Reality, it’s been said, is that which doesn’t go away even when you stop believing in it.

Substituting comforting fantasies for hard-edged realities may be a source of short-term solace to those whose preferred method of dealing with challenging, complicated or uncomfortable facts amounts to avoidance. But avoidance only leads to still more avoidance — and even worse consequences.

Here’s a case very much in point. Two position papers issued by the Bermuda Public Services Union this week take issue with associated Finance Ministry proposals to privatise (or “mutualise”) certain Government services. They are cogently argued, well researched and lucidly articulated documents. At least as far as they go.

Both papers call for reform from within the civil service and argue the necessary streamlining, cost-cutting and restructuring of Bermuda’s public services could be presided over by senior bureaucrats rather than politicians.

The BPSU goes on to reject out of hand Government’s “mutualisation agenda” — an initiative to spin off some public services to partnerships between the private sector and former civil servants who would become financial stakeholders in these new ventures with a vested interest in their success.

In a perfect world, one in which Bermuda’s economy was growing exponentially and Government tax revenues remained robust, the BPSU proposals for a gradualist approach to civil service reform would have some merit and be deserving of a sympathetic hearing. In the imperfect and increasingly cash-strapped world we actually inhabit, the union’s arguments are all but nonsensical.

Failing to even pay lip-service acknowledgment to Bermuda’s harsh new economic environment, the BPSU papers are more akin to ultimatums than points of departure for rational discussion. They might as well deny the fact the sun rises in the east as gainsay the pressing need for civil service restructuring and retrenchment.

No bureaucracy relishes the prospect of top-down imposed changes, particularly when applied under the pressure of a need for urgent short-term budget cuts. Ideally, public service mutualisation would work best when support for such a change — and for the benefits it could bring to employees as well as service customers — is allowed to develop organically over a period of time.

But Bermuda no longer enjoys the luxury of time.

The Island is now entering its seventh year of negative economic growth. The Gross Domestic Product continues to shrink even while unemployment figures tick steadily upward. The projected 2014/15 deficit will be somewhere in the region of $267 million while Bermuda’s national debt has now topped the $2 billion mark. With a declining population and a diminishing tax base given ongoing contractions in both the international business and local sectors of the economy, Bermuda has to make some hard but necessary decisions.

This is not a situation we can continue to borrow our way out of indefinitely. The bald fact of the matter is the old Bermudian way of conducting our affairs is simply no longer an option given our increasingly straitened circumstances.

Government literally cannot afford to continue absorbing such a high percentage of the Island’s labour market; we no longer have the financial wherewithal to maintain the size of the current bureaucracy. Our position is becoming increasingly unsustainable because it is creating hugely destabilising fiscal imbalances along with adverse spillover effects into the private sector.

To prevent private sector growth from slowing further, the Government needs to stabilise the economy by dealing with the underlying forces driving public sector expenditure.

And the chief drivers are, of course, the administrative and operating costs of an increasingly top-heavy civil service.

Downsizing and rationalising the Bermudian bureaucracy must be an imperative if the Island’s economy is to ever pull out of its ongoing downward spiral. The BPSU objects to the inherent “threat” contained to civil servants’ current terms and conditions of employment in the recently tabled Public Bodies Reform Bill 2014. But nowhere in its discussion papers does the white collar union even touch on what amounts to an existential threat to the Island’s continuing viability unless we take urgent remedial action in the field of public expenditure.

Compelling arguments can and have been made demonstrating that mutualisation has been a win-win proposition for both service users and providers in those areas which have been spun off in other jurisdictions. Public and institutional interests can both benefit given the increased efficiencies and improved delivery which often results when services make the transition from the public to the private sector.

We are also well positioned to learn from the mistakes of other countries, particularly those which occurred in the United Kingdom when London embarked on a not entirely satisfactory crash campaign in mutualisation.

Of course, any reforms to the bureaucracy must take place in conjunction with a series of direct initiatives — including regulatory and immigration overhauls — which can help to both stimulate and develop a stagnant private sector.

Like it or not, these are the grim new economic realities Bermuda faces. And they aren’t going to simply go away if the BPSU continues to deny their existence.