The Truth About Canada by Mel Hurtig Page B
Authors: Mel Hurtig
Tags: General, Political Science
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All in all, for Canada another very shabby performance.
Widely respected political scientist Dr. Janine Brodie, in a paper delivered in Windsor in May 2007, sums it up: “One Canadian governmentafter another has abandoned the vision of social citizenship, social security and social justice.”
The Ottawa-based Caledon Institute of Social Policy commented on the Harper government’s February 2007 budget: “The Budget could well have been named ‘Opportunities Lost.’ With a $19 billion price tag, never has so much been spent with so little result.”
Returning to the subject of child care and early-learning programs, scores of studies from around the world have shown that countries with quality, affordable, universal early-learning programs perform better in a wide variety of ways than countries without such programs. The result is better students, fewer stressed-out teachers in elementary and secondary schools, and, overall, a more productive, innovative, and competitive nation. And study after study has shown that by far the best and most equitable child-care systems are properly financed universal public systems.
What is badly needed in Canada is one well-designed national child-care program, and not 13 different and mostly inadequate provincial and territorial schemes. Most European countries have long had national programs operating with great success, with big benefits to the social, educational, and behavioural performance of their children.
Despite all of this, the substantive 1984 promises made by the Mulroney government of a national early-learning and child-care program came to nought. Then, in 2006, the Harper government cancelled a national child-care agreement between Ottawa and the provinces that was the result of years of government negotiations and decades of advocacy by many informed and concerned groups. So today in Canada, more than 70 percent of mothers with pre-school children work, but fewer than one in five children under the age of six who have working parents have access to regulated child-care spaces. This compares to 60 percent in the United Kingdom and 78 percent in Denmark.
In our overall social spending, how utterly disgraceful it is for Canada, with the ninth highest GDP per capita, to be so uncaring and so uninterested in the welfare of its own men, women, and children compared to so many other developed countries.
That Stephen Harper has described Canada as “a Northern European welfare state in the worst sense of the term” tells you a great deal about what kind of person he really is.
Derek Burney, Brian Mulroney’s chief of staff in the years leading up to the Free Trade Agreement, in an article published in the magazine Policy Options , and in the National Post on October 6, 2007, told Canadians that “None of the dire predictions about vanishing social programs ever materialized …”
What utter nonsense.
6
OTTAWA’S UI/EI CASH COW
“Employment insurance is a myth.”
A word about unemployment insurance, or, as it is now ridiculously called, “employment insurance.” Before Brian Mulroney, Jean Chrétien, and Paul Martin went to work, more than 80 percent of unemployed workers in Canada received unemployment insurance; in fact, in 1980 it was as high as 86 percent. Today, it’s down to only 40 percent. In Toronto, it’s only 22 percent. In Ottawa, it’s less than 21 percent.
Hundreds of thousands of unemployed Canadian workers now can’t get EI and are forced to live on totally inadequate welfare with incomes far below the poverty line, thanks to the likes of the three above-mentioned prime ministers and premiers Mike Harris, Ralph Klein, and Gordon Campbell. In real terms, many Canadians on welfare are now receiving 45 percent less than equivalent rates of 10 years ago.
From 1962/1963 to 1982/1983, the unemployment insurance premiums received by Ottawa ran from a low of 3.2 percent of federal budgetary revenues to a high of 7.3 percent. But for the next 20
Widely respected political scientist Dr. Janine Brodie, in a paper delivered in Windsor in May 2007, sums it up: “One Canadian governmentafter another has abandoned the vision of social citizenship, social security and social justice.”
The Ottawa-based Caledon Institute of Social Policy commented on the Harper government’s February 2007 budget: “The Budget could well have been named ‘Opportunities Lost.’ With a $19 billion price tag, never has so much been spent with so little result.”
Returning to the subject of child care and early-learning programs, scores of studies from around the world have shown that countries with quality, affordable, universal early-learning programs perform better in a wide variety of ways than countries without such programs. The result is better students, fewer stressed-out teachers in elementary and secondary schools, and, overall, a more productive, innovative, and competitive nation. And study after study has shown that by far the best and most equitable child-care systems are properly financed universal public systems.
What is badly needed in Canada is one well-designed national child-care program, and not 13 different and mostly inadequate provincial and territorial schemes. Most European countries have long had national programs operating with great success, with big benefits to the social, educational, and behavioural performance of their children.
Despite all of this, the substantive 1984 promises made by the Mulroney government of a national early-learning and child-care program came to nought. Then, in 2006, the Harper government cancelled a national child-care agreement between Ottawa and the provinces that was the result of years of government negotiations and decades of advocacy by many informed and concerned groups. So today in Canada, more than 70 percent of mothers with pre-school children work, but fewer than one in five children under the age of six who have working parents have access to regulated child-care spaces. This compares to 60 percent in the United Kingdom and 78 percent in Denmark.
In our overall social spending, how utterly disgraceful it is for Canada, with the ninth highest GDP per capita, to be so uncaring and so uninterested in the welfare of its own men, women, and children compared to so many other developed countries.
That Stephen Harper has described Canada as “a Northern European welfare state in the worst sense of the term” tells you a great deal about what kind of person he really is.
Derek Burney, Brian Mulroney’s chief of staff in the years leading up to the Free Trade Agreement, in an article published in the magazine Policy Options , and in the National Post on October 6, 2007, told Canadians that “None of the dire predictions about vanishing social programs ever materialized …”
What utter nonsense.
6
OTTAWA’S UI/EI CASH COW
“Employment insurance is a myth.”
A word about unemployment insurance, or, as it is now ridiculously called, “employment insurance.” Before Brian Mulroney, Jean Chrétien, and Paul Martin went to work, more than 80 percent of unemployed workers in Canada received unemployment insurance; in fact, in 1980 it was as high as 86 percent. Today, it’s down to only 40 percent. In Toronto, it’s only 22 percent. In Ottawa, it’s less than 21 percent.
Hundreds of thousands of unemployed Canadian workers now can’t get EI and are forced to live on totally inadequate welfare with incomes far below the poverty line, thanks to the likes of the three above-mentioned prime ministers and premiers Mike Harris, Ralph Klein, and Gordon Campbell. In real terms, many Canadians on welfare are now receiving 45 percent less than equivalent rates of 10 years ago.
From 1962/1963 to 1982/1983, the unemployment insurance premiums received by Ottawa ran from a low of 3.2 percent of federal budgetary revenues to a high of 7.3 percent. But for the next 20
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