That I expect will prove to be a serious mistake. PFRA's main business was preserving the soil and water of the Canadian prairies. There was a drought in the 1980s that statistically, in terms of dryness and heat and wind, was every bit as bad as the Dust Bowl of the 1930s, but that time we didn't see whole townships blowing away and the wholesale relocation of people from what had become deserts. PFRA was the difference. That desert is still out there waiting for us to let our guard down. And now we have. Next time there's a major drought on the prairies...
