The Truth About Canada (7 page)

John Ibbitson of the
Globe and Mail
is right to the point:

Because we hold neither our leaders nor ourselves to account, because we use such words as “consultation” and “consensus” instead of “crisis” and “emergency,” because so many of us just don’t give a damn, millions of dollars that should be going to native education are being wasted, leaving a generation of students untaught.

Everyone in the federal government and within the Indian community knows this is happening. But it is easier for politicians to blame each other, and for native leaders to blame the politicians, than for anyone to say: “Stop. This is our responsibility. We have to act.”

Each year, Indian and Northern Affairs Canada transfers $9.1-billion to first nation governments. Of that, $1.5-billion, or 16.5 percent, is earmarked for education. How much of that amount is actually spent on schools? Nobody knows.
⁵

Ibbitson quotes Peter Garrow, the Assembly of First Nations education director, as saying, “they have to make some tough decisions” on reserves, where education needs must compete with all other needs, such as health and housing.

Does getting an education help? In 2005, aboriginal people who had a university degree had an 84 percent employment rate.
⁶
But only 4 percent of aboriginals have a university degree.

The historic Kelowna Accord was signed in November 2005 with much applause across the country and almost universal approval from the provinces, the territories, and from our native peoples. The objective was to step up the level of aboriginal health care, housing, education, and general living conditions. There was, however, just a small problem: The Harper Conservative government junked the agreement, abandoning years of negotiations, even though each of the five Conservative premiers had supported the accord, along with the Assembly of First Nations, the Métis, and the Inuit. According to John Ibbitson, “The Conservatives lack the political courage to confront, head on, the overriding social policy challenge of our time: eliminating aboriginal poverty on and off reserve.”
⁷

Between 1990 and 2001, the suicide rate per 10,000 youths 15 to 24 in Canada was 11.9. In the United States, it was 9.9. In Mexico, it was only 4.7. Why was it so high in Canada? The suicide rate for aboriginal youth in this country is three times that of non-aboriginal youth.

But then again, it seems many of us just don’t give a damn.

4

CANADIAN SOCIAL POLICY

COMPARED TO MOST OTHER DEVELOPED COUNTRIES, WE ARE A DISGRACE, OUR POLICY “AN UTTER DISASTER”

“A
ppalling” is the only way to describe Canada’s social spending to assist children, low-income households, the needy elderly, the sick and disabled, the unemployed, and other disadvantaged persons who need help. Compared to most other developed countries, we are a disgrace. The National Council of Welfare has described social policy in Canada as “an utter disaster.”

When all federal, provincial, and municipal social spending is added up, Canada is way down in 25th place among the 30 OECD countries in terms of social spending as a percentage of GDP. (The Unites States, the world’s wealthiest nation, is in 26th place, beating out only Ireland, Turkey, Mexico, and Korea).
¹

In May 2007, Save the Children also put Canada down in 25th place in terms of how our society treats children, and we’re at the very bottom of another list of OECD nations when it comes to our investing in early learning.

Heading the list in overall social spending as a percentage of GDP is Sweden, at just over 31 percent, followed by France at 28.7 percent, and Denmark and Germany at 27.6 percent. Canada, the world’s ninth largest economy, fell from almost 21.3 percent of GDP in 1992 (before Paul Martin as finance minister began his massive cutbacks) all the way down to 17.3 percent of GDP in 2003. This 4 percent drop amounted to about $57.85-billion in 2006. If Canada’s social spending rose to match just the
average spent by the 15 countries of the European Union, our increase in spending on education, health care, child care, the alleviation of poverty, labour training, public housing, etc., would be more than $95-billion.

While Canada’s social spending fell, all the following countries
increased
their social spending: France to 28.7 percent of GDP; Germany to 27.6 percent; Austria to 26.1 percent; Portugal to 23.5 percent; Poland to 22.9 percent; Greece to 21.3 percent; the Czech Republic to 21.1 percent; Switzerland to 20.5 percent; the United Kingdom to 20.1 percent; Iceland to 18.7 percent; and Australia to 17.9 percent.

Slightly down from their previous levels of social spending, but still well ahead of Canada, were Sweden at 31.3 percent, Norway at 25.1 percent, Luxembourg at 22.2 percent, and the Netherlands at 20.7 percent. Bringing up the rear in social spending were the United States at 16.2 percent of GDP, Ireland at 15.9 percent, Turkey at 13.2 percent, Mexico at 6.8 percent, and 5.7 percent for Korea.

During the period 1990 to 2002, only six OECD countries decreased their social spending as a percentage of GDP, and Canada was one of them. And in a 2006 updated OECD report on social spending, most countries with a lower per-capita GDP than Canada were devoting more to social spending as a percentage of the economy than we were.

So, good old compassionate Canada is near the bottom of the list in social spending. What a bunch of hypocrites we’ve had in Ottawa. All of the above comparisons must be considered in relation to the steady stream of public opinion polls that clearly show most Canadians put social programs near the top of their list of priorities, far ahead of tax cuts, debt repayment, defence spending, and the economy. Just before the 2007 Conservative budget, a Strategic Counsel poll showed 50 percent of Canadians believed that increased government spending on social programs should be the most important priority, while only 19 percent supported tax cuts. Yet what we got were tax cuts, and later in the year even more tax cuts, with paltry benefits going to individual taxpayers.

It’s worth noting that in the three years after Paul Martin became minister of finance, federal transfers to the provinces fell by $8.2-billion and federal social spending dropped by another $4.2-billion. By
2000/2001, federal program spending as a share of GDP had fallen to 11.6 percent, the lowest level in 50 years!
²
Back in 1989, social spending accounted for 59 percent of total federal government spending. By 2007, it was down to only 49 percent.

Of course, as Ottawa chopped transfers to the provinces, the provinces, led by Ontario’s Mike Harris and B.C.’s Gordon Campbell, slashed their own social spending. One result has been the pitiful levels of welfare payments we have had in this country for many years, as we shall see shortly.

The race-to-the-bottom impact of both the Canada-U.S. free-trade agreement (FTA) and North American free-trade agreement (NAFTA) is an important factor in all of this. And for the future, provisions in these “trade” agreements and Jean Chrétien’s and Paul Martin’s foolish promises to Quebec will combine to make important and desirable new national social programs such as a national pharmaceutical plan almost impossible.

As we’ve seen, in continental Europe, poverty has been reduced by 40 percent through enlightened social spending. In the Nordic countries and the Netherlands, the impact has been even greater. As for Canada, the United Nations Committee on Economic and Cultural Rights called it right when it released its third highly critical report about Canadian social policies in 2006. It made clear that “governments in Canada have not really committed to the recognition of social and economic rights as fundamental human rights.” The UN committee complained about the fact that it was obliged to raise exactly the same points it highlighted in its 1993 and 1998 reports, and lamented the Canadian failure to implement its earlier recommendations. The Canadian NGO human-rights advocates who made submissions to the UN committee in Geneva argued, “In light of Canada’s unrivalled economic and fiscal health, it is clear that Canada has chosen to permit the poorest people in the country to live at a level of misery that undermines their human dignity and violates their fundamental human rights.”
³

How could this have happened? As many of us had warned, the level playing field required by the FTA and NAFTA inevitably brought us
down much closer to the uncaring American model. For as long as I can remember, Canadians have always taken for granted that social policy in our country has been, and will continue to be, very different from that of the United States. But this said, it is undeniable that thanks to the FTA and NAFTA, Canadian social policy today has moved closer to American standards and away from the more compassionate policies of most European OECD countries.

Next time you hear some Neanderthal describing Canada as a socialist welfare state, refer them to the pages you’ve just read. Next time you hear someone say that we don’t have enough money for health care or education or social spending to help lift families out of poverty, tell them they should spend some time studying what almost all other developed countries do in terms of their social responsibility.

Let’s compare what has been the situation in Canada for far too many years with what has recently happened in France, where a 2007 law makes housing an enforceable right, like health care and education. Beginning in 2008, the law will apply to the homeless, to single mothers, and to poor workers. By 2011, it will include all those living in poor-quality or unhealthy homes. And in Scotland, there is now a legally enforceable right to housing, committing government to supply housing for those who require it by 2012.

The excellent Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives (CCPA) paper on tax revenues points out that

Every just society must protect the vulnerable: children, the elderly and those with disabilities.

In the Nordic countries, pensions replace 66.6% of the salaries of pensioners. In Canada it’s 57.1%. In the United States it’s 51%.
⁴

Compare this with Finland, where it’s 78.8%. 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 government
after 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.

5

EMPLOYMENT AND UNEMPLOYMENT IN CANADA

E
mployment in manufacturing and forestry in Canada is well down (forestry went from 89,000 jobs in 1995 to only 56,000 in the spring of 2007) and agriculture has had big job losses, falling from 512,000 in 1985 to 330,000 in 2007. But employment in finance, insurance, and real estate increased during the same years, from 694,000 to 1,059,000, and professional and related employment exploded from 425,000 to 1,118,000, while health and other public sector employment increased from 1.063 million to 1.839 million.

There has been huge growth in professional services and business services employment. This sector of our economy has gained more than 2.242 million jobs since 1992. Services now account for a solid majority of Canadian employment, and an increasing share of GDP.