When did public servants become the enemy?

I have, on occasion, worked for the government.  I've been an employee of federal, provincial and municipal governments, so I've seen civil servants at work as well as being one myself.  Some, I'll admit, are lazy, but they are by far the minority, and most simply want to do their job, and do it well.  It seems to me that, rather than recognising the hard work and dedication provided, our government (especially since they obtained a majority in the House of Commons in 2010) has been on a more or less sustained attack on the civil service.  One of their first acts in 2010 was to push Canada Post to lock out its employees, and then force a contract onto the CUPW members at a lower rate than they had negotiated.  Since then, they've laid off thousands of government employees, thus reducing or even eliminating services.  (I've been affected as one of my clients is a First Nation.  We can't get any feedback from AANDC, and as a result our sanitation project has been stalled for months, soon to be years).  Muzzling of scientists has been generating a low-level and gradually increasing protest.  Now, Jim Flaherty has decided that the government (and only the government) will get to decide when workers are "essential", and then use that ruling to cancel legal strikes and also impose contracts.  Flaherty claims that the system will be fair, but if only one side at the table has any power, it's hard to see how the workers will be able to make any points about their side of things.  http://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/right-to-strike-by-civil-servants-curtailed-by-budget-bill-1.2159404


It's time to give these bastards the heave ho.