My problem with PR is that it removes the immediate accountability that the current setup has. How could I, as an Ottawa resident, lobby my MP if he/she is from Halifax? What possible incentive could they have to help me out? If they fail to be accountable then I can’t vote them out. I can’t hold that MP responsible for a vote in the House. For smaller countries PR makes more sense in a way. The degree to which issues differ say between Nunavut and Southern Ontario can be staggering.
This is why a transferable ballot is preferable to me.
Another interesting issue is the influence of cabinet ministers on the machinery of government when acting as typical MPs. Chrétien spent a good year telling people he was simply acting as a normal MP lobbying the head of the Business Development Bank of Canada. The fact that the man’s job hinged on Chrétien’s approval seemed to not have crossed anyone mind.
The only way I can see that being changed is if we moved to cabinet ministers that give up their riding once appointed. Couple that with increased powers for the various House committees and you could level the field between minister and MP.
This is the “Tory touch” theory, put forward by a Canadian political scientist, Gad Horowitz? He was trying to explain why Canada has traditionally been more accepting of statist parties than in the U.S., but he was also addressing a larger anomaly: why is it that the U.S., alone of western liberal democracies, never developed viable socialist parties? If you consider this issue just by looking at Canada and the U.S., it looks like smaller Canada is the anomaly, but if you look at western Europe, Canada, the U.S., and Australia/New Zealand, it’s the U.S. that is the anomaly.
The “Tory touch” theory tries to explain both by reference to the Loyalists. It’s not so much that every single Loyalist was an upper crust noblesse oblige person. As RickJay points out, most were political refugees from the thirteen colonies, who had been hounded out, lost their property, and so on. So for them, the promises of “life, liberty and property” and “pursuit of happiness” rang hollow. They lost liberty and property as a result of the Revolution; in rare cases, some also lost their lives. The argument is that that experience predisposed them to be suspicious of the liberalism and democracy of the thirteen colonies, because they had lost everything under it, and they were therefore more receptive to political arguments that a strong state was one’s protection from the mob.
As well, although the bulk of the Loyalists were not high class people, the governing elites that formed in Upper Canada and the Maritimes following the influx of Loyalists were advocates of strong government to protect people’s property from the mob (i.e. - the liberal/democratic model of the thirteen colonies). So you had the combination of the governing elite that was willing to excercise strong central authority, and a population predisoposed to accept it, because the American example had not protected them.
Coupled with this analysis was the fact that Upper Canada and the Maritimes had to grow suddenly with the arrival of the Loyalists. Unlike the thirteen colonies, which developed much more gradually, with slow accumulations of private wealth that could be relied on to develop the infrastructure through investments and entrepreneurialism, Upper Canada and particularly New Brunswick had to be built from scratch, by people who had lost most of their property to the Americans. The only way that could realistically happen was if the local colonial governments took a major role in developing the infrastructure directly, since only the governments had the necessary resources. For example, the Conservative party in Upper Canada/Canada West was successful because it advocated heavy government involvement in building canals in the early part of the 19th century, while in the U.S., canals were being built by private companies.
So the theory is that the Loyalists’ suspicion of democracy (i.e. - mob robbery, in their experience) and acceptance of a strong government, coupled with the active involvement of the governments in the economy right from the start, has meant that parties advocating strong government roles have always been more politically acceptable in Canada. And even though the statist parties in Canada were originally right wing, their politicial legitimacy meant that left-wing parties were not seen as foreign to the Canadian political scene and could grab a toe-hold. A strong statist party on the right paradoxically helps the development of a strong statist party on the left.
And, this theory also tries to explain the anomaly of the U.S. The flight of the Loyalists also affected the development of American political theory. The argument is that the departure of the Loyalists acted as a “cull” of the American populace, politically, by linking those who favoured a strong statist party with disloyalty. (Alexander Hamilton had personal experience of this phenomenon in the period during and immediately after the adoption of the Constitution.) A strong statist party could be easily linked in the populace’s mind with Toryism and King George, so strong statist parties tended not to develop, or were seen with suspicion (see: collapse of the Federalists). This political mind-set meant that when socialism came along, it could not appeal to the legitimacy of strong statist parties on the right in the American political world - there weren’t none. And, goes the theory, that contributed to the failure of socialism to have even political legitimacy in the U.S.
Other Western liberal countries had never had this cull, so like Canada there was a broader political range to start with, and socialism could at least have some political legitimacy, even if it didn’t become the dominant political theory.
No one’s addressed this yet, which surprises me, as it’s such an easy question…anyway, Google “1998 ice storm” and “Turbot war”. In the first case, Canada’s armed forces undoubtedly saved many lives in Ontario and Quebec after one of the nastiest winter storms in recent memory. In the second case, Canada and Spain got in a dispute over fishing rights which resulted in the Canadian coast guard arresting Spanish fishing vessels. The second case is morally less clear-cut, and the use of the word “war” in this context is a little snigger-inducing, but it’s still an example of how Canada does occasionally have to assert its sovereignty.
I would agree with this comment with respect to political theories and social attitudes, but following up on my previous post, I would disagree if you’re looking at economic issues. Canada has always had a much stronger tradition of government involvement in the economy, from both right and left wing parties, than is the case in the United States.
For example, canals in Upper and Lower Canada were driven by conservative colonial governments, as was the development of the Grand Trunk railway, through a govt’-corporate alliance. Same for the CPR under Macdonald - first as an outgrowth of the Grand Trunk, then after that failed in the Pacific Scandal, under Van Horne and Stephens. In the interim, the Mackenzie government tried to build the railway itself, through contractors. In any event, it’s highly doubtful that the CPR would have been built without massive government subsidies.
Then when the Liberals came back into power, they were going to go one better than the Tories had done in the transcontinental railway business, and build two: the Great Northern, and the Grand Trunk Pacific. Eventually, they both ran into serious financial difficulties and the Conservatives under Bordern nationalised them, creating the first significant federal Crown corporation. It was also the Tories under Bennett who created the CBC.
So, on the axis of government intervention, I would say that the Canadian political ethos has always been less conservative than the American one.
Well, to start with, you can’t say that Canada as a whole has a similar cultural history to that of the United States, because that would overlook the French fact. We have always had to grapple with two languages, two cultures, within our system - and two strands of Christianity, Protestantism and Roman Catholicism.
Francophone Canadians have historically been almost entirely Roman Catholic, which when coupled with anglophone Roman Catholics, makes it the single largest religious grouping. Protestantism of all stripes has always been second - completely the reverse of the religious break-down in the U.S. Evangelicals in turn are a smaller sub-set of Protestants.
I would agree with that. I was thinking more along lines of social and legal policy. However…
Who built the Hoover Dam? The Tennessee Valley Authority Project? While it’s worth noting that the Canadian government has always had a measure of government involvement in economic matters, I would point out that we are often in the habit of grossly underestimating the involvement of the American government in its own economy. The United States spends billions of dollars on public works and economic intervention, and always has. The difference is not as great as it is sometimes made out to be.
Transfers to provinces in 1993-1994: $37.4 billion.
Transfers in 2003-2004: $45.9 billion.
The difference there is about 22%. Total inflation since 1994 has been about… guess what? … 22 percent. So current federal transfers are about the same as they were when the Liberals took over, in raw money terms.
Of course, per capita, it’s down a bit… about seven percent. Given that they managed to kill off the deficit and thereby guarantee we’d be able to bring social spending back up, I’d say it was worth it. How much could they be transferring today if we were still $40 billion in the hole every year?
That’s an explanation I haven’t heard of. In their book It Didn’t Happen Here: Why Socialism Failed in the United States (W.W. Norton & Company, 2000), Seymour Martin Lipset and Gary Marks study the question and conclude the failure of socialism to develop as a significant political force here resulted from a combination of factors, including:
American poltical culture is uniquely antistatist, individualist and libertarian, even compared with other English-speaking countries. (This might be explained in part by the “cull” you mentioned of Loyalists in the earliest days of the Republic.)
Leaving out the systematic submergence of certain ethnic and racial groups, there has never been a rigid social (as distinct from economic) class system in the United States, such as characterized the societies of Marx’s Europe.
Unlike their counterparts in Western Europe and elsewhere, American socialists of the late 19th and early 20th centuries failed to build a power base in the labor unions, which were mostly concerned with bread-and-butter issues like wages, hours and working conditions.
Unlike their foreign counterparts, American socialists failed to build alliances with traditional religious believers, and in fact alienated them, to the point where the American Catholic clergy became openly hostile to socialism. (I don’t know what has been the attitude of the Canadian Catholic clergy.)
In the early 19th century, European socialists got their foot in the door, and established their political presence as defenders of the people, by campaigning for such things as press freedom and universal suffrage. Although these were radical ideas in Europe at the time, they were well established in the United States from earliest decades of the republic – at least, adult white males got the vote, regardless of property qualifications, by the early 19th Century in most states. This deprived American socialists of the opportunity to fight for such things here and reap political benefits thereby.
The winner-take-all, first-past-the-post system marginalized American socialists, compared with other countries that had proportional-representation systems. (This systemic barrier, however, has marginalized all American third parties of all ideologies. And it did not prevent the rise of third parties in Canada, which has roughly the same system.)
The American federal system prevents Congress, if it ever had a socialist majority, from enacting any thoroughgoing program of socialism on a national scale. However, this cuts both ways: The federal system also provided socialists with more opportunities to contest and win elections at the state and local levels. (See below.)
Although American socialists won important offices at the state and local level in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, and even controlled the governments of some cities, socialist leaders at the national level failed to build on these achievements. In fact, such non-revolutionary municipal reforms local socialist leaders were able to achieve were dismissed and derided as “sewer socialism” by national party leaders.
Compared with more practical and compromise-oriented socialists in other countries, American socialists were unfortunately given over to extremism, sectarianism, and splitting over minor points of doctrine.
The ethnically diverse character of the American working class led American workers to identify with their ethnic group before their class, inhibiting the development of “class consciousness” here. White American proles, for instance, have never wanted to think of themselves as being in the same social class as the blacks.
The Socialist Party made the crucial mistake of opposing U.S. entry into World War I. This made the party much more popular among German-Americans, but it also drove a lot of Anglo-Saxons out of the party, especially in the Midwest.
For some reason, Marks and Lipset end their analysis with the 1930s and '40s – the period when much of the Socialist Party’s agenda was co-opted by Roosevelt in the New Deal; the party became even more marginalized by sectarianism; many of the Communist Party members, on Stalin’s orders, hid their party affiliation while they sought positions of influence in government and the labor unions, and indeed went so far underground that those who escaped the McCarthy-era purges gradually stopped being Communists at all; and the Cold War taught Americans to identify the idea of socialism with treason. But the political upheavals of the '60s and ‘70s apparently do not even merit discussion as lost opportunities for socialism in America, in Marks’ and Lipset’s view.
But if we use a relative measure – that is, the position of a Liberal government in relation to the populace – I suspect Paul Martin’s government would be among the farthest to the right. He’s not a Laurier, championing the Louis Riels of his day. He’s not a Pearson, with a passion for peace and a solid social safety net. He is certainly not a Trudeau. He’s not even Chrétien, whose political deathbed repentence put him several steps ahead.
The only Liberal leader I can think of who matches his style is WLMK – that same wishy-washy, non-committal, amoral approach.
Perhaps you and I have different opinions on what constitutes “chopped to the bone.”
True, health is primarily a provincial issue, and the province in question has a lot to do with it. In BC, health care is an absolute nightmare. My grandmother, a great aunt, and a great uncle have all been in hospital a lot this year out in BC. They’ve been left sitting in hospital corridors, and discharged when they really needed a hospital stay. Vital clinics have been shut down.
But even out here in the supposed socialist paradise of Quebec – and under a party claiming to carry René Levesque’s torch – the state of health care reached such a crisis that people were being urged to stay away from the emergency rooms. The waits were horrendous.
It’s not just a lack of funding, of course. The costs of health care – the new equipment, and so on – are rising. Funding has not risen to match, and that, too, is a failure of government.
Having been on welfare during a period of a year and a half of my life, I can assure you that that system is not working well. The money offered even back then was not enough to cover rising housing costs, food, and bills, and I doubt it’s gotten any better since. There’s no real funding, either, to help with programs that actually get people back into the workforce.
Then there’s student loans – another system so underfunded it’s practically a joke, and a very bad one played on students. It does not cover the costs of basic housing and tuition, even in Quebec where housing is cheap, tuition is lower, and we still have burseries. I can’t imagine what it’s like in the other provinces. And if you work, of course, it’s cut from your burseries. So if a student isn’t being secretly supported by their parents, they have to work under the table, or (as one friend of mine did) in prostitution, just to get by.
In this case (student support), it’s not a matter of money being cut. Indeed, a tiny amount has been added. But the costs have increased so rapidly that they’ve long since outstripped the miniscule gains.
Fiscally, certainly. From where I stand, a person who considers cuts to taxes when health care is in dire straits is a right winger.
There’s the odd social conservative in among them, as well, but it’s true those tend to gravitate to the farther-right parties.
They damn well fought it until very recently. If the courts hadn’t forced them to deal with the issue, and deal with it immediately, they simply would have appealed the decision. They also voted a few years ago in favour of a resolution (legally meaningless, perhaps, but still a strong statement of position) that marriage was between a man and a woman only.
You’re right. Most of them aren’t. But you have to go pretty far to the right in this country before you get to these people. We’re not the US. Anti-abortionists and death-penalty advocates could not be consdiered the political centre.
Part of Chrétien’s deathbed repentance. Martin’s always been a little vague on the war in Iraq, and his relationship with George W. Bush is disturbingly cozy.
Again, only if you measure against the standards of our time.
When you look to see where the Liberal PMs were in relation to where the public was, things look rather different. Most Liberal PMs have been willing to stake out definite progressive stands on controversial issues of their time. Most of this country’s major leaps forward have been under Liberal PMs.
Depends on where you are and who you talk to. The social safety net is in tatters in some places, and for some people the situation is getting rather grim. I think of my friends and family out in BC, and the nightmare going on over there. The Liberal government in Ontario is introducing a health tax, and the Liberal government of Quebec is continuing with its “re-engineering” scheme of dismantling the welfare state.
I call it as I see it. When I disagree with my party’s stand on something, I say it, and have done so on these boards. I don’t automatically tow the party line.
I think you’re far more optimistic than I am of the state of the social safety net. It’s true that the plural of anecdote is not data, but having personally encountered some of the places where our safety net has fallen apart, I’m less inclined to think it’s working as well as you say.
I’m curious as to where these statistics come from. I’ve been looking over the federal governments past budgets pages, and I’ve been unable to come up with them (for one thing, it doesn’t go back as far as 1994).
“Wishy-washy, non-committal, amoral approach” doesn’t suggest “Right wing,” though. It suggests no wing at all. Which to be honest sounds about correct to me.
Bad medical care != lower spending. You’re operating on the usual assumption that because you got bad service (and I can certainly believe that) it must be because the government’s spending less money. But the facts simply do not support this; health spending is about the same as it has been for the last 30 years. It’s actually substantially higher than it was six or seven years ago.
To use a rather stupidly obvious example, would you rather have the American system? Being a socialist I suspect you would not… but they spend far more money by any measure than we do on health care. Some European nations with better functioning systems spend less than we do. There’s just not a lot of objective evidence to suggest that current health care problems are the result of the government being stingy, or that jacking up people’s taxes to increase health care spending would have much of an effect. Well, aside from bankrupting some people.
Like a lot of government programs (hello, Armed Forces) the problem is NOT spending levels, and pretending it is is just electioneering bullshit. The problem’s one of organization and the usual inefficiencies of a government monopoly.
Being in the position of paying off some $40,000 in student loans, I certainly know what that’s all about. But quite frankly, having the government help me out with paying off an investment that will pay me vastly more money than I put into it strikes me as being, well, really frickin’ stupid. I don’t think the NDO has adopted a very smart platform here. People with college loans are still far better off in the long term than people who didn’t go to college; the average payback on a college or university education way, way outweighs the average student loan. Why should I be impressed with a plan to help out wealthier-than-average Canadians? Not that you can’t find some exceptions, but with all due respect to your friends, I managed to work my way through a very expensive university without whoring myself out.
And if we talk about me personally for awhile, here’s what happens to me if the NDP is elected; I (and my wife) go bankrupt. Absolutely no question whatsoever about it, assuming you raise income taxes, which I suspect you would. My wife and I simply cannot pay more in tax than we already do without defaulting on the loans, which won’t be paid off for four and a half more years. How would you propose we resolve that problem? You can’t just cancel all loans like Pat Robertson wants to do. Raising taxes (and please don’t give me the line of bull that you’ll only tax the rich) hurts people, too; take my position and then multiply it by thousands, because lots of people just can’t handle a pay cut right now. You can’t have your cake and eat it as well; money does not grow on trees.
Anyway, to be honest I am personally of the opinion that the country would simply be beter off by eliminating student loans AND handing our four free years of tuition to anyone who wants it; students would be better off and you’d probably save jillions in administrative costs.
Hamish, political ideology is relative. First of all, Martin was not PM at the time; secondly, relatively speaking, there’s just not a lot here to suggest they’re right wing. You have to step back and ask yourself if EVERYONE to the right of YOU, personally, is a right wing nutbar, or if maybe you’re sitting well to the left.
My personal position on the matter is that gay marriage should be full bore-on legal tomorrow, no questions asked. I am of the opinion that it should have been so many years ago. But I still think Canada is way, way ahead of the curve on this issue, even if it’s not as fast as I would like.
Well, we’ve mostly HAD Liberal PMs, so you’d expect that. I would point out that our greatest leap forward was under a Conservative… that being Confederation, when Sir John A. was the BMOC.
To be honest, how many great leaps forward have we had, anyway? Canada doesn’t leap forward. It walks along steadily.
Don’t take this the wrong way, but I’m interested in you answering two questions:
How old are you?
Exactly how do you think today’s safety net is worse than it used to be?
“Sky is falling” jeremiads just don’t impress me, especially when they’re followed by “And we need to cut your income to fix it.” (How will I pay those student loans?) The situation has ALWAYS been grim for a lot of people, my friend. People were in lousy shape 10 years ago, 20, 30, 50 and 100, and I suspect maybe even more so in the past. The question is whether spending a gazillion dollars right away and having to borrow it, as opposed to just spending a jillion every year and not borrowing, is the better long term solution.
Nice analysis, RickJay. From what I’ve read of Mackenzie King, he was indeed very much a pragmatist, with definite moral convictions to be sure, but prepared to work whatever compromises would satisfy Parliament.
The Liberals’ policies, however inadequate they may seem, are significant improvements over anything that has effectively been put in place south of the St. Lawrence or the 4Xth parallel.
Not trying to hijack, but I’m quite surprised nobody’s corrected Brainglutton’s post about Canada never having known slavery. It was not as prevalent but there were thousands of them, especially in French Canada. They were treated just as cruelly as their American counterparts at times. Some of the Loyalists brought their slaves with them when they fled America.
However, it is true that the institution was abolished in all British colones by 1833 (way after some American states, like NY, had done so) and the Underground Railroad did have Canada as one of the key destinations, so it’s understandable an American might think they never had it to begin with. But they did, and while thousands of Black people fled to Canada and found freedom there, Canadian hands cannot have been said to be clean of the sin that warped so much of American history.
But in the context of our time, when the political winds are blowing right while the populace itself is shifting left, non-committal now means pro-corporate, and out-of-touch with the public.
I don’t doubt that it is. And taking your figures above (which you have still not backed up), it would seem it has kept pace with inflation.
But has it kept pace with the growing population, rising drug costs, and the costs of new equipment and new treatments? Providing quality health care is more expensive now than it was a decade ago, even when inflation is taken into account.
And just to head off the argument: yes, failure to keep pace with rising costs is the equivalent of a cut. It may be more passive, but it amounts to the same thing.
I have no doubt that reorganization could make our system better. But I think funding still needs to be increased (as does the government’s own commission on health care, of which you’ll find the highlights here).
But reorganization takes money, too. Even if we assumed that we didn’t have to raise spending beyond inflation in the long term, it would still require a a massive dollop of cash just to restructure the health care system.
Assuming you can get a job in your field, this is true.
With my field, a bachelor’s degree is next to useless. It requires a master’s or a teaching certificate before you can do much with it. Meanwhile, while I try to raise funds for a master’s, Quebec student loans is taking $200 out of my account every month, which was about a quarter of my monthly income back when I had a job (I’m recently unemployed).
Not for the lower or middle classes. We intend to to expand the Child Benefit Plan to help middle-class people with families. And why is only taxing the rich “a line?”
We’re planning to close a lot of loopholes for large businesses, and impose a tax on the profits of the big banks when they exceed 10%.
For somebody like me – who has been in and out of bankruptcy for the last decade (I can’t declare bankruptcy officially, of course, being a student debtor) repeatedly, you’ll understand I have trouble being sympathetic.
For a member of the lower or the working class, the government is security. Things are so damn precarious. The unemployment rate is still through the roof, and finding even a McJob to support myself while I look for a real job has been really difficult.
For someone like me, the government is security. If I’m desperate an at the point of starvation, I can go for employment insurance or welfare. I don’t have to worry that a health problem will eat up all my cash resources (although the money I’d saved up was eaten by a dental emergency I had – something else I think should be covered).
I have trouble being sympathetic towards people who make many times what I ever have (I have no idea if you’re in this category, of course) and talk about having trouble making ends meet. You can imagine that it’s rather obnoxious to hear people whose after-tax income greatly exceeds yours complain about taxes.
I do not think the tax burden is excessive in this country by any means. You get what you pay for, and security is worth paying for.
Then you have my vote, RickJay
I believe that’s the best system, too. It’s more or less what they have in Germany, where a friend of mine is studying.
Education is important, and a society that’s willing to fund the education of its citizens reaps the benefits.
A point I made earlier. And quite relevant to this – the gap between Paul Martin and the progressive elements of this country is much larger than the gap between Trudeau and the progressive elements of his time, or Pearson and the progressive elements of his time.
Canadian society has moved farther, faster. The Liberals have not kept up. If anything, they’ve backslided a bit since Trudeau. Since the political spectrum has taken a step to the left, and they’ve inched a little to the right, the end result is that they are far more right wing.
As for Paul Martin not being PM at the time, it’s not relevant. The vote in question (the one that took place on June 8, 1999, and proposed by the Reform Party) was a free vote, Paul Martin was present, and he voted in favour of the Reform motion. The NDP voted against it.
Of course. But by this point, I don’t see how a person who’s against gay marriage can be called left or even centrist.
If Martin was another Trudeau, or a Pearson of his age, there wouldn’t have been all this stalling on gay marriage. It would’ve been a done deal by now.
Again, why aren’t you running.
Seriously, though, it just illustrates my point on this issue. Most people I’ve talked to on this seem to feel the same way. And yet, the Liberals are dragging their heels on this issue. They’re one major step behind the public.
It’s true you don’t see as many Tory leaders, but still they had their chances. They haven’t been in as often, but the time isn’t neglible. It was the Liberals who brought in the social safety to begin with – health care and the welfare state, the liberalization of divorce and sex laws, official bilingualism, the Charter of Rights, peacekeeping – all of them came in under Liberal PMs.
It’s true that the Tories have had a few good ones – in addition to to Confederation, MacDonald granted widows the vote, which was a first step towards Borden’s giving all women the vote.
These are what I consider “leaps forward.”
I’m 28. I’m not sure what relevance this has to the discussion.
I’ve already outlined a number of anecdotal events, from personal experience, that illustrate the breakdown of the system as I perceive it.
It’s getting harder and harder to get access to services, and the burden is falling on those who can’t pay. Hospital overcrowding has lead to a nightmare situation in emergency rooms, education is increasingly out of many people’s reach even with student loans, and welfare hasn’t kept up with the cost of living.
And Polycarp, with all due respect, my country has to stop comparing itself to the United States. It’s bad for the national psychology – it feeds a certain superiority/inferiority complex that’s unhealthy for us – and frankly, being better than George W. Bush’s America is hardly setting our sights high.
The myth might also be based in part on Lord Simcoe’s bill.
The colony of Upper Canada was established in 1791, and Lord Simcoe outlawed slavery in that one colony (which is now southern Ontario) in 1793 – so slavery was only legal there for two years.
Of course, that’s only small part of what’s now Canada, and there is some indication that the law banning slavery wasn’t always enforced.
You’re a socialist and I’m not so there are some things we just have to agree to disagree on, but on this issue I have to question your logic. By what measure do you claim Martin was further behind Canadian society than Trudeau? Gay marriage is NOT something that enjoys universal support among Canadians; there’s a strong opposition to it out there, and I’m not talking about a small minority. Bear in mind you’re living in arguably the most liberal province in the country on this specific issue.
And in what other regard right now is the populace way more progressive than government?
Wouldn’t you be upset when I voted to eliminate the Indian Act, buy out legal Indian status, and essentially end all funding of that fiasco within seven years, increase the defence budget, not raise taxes, end provincial equalization payments, full-bore support free trade agreement, and do various other NDP-unfriendly things. Which illustrates why classifying people as “right” or “left” is highly problematic, anyway.
Well, no, that is not true, Hamish. The Bill of Rights - the first one - was passed by a Conservative administration. (I’m going to keep saying Conservative, not P.C.) The first federal Medicare bill was passed by a Conservative administration - Diefenbaker’s, in 1958.
(Shrug) I am unconvinced by anecdotal evidence. As you point out, it’s not the singular of data. I’m not saying your examples aren’t true, or aren’t dreadful, because I am sure they are both. But that only serves as evidence the system is “Cut to the bone” or “getting worse” if it’s a new phenomenon. It’s simply not; some people have always had a lot of trouble getting services or paying the rent. I would measure the state of the economy and the government’;s role in it at least in part by some objective measurement of how often that sort of thing is happening.
The issues that consistently top the lists of priorities for Canadians, as collected by polling groups, are usually health care and jobs, whereas for most of the Liberals’ decade in power, the deficit – and later, tax cuts – seemed to take priority over these.
Even at its worst, support for the Kyoto Accord never dropped below 62% (at its height, 74%). Martin was always wishy-washy about this. He was also vague on where he stands on the Iraq War (His precise words were, “I think the decision we took on Iraq was a good decision, but at the same time, we share values with Spain, the United States and Britain and we support them” – which is simply talking out of both sides of his mouth). Last I saw (an Ipsos Reid poll last March), 74% of this country thinks we were right to stay out of that war.
As for gay rights, the most recent poll (less than a week ago) has 58% of Canadians saying that homophobia is as bad as racism or anti-Semitism, and only 24% saying it’s not as bad. Meanwhile, every victory we’ve won during the Liberals’ stay in office (except for the hate-crime laws) has been fought on the battlefield of the courts, in opposition to the government, using a Charter brought in by Trudeau.
True that. I’ve said before there are things I disagree with in my own party – its support of strict hate-speech laws, for instance. I was very much opposed to the “clarity act,” and glad when Layton came out against it. When I was involved in BC politics, I eventually gave up on the NDP because it favoured loggers’ unions over ecological issues. Another reason I’m particularly proud to get behind Layton is because the environment is one of his main concerns.
I concede that the Bill of Rights was Diefenbaker’s, although it had little, if any, binding power on the courts. It was certainly no Charter, more of a statement of principles.
As for Medicare, I haven’t been able to find any reference for the year you’ve quoted. Every source I’ve found has Medicare introduced in Saskatchewan in 1962, the Hall Report being submitted in 1964, and the establishment of a national program in 1967, with the last province getting on board in 1972.
I’ve been poring over cyber-reams of information online, from every perspective, for or against increased health care spending, and from either end of the political scale. A lot of it is long on argument, short on facts. Even the two of government have conflicting versions of how desperate the health care situation is, and who’s at fault.
Lacking statistics from an unbiased source, I’m going to go with the Romonow Report, linked in my last post. As far as I know, it’s the most comprehensive survey ever done of our health care system. And it’s says there needs to be more money transfered to the provinces to support the system.
(Of course, I’m not absolving the provinces of blame for any problems in the system – far from it. If anything, they should take the brunt of the responsibility. But since this is a federal election, the focus is on the federal government’s role in health care, and that’s why I’m harping on this.)
RickJay, I’ve heard you express disapproval for equalization payments before, as I understand it because you don’t think rich areas should subsidize poor areas. Just how far do you think that principle should be applied? Should it apply at the municipal level, too? Should low-income school divisions be left with only what they can garner from property taxes and just make do with fewer bucks per student? Should the far north be expected to spend less per capita on health care, even though it actually costs far more to deliver the same level of service due to the distances involved?
My 1000th post[/sub]
Which illustrates why classifying people as “right” or “left” is highly problematic, anyway.