On Reforming Capitalism

 These are the conventional definitions of capitalism.

Capitalism is an economic system based on the private ownership of the means of production and their use for the purpose of obtaining profit.[1][2][3][4][5] This socioeconomic system has developed historically through several stages and is defined by a number of basic constituent elements: private property, profit motive, capital accumulation, competitive markets, commodification, wage labor, and an emphasis on innovation and economic growth.[6][7][8][9][10][11] Capitalist economies may experience business cycles of economic growth followed by recessions.[12] (Source: Wikipedia)

What is capitalism?

The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica

Capitalism is a widely adopted economic system in which there is private ownership of the means of production. Modern capitalist systems usually include a market-oriented economy, in which the production and pricing of goods, as well as the income of individuals, are dictated to a greater extent by market forces resulting from interactions between private businesses and individuals than by central planning undertaken by a government or local institution. Capitalism is built on the concepts of private property, profit motive, and market competition. (Source: Encyclopædia Britannica)

Capitalism

A term coined to describe the use of private capital to finance economic activity. Investors and entrepreneurs use their money to create businesses, hiring workers, renting property and buying equipment as needed. Any surplus, or profit, belongs to the entrepreneur or investors. Communism is seen as the obverse of capitalism, as all economic activity is controlled by the state. (Source: The Economist)

However a more to the point definition of capitalism can be expressed this way.

Capitalism: an economic system designed to transform the labour of the working class into the wealth of the owning class. (Source: The5thColumnist)

Capitalism started unrestrained until workers organized and at the cost of thousands murdered by capital (and the Pinkertons) forced employers to bargain with them, arguing for amongst other things a fair day’s pay for a fair days’ work. Workers union organizing also led to political victories including collective bargaining and labour standards legislation, as well as workplace health and safety legislation, and of course the weekend and extending the middle class beyond, doctors, lawyers and merchants.

The capitalist class was not content with earning a fair profit and invented the belief that corporations must seek the maximum return for shareholders with no regard to the workers, the community, or the environment and found ways to do this.

It included moving production abroad to countries with lower or no labour or environmental standards and where jobs could not be moved such as the service industry converting wage jobs to piece-work jobs or co-called “independent contractor” jobs in the so- called gig or app industry.

The result has been unprecedented inequality .

So what is the solution

A purist Marxist would suggest we just wait for (or hasten) the inevitable collapse of capitalism and then “bring to birth a new world from the ashes of the old”. But such a strategy esquires the collapse of society as we know it and it will not be just the 1% (or 10%) of the wealthiest that may deserve to suffer but everybody in the middle. Only those with nothing to lose will lose nothing in this scenario.

This leaves the dreaded incrementalism as a practical solution that may even be able to achieve the political will to make it happen if done strategically.

Let us look first at the issues we want to address and I see two main issues.

Corporate concentration

The first being, despite capitalism’s claim of promoting competition, the reality is that it has lead to economies of monopolies and oligopolies with increasing corporate concentration driving the small businesses it was suppose to encourage out of business. Government regulation has been continuously weakened regarding corporate concentration particularly as it applies to the media, weakening one of the main pillars of democracy, an independent press.

This needs to be addressed and it is not a radical idea to go back to legislation and measures that existed previously while capitalism was thriving.

Economic and Political Inequality

The other being that, along with this, it has lead to massive personal economic inequality, and this massive economic power held by a few has become political power where even in so-called democracies the concept of one person one vote has been replaced one dollar one vote as far as the reality of political decision making is concerned. See: Economic inequality leads to democratic erosion, study finds | University of Chicago News.

One of the easiest ways to address inequality and redistribute wealth is through the income tax system and again I suggest we start by going back to taxation levels that existed while capitalism was thriving.

Marginal Tax Rates

Today in 2025 the marginal tax rate on the highest earners in the United States is 37% while in Canada it is 33%, but it has not always been that low.

  

Source: Comparing Income Taxes: Canada vs. USA in 2025

 Between 1951 and 1963 the United States marginal tax rate on the highest earners was over 90%, while in Canada during the same period the marginal tax rate on the highest earners varied between 90% and 75%. Capitalism was thriving over that period, albeit without the ridiculous levels of income and wealth inequality we see today. As a first (incremental) step in tax reform I propose we go back to those levels.

Source: Bradford Tax Institute

Source: Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives

Wealth Tax

The next (incremental) step in tax reform to address excessive individual income and wealth inequality should be a wealth tax. As of 2021, five out of 36 OECD countries implement a wealth tax on individuals. The New Democratic Party and Canadians For Tax Fairness both propose a modest wealth tax of 1% to 3% depending on level of wealth. The United States Democratic Party does not appear to have a consistent policy on wealth taxes, but both Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren have proposed wealth taxes of 2% to 3% depending on level of wealth. I would propose we start with a wealth tax similar to those proposals.

Final Stage of Tax Reform

The existence of billionaires (and now trillionaires) is, to put it bluntly, immoral. The final stage of (incremental) tax reform, after people have been eased into the idea of a wealth tax, is to use the tax system to tax back all income over a million dollars a year and all wealth over 100 million dollars. I consider this to be modest proposal as it still allows for a considerable level of inequality but not the blatantly excessive and immoral levels we currently have.

Reigning in Capitalism

Render unto the public sector the things that are the public sector’s, and unto the privater sector the things that are the private sectors

There may be a place in the economy for capitalism and the private sector but it should not dominate our lives and society as it currently does. It needs to be put in it’s place.

Health Care

Nobody should profit from someone else’s misery. It is a simple matter of ethics and morality. Health care should not be provided for profit but should be funded and delivered by a single-payer public system that provides is better health care and better economics.

Source: Canadian Medical Association

Water

Water is essential for human survival so our access to it should not be dependent on someone else making a profit. As water becomes scarcer it becomes vital that governments protect our vital water supplies and not sell them off to the highest bidder. Our water supplies should not be put at risk for data centres to store the high tech industry’s (or even government’s) surveillance data on us and certainly not for it’s ill fated so called artificial intelligence dangerous LLM bullshit. Local water supplies should not be privately owned but preferably be municipal utilities. Water resources should only be made available to the private sector when there is a surplus to public needs.

Food

Access to food should also not be dependent on monopolistic corporations making excessive profits. Something needs to be done about the corporate concentration in the oligopolistic corporate agrifood industry.

Corporate Control of Agriculture – Farm Aid

GRAIN | Top 10 agribusiness giants: corporate concentration in food & farming in 2025

The Monopoly Problem at the Heart of Canada's Food System | Perspectives Journal

Corporate concentration | Food Policy for Canada

The best way to do that is to support family farms as well as agricultural cooperatives (agricultural cooperatives in Canada) and the supply management system including marketing boards

At the retail end of the food chain, the grocery sector. there is a similar oligopoly corporate concentration problem.

Canada's grocery business doesn't have enough competition — and shoppers are paying the price, report finds | CBC News

5 takeaways from the Competition Bureau’s study into Canada’s grocery sector - National | Globalnews.ca

Increasing Retail Monopoly Power Poses a Threat to Canada’s Post-Pandemic Economic Recovery [Op-Ed]

Walmart’s dominance of groceries should receive antitrust scrutiny, group says | CNN Business

The best way to counter that is for consumers to have a real choice to not support the monopoly grocery industry. Governments can best aid that by supporting non-profit food food co-operatives to ensure all consumers have a choice.

Grocery co-ops an alternative to corporate grocers amid anger, mistrust: experts

Co-Ops, Mutual Aid, and the Movements Against the Grocery Industrial Complex | Loose Lips Magazine

Toward fair and sustainable food systems: The role of food cooperatives and solidarity grocery stores – Food Secure Canada

Housing

North America’s dependence on the private sector for housing has not helped the current homelessness crisis, indeed it probably contributed to it. On the other side of the ocean in Finland at the end of 2021 long-term homelessness only affected 1,318 people and that is considered unacceptable under Finland’s Housing First Initiative which is not only the right thing to do but less costly than providing the social programs need to deal with homelessness.

North America needs to adopt a more European approach to public and social housing where public housing is not just for the very poor but also for ordinary working people.

Canada is facing a housing crisis. Could it take a page from Europe? | CBC News

What European housing models could do for Canada’s affordability problems

Europe’s affordable housing revolution: The power of leading by example - Affordable Housing Initiative European Partnership

We need to provide enough public or co-operative (being preferable) housing so that all Canadians that want to can access affordable housing on a rent geared to their income without being forced to deal with the predatory private market. The private market can still compete in niche and higher end markets and of course home construction will still be dominated by the private sector. Governments should also provide incentives and assistance for families that want to purchase their own modest homes.

Energy Choices and Climate Change

No discussion of capitalism would be complete without dealing with energy policy and climate change. We built an economy based on planned obsolescence and waste because that was good for capitalist profits. And we powered that economy with fossil fuels. The result:

• Climate change is real.

• Climate change is caused by human’s energy choices.

• Climate change has done irreversible harm, and

• Climate change s poised to do catastrophic harm.

All of this is true and highly documented. I am not going to insult the intelligence of those of you who choose to be informed by citing pages and pages of proof. Those who choose to be wilfully ignorant of the facts will not be swayed by any proof.

We need to act. The solutions are known. We need to phase out fossil fuels. No new projects. Governments that continue to support fossil fuels are putting private profits (and short term economic indicators) above the health of the planet and it’s human population.

We need to put a “price on carbon ” and disincentivize it’s use while providing support and incentives for the development and use of renewable energy. We also need to build a more sustainable economy that does not depend on waste and planned obsolescence. But that is a whole other book.

Failure of High Tech as Saviour

This section will be primarily informed by my own personal experience and observations (and research) over the last 60 years or so from first using punch cards to program Statistical Package for the Social Sciences on the Laurentian University mainframe, as part of my Techniques of Political Inquiry course, to my first personal computer, the Osborne 1 accessing Bulletin Board systems and freenets up to today’s Windows 11 machine accessing the Internet. For this reasons it will not include many, if any, citations and because doing so could overwhelm the user once I started. I was considering making this a separate blog post but I believe it belongs here.

There was a time when we made things in North America, even electronics and computers, and then the capitalist owners of the means of production thought it would be more profitable to make everything abroad in low wage countries with lax labour, health and environmental regulations. But don’t worry they assured us we were becoming a post industrial society with a knowledge economy and an information super highway. We would no longer work in factories with our hands but in offices with our minds. High tech was the new thing and it was going to save us all. It was great for awhile for a few who got the new high wage jobs, but many of the jobs turned out to be lower wage tech support jobs that did not replace the higher wage manufacturing jobs that were lost, and that they soon discovered could be sent overseas as well.

However it was a boost to planned obsolescence, with a twist that the electronic waste created was much more hazardous than broken down furniture and appliances in our landfills. Computers had to be replaced ever 18 months and smartphones every two years. At the beginning there probably were enough computer advances to justify that, though I got away with upgrading every three years but lately it has been more like every 7 years. However it was remarkable how capable those early PCs were. The Osborne 1 or original IBM PC, were capable of running full office software like Wordstar and Supercargo and even Dbase II. Programmers worked hard to get every bit of capability out of the software and hardware. Lately it seems the goal has been to bloat software and add unnecessary options to force users to upgrade their hardware. This is even more so in the smartphone industry where a new phone is needed so you can have rounded coiners.

At one point, because of a few successes, people were blindly investing in any company based on the web, regardless of any actual earning potential and then the “dot com bubble” burst. We are seeing the same thing with AI now, billions being thrown at to produce a massive GIGO machine that just makes stuff up, resulting in a massive waste of water and power and environmental degradation, not to mention the suicides caused by AI addiction or the AI directly telling them to kill themselves. Of course when the “AI bubble” bursts it might take the rest of the economy with it.

And high tech gave us the corporate and government surveillance state with the corporations saying they are doing it to make our lives better and the state saying they are doing it to make us safer, when in reality it is to consolidate their wealth and power.

Facebook, Twitter, Amazon, no need to detail the harm caused by them. Then we have the so-called gig industry which is just a way to avoid unions and exploit workers and the high tech billionaires exercising their political power to the point of buying the United States Presidency. More could be said but let’s leave it at that for now.

High tech saviour, my ass, just a better way to exploit workers, destroy the environment, and buy politicians,

Necessity of Government Regulations to Protect Workers Rights, Public Heath and The Environment

Deregulation is the darling of the capitalist media that argues all our economic problems would be solved if we did not have those pesky government regulations and just trusted corporations to put workers rights, public safety and the environment ahead of maximizing profits. They like to claim the market will regulate everything but the only thing the market regulates is maximum profit in the short term. It cannot even ensure a corporations’ long term growth or success. The market is very shortsighted and focused on profit only. So fuck the market.

The best proof of the need for government regulations to protect public health, the environment, and workers rights (including a minimum wage that is a living wage ), it is what happens when we deregulate.

10 Unforeseen Effects of Deregulation - UMA Technology

Disaster in the Making: he Quiet Erosion of Canada’s Regulation System

The Dangers of Deregulation – State of the Planet

The deregulation gamble: When worker safety becomes a political pawn | HR Law Canada

Trump’s crusade against health and safety regulations endangers workers, hobbles the environmental justice movement, and sets the stage for our next public health crisis | Economic Policy Institute

Public Ownership and Worker Co-operatives

The best way to counteract the power of the wealthy capitalist elites is to not give them the power that private ownership of the means of production gives them The best way to do that is to turn that ownership over to the actual workers that, to put it obviously, use the means of production to produce, whether that is things, services or information. The best way to do that is through worker co-operatives.

Worker cooperative - Wikipedia

What is a Worker Cooperative

History of Worker Cooperatives

Canadian Worker Co-op Federation

U.S. Federation of Worker Cooperatives

That being said, there are situations where centralized public control is preferable for strategic national interests, such as the creation of a nationwide electricity grid, or a nationwide electrified rail system, although I am sure there are others. There may be other sectors where a public presence, but not dominance, is desirable, including a public broadcaster, a public renewable energy agency and likely others.

Universal Basic Income

Capitalism’s secret (well maybe not so secret) weapon is maintaining a level of unemployment that forces workers to take underpaid exploitative employment. Universal Basic Income is the counterbalance to that. While Universal Basic Income does not deter people from seeking employment it empowers then to refuse to be exploited.

(Source: UBI Works - Canada's advocate for Basic Income)

Further references on Universal Basic Income:

Universalbasic income program could cut poverty up to 40%: Budget watchdog |CBC News

Universal Basic Income In Canada 2025 - Active Programs And Pilots You Should Know About

Why UBI Works: Hard Evidence of its Impact on Poverty

People kept working, became healthier while on basic income: report | CBC News

Universal basic income is having a moment. What is it?

The Final Stage: Workers Control

In the final stage of reforming capitalism we give workers the right to seize the means of production and take control of their workplaces.

Workers of the world, unite!

Is There a Conspiracy to Break and Then Fix Health Care ?

So how would this work. I suggest first you underfund public health care as well as simply not spending budgeted funds. As the public facilities fail to meet the needs you claim private facilities are needed. You then transfer funds from public to private facilities further reducing the public facilities capability. You then claim the private facilities are the answer to the crisis and start increasing funding diverting more to the private sector. As care improves you declare that privatization has solved the crisis and is the saviour of health care. You then claim to be spending more on health care than ever as the added profit expenditures make it appear that more funds are being spent on care.

The winners are the private heath care corporations and the political parties they support that made this all possible and we get a bunch of new multi-billionaires as a bonus.

COVID-19 Pandemic Reflections and The Next Pandemic

Well the pandemic is over, at least according to most governments, science and medicine not so much. So now it is time to look back, and to look forward.

Perhaps my biggest reflection is that governments, at least in Canada, did not receive the rational criticism for their failures that they should have. The media was intent on concentrating on the irrational response of the anti-science, anti-public health, anti-vaxer crew who were co-opted by the far right white supremacist convoy types in Canada. The left, on the other hand, felt so strongly the need to defend the principle of governments acting to protect Canadians from this deadly pandemic that they failed to properly criticize governments failures in doing so. Not that there was no rational criticism, but what there was was overwhelmed by the Freedumb Convoy Shitshow.

The biggest failure was in not being prepared, even though scientists and public health officials had predicted that pandemics would be commonplace in the future, along with not following the precautionary principle and treating it as airborne until that could be completely ruled out.

But the most egregious, and I would say unforgivable decision, was to not utilize the front line of our health care system, but rather shutting down the vast majority of family physicians’ offices pushing an even greater workload onto the overwhelmed hospital system. This was either complete negligence on the part of the health care system or a clear indication we don’t actually have a health care system but just a bunch of disconnected parts.

As far as messaging goes, we had the use of the language “social distancing” rather than “physical distancing” at a time when maintaining social connections was critical to people’s mental health. Along with that error in messaging was the message to stay inside, rather than stay away from other people, at a time when getting outdoors (with appropriate precautions) could be critical people’s mental health.

However, in the long run, if only coincidental, there is some truth to the arguments for “no more lockdowns” and “we have to learn to live with the pandemic”.

If and when pandemics become a normal part of our reality we will indeed have to learn to live with them and it will not be sustainable to completely shut down our economy and society everytime they occur. Shutdowns or lockdowns, whatever you want to call them, will have to only occur rarely and for short periods when necessary to get an initial grasp of what is happening. And they will of necessity have to be political decisions.

But living with pandemics does not mean ignoring them. It means taking necessary precautions, such as physical distancing, masking with high quality masks, extensive vaccination programs, and, at times, restricting the highest risk activities such as large indoor gatherings of people packed closely together for long periods, methods that have been proven to work and reduce the incidence and seriousness of the outbreaks and most of all save lives.

But most importantly it means being prepared beforehand.

The first step in being prepared is having a primary care system where everyone has access to a primary care physician. In Ontario everyone does not have access to a primary care physician so we urgently need to drain more family doctors, fast track the approval of foreign trained doctors to work in Ontario and increase immigration and training of doctors from abroad, along with increasing the number of nurse practitioners available. And, of course, not shutting the primary care system down during a public health emergency.

We also need to have a hospital system that is not running at over 100% of capacity during the best of times. How do we build in excess capacity without it being inefficient. By using that excess capacity. As it is now so-called elective surgery is ridiculously backlogged. But this elective surgery is not elective at all. What we call elective surgery is surgery for non-life threatening conditions. Knee and hip replacements, eye surgery and many other so called elective surgeries may not be life saving but they certainly can be life changing for many patients for whom they make life worth living again. We can then, in the case of a public health emergency, divert that capacity to save more lives during a future pandemic. Purpose built publicly funded and operated specialty clinics can be part of that solution, and can be used to treat pandemic patients separate from hospitals, reducing the risk of infecting patients in the general hospital population.

And, though it need not be said, when the problem is the lack of doctors and nurses adding profit into the system is not going to solve the problem, only add unnecessary costs.

It also should not have to be said that the lives of vulnerable elderly persons should not be routinely sacrificed to ensure the profit margins of private long-term care facilities, creating a situation where those needless deaths increase exponentially during a pandemic. Being prepared for future pandemics requires that all health care should be publicly funded and operated. Private profit has no place in health care because that profit always has to come at the expense of patient care.

The other need for preparedness is economic. During the COVID pandemic the government scrambled to implement makeshift assistance programs for those economically impacted by the pandemic, and though it helped many it was a very messy solution. What we need is a permanent solution that will not only deal with public health emergencies but also with the economic disruptions of a transition from a fossil fuels based economy to a sustainable energy based economy. What we need is a guaranteed basic income along with a fair progressive taxation system.

There is no justification for not being prepared for the next pandemic.

Now Comes The Necessary Part Ontario Edition

Nevertheless, and irrregardless of and notwithstanding that federal-provincial jurisdiction exists the actions that are necessary for the next Ontario government to take are the same as those the newly elected federal government needs to take. It’s the same electorate and the same Canadians and the same solutions that are required.

To that end I am simply annotating my recent blog post to establish its relevancy to the Ontario election.

Now Comes The Necessary Part

We can argue all we want over whether the election was necessary but what is definitely necessary is the government tackling the pressing issues of the day, issues that have been pressing for decades and in some cases since before Confederation.

Indigenous Reconciliation

This is clearly an area where the primary jurisdiction is federal but that does not change the fact that both the federal and provincial Crowns have been responsible for the encroachment on First Nation's Lands and the denial of their inherent rights. The Ontario government has a clear role to play in reconciliation, along with the people of the province.

The longest standing issue in Canadian political history is the plight (struggled over what language to use here) of the original inhabitants of North America and the effects of European “discovery” and colonization.

[Side note: I often think the dictionary should define “discover” as “stumble upon”.]

The recent discovery of 150 (latest count Canada wide 6,000 and growing) unmarked graves at an Indian Residential School in British Columbia has focused Canadians thoughts on the treatment of North America’s indigenous peoples from unfairly negotiated treaties to the lack of clean drinking water on reserves.

People are finally realizing that it was not simply a problem of a few bad people abusing a few children in a few schools but a systemic policy of cultural genocide (“take the Indian out of the Indian”) seen as, in the words of the Indian Affairs Department, the “final solution to the Indian problem”. The facilities included such high levels of neglect and abuse that the likelihood of dying in an Indian Residential School was slightly higher than the likelihood of dying as a soldier in World War II.

Of course the term school for these facilities is inappropriate. Schools have graduates, not survivors.

It is no wonder there are problems in indigenous communities when the destruction of indigenous families and culture was government policy for so long.

Governments have committed themselves to reconciliation but what will that be. From my euro-centric viewpoint I would see it as a new social contract between Indigenous Peoples and the rest of Canada, something that will have to be achieved by consensus. But it will be up to Indigenous communities to decide when reconciliation has been achieved as they are the only ones capable of judging that.

[Another side note: Until then the flags should stay down.]

Health Care

Health care is an area where the primary responsibility is provincial. Indeed the national health care program we have now was pioneered by Saskatchewan under provincial jurisdiction. There is nothing beyond political will preventing the new Ontario government from implementing the measures cited below as an example to the rest of Canada.

Public health care, or Medicare as we Canadians call it, was first implemented in Saskatchewan in the form of hospital coverage in 1947, followed by full health care coverage following the 1960 provincial election. Federally the Medical Care Act was passed in 1968, followed by the Canada Health Act in 1984 which affirmed and clarified five founding principles: public administration, comprehensiveness, universality, portability and accessibility.

However in the over 50 years since then the system has stagnated, indeed it has gone backwards with the federal level of funding decreasing over time. We need to finish building the system and we cannot wait another 50 years to do it incrementally. The government must act now to extend the system to include:

- at least 50% federal funding

- a family doctor for every Canadian

- full mental health care, including psychology services where medically necessary

- full long term care for those requiring residential care

- full prescription drug coverage

- full eye care coverage

- full dental care coverage

- full physiotherapy coverage where medically required

Climate Change

Combating climate change will require a myriad of policy decisions that involve both federal and provincial governments, The new Ontario government must move to address this in the areas under it's jurisdiction.

The first warnings of climate change and it’s effects were noted over 50 years ago and the warnings have become more dire year after year with governments responding with lots of promises but little real action. The irony of all this delay is that the longer we wait to act, the more drastic actions we have to take to respond to this crisis. Those against taking drastic measures should have been calling for us to take action sooner rather than arguing against taking action at all.

The idea of starting new fossil fuel projects at a time when we need to start phasing out fossil fuels is simply ridiculous yet it is treated as a serious option in industry and government circles. How drastic to we want the measures to have to be when we finally realize we have to take action before it is too late.

From an economic point of view there are a tremendous number of opportunities available in the renewable energy sector. Call it whatever you want but the concept of a Green New Deal may be the economic and environmental salvation of our future.

Inequality & Under-taxation

Inequality requires tackling the problem at both ends. At the bottom we need to bring workers income and wealth up. As most workers and jobs fall under provincial jurisdiction it is clearly the Ontario government’s responsibility to increase minimum wages and employment standards, the most important being to make it easier for all workers, especially those in the so-called “gig economy”, to unionize. Also it is well within the province’s jurisdiction to establish a guaranteed basic income to eliminate poverty.

At the other end of the scale, the overpaid and overwealthed, the province has all of the tax measures available to them that the federal government has to redistribute income. To the extent that the income tax system is harmonized with the federal system the province always has the option to do as Quebec has and separate it’s income tax system from the federal one.

Ever since the creation of capitalism there has been inequality because the system is designed to create and reward inequality.

However I have to say that during my lifetime (since the 1950s) it has become noticeably worse. One factor is that the wealthy capitalists have moved the means of production to low wage countries so that their portion of the rewards of labour has increased, while the jobs left behind in North America are lower wage jobs.

They have invented a whole new sector of the economy based on piece-work to avoid paying the existing minimum wages or providing employee benefits and they give it a snazzy sounding name, the gig economy, to try to convince people they are freeing them from wage drudgery and letting them be their own boss when in reality the corporation has more control over them than if they were unionized wage workers.

At the same time the taxation of corporations and the wealthy has declined, partly in response to corporate blackmail threatening to take more jobs elsewhere if they are forced to pay fair levels of taxation.

It is also because wealth equals political power and excessive wealth equals excessive political power and that power is used to enact polices that favour the wealthy.

Governments need to enact policies that are actually designed to serve working people and dedicated to their well being, policies that will counter inequality and under-taxation.

Let us start with decent minimum wages and labour laws designed to encourage and assist workers in organizing unions. Minimum wages should not be designed to keep workers just above the poverty line but designed to provide workers with a middle class income. Our economy has the money to do that it just requires a little redistribution from those with excessive wealth to the people that actually produce that wealth.

We also need a guaranteed basic income for those that for whatever reason are unable to be employed at any particular time.

We can increase employment by redistributing money from the private sector to the public sector via a tax on excessive income and wealth to provide jobs building public infrastructure and affordable housing for everyone.

As for taxation, we can start by raising the level at which people start paying income taxes and increase the amount of tax paid in the higher marginal tax brackets. We also need dedicated taxes on excessive levels of income and wealth. I would tax away all excessive income (above $1,000,000 annually and all excessive wealth (above $100,000,000) but I do not expect any government to go near that. However that leaves a huge amount of room for a wealth tax that will have little practical impact on the standard of living of the excessively wealth while providing great benefit to the common good.

This is not in any way proposed as a punishment but just a means for them to create a better country/world with no impact on their personal well being.

Electoral Reform

Ontario and the federal government currently share the same Single Member Plurality (SMP) electoral system. Both need to change. There is no reason Ontario cannot act first and set an example for the federal government and the other provinces.

Winston Churchill is often quoted as saying “democracy is the worst form of Government except for all those other forms”.

Ever since democracy (“rule of the people” in Greek) was invented by they Greeks we have been looking for ways to make it less worst.

[Yet another side note: My Eurocentric education tells me democracy was invented by the Greeks but I would not be surprised if forms of democracy were being used in non-European cultures before then.]

The key to any democracy is the electoral system, how the people actually select the people to represent them in government.

The system we use now is Single Member Plurality (SMP), more often referred to as First Past The Post (FPTP), an objectively silly name. In Single Member Plurality systems the country (or other jurisdiction) is broken into constituencies and each constituency chooses a representative to send to the legislature. Whichever candidate receives the most votes becomes that representative. We use the term plurality because the candidate does not have to receive a majority of votes cast, just more than any other candidate.

The main benefit of SMP is that voters elect local representatives.

The main drawback is the elected candidates could possibly be the last choice of more voters than they are the first choice. Also theoretically a party could elect 100% of MPs with less than 50% of the total votes, though in practice a typical result may be more like 60% of MPs with 40% of the votes.

There are two main proposals to replace this system: Ranked Ballots (preferred by the Liberals but not in their platform) and Mixed Member Proportional (proposed by the NDP in their platform).

Ranked Ballots solves one of the problems of SMP in that it avoids the last choice of a majority of voters being elected as MPs or forming a government. It however will likely create an even less representative House of Commons based on voters first choice party preferences.

Under Mixed Member Proportional (MMP) a majority of Members of Parliament are elected in the same manner as SMP to represent defined constituencies. Then an additional number are selected from party lists in order to balance the percentage of MPs from each party with the percentage of total votes received by each party (often referred to as the “popular vote”) to form a House of Commons representative of the views of the total population. Under MMP there is usually a threshold of percentage of total vote required to be allotted seats, often 5%, to avoid radical fringe groups having representation. However if that threshold is met a party receives representation. But is not representation of all voters what democracy is about.

One of the main criticisms of MMP is that it is unlikely to provide one party majority governments (unless a majority of voters support one party). But is that not what democracy is supposed to provide, a legislature that reflects the will of the people. Would we not be better off if parties learned to work together for the common good rather than simply engaging in political posturing. By reducing the power of a single party in government you reduce the power of a single person (the majority party leader), and perhaps get back to actual representative government rather than the trend of effectively electing (even if indirectly) a dictator to rule over Parliament.

Changing our electoral system to a more democratic one, MMP, is the most important thing the government can do.

Conclusion

These are not the only issues of importance but ones that have not been properly addressed over decades and more. We need the political will to address them all now without the excuse that the solutions need to be implemented incrementally.

Both the federal and the new Ontario government need to act urgently on these priorities.

Intuitive Lessons from The Pandemic – A Fantasy

This post is not based on comprehensive research or particular expertise on my part. Rather it is more what we would have called “common sense” before Mike Harris completely destroyed the meaning of the phrase.

We start off with the most obvious. We need a public health care system that is not overloaded to begin with. We can solve two problems here, provide pandemic readiness and provide timely life enhancing health care. We currently provide timely care for life threatening situations like cancer, heart surgery and emergency trauma but have created an artificial class of so called “elective surgery” we consider to be of lesser importance. This includes things like hip and knee surgery and replacements and many other types of health care that are necessary to allow people to live fulfilling lives. Health care is much more than preventing premature deaths. If we provided the necessary resources to provide all necessary health care without unreasonable wait times we would have the capacity to deal with a pandemic without putting peoples lives at risk.

Equally obvious is the need to bring long term care into the public health care system. Before the pandemic the horror stories of private long term care were well known even if the body counts were not as inexcusable as they became with the pandemic meeting the profit motive.

And still looking at the health care system, why did doctors offices shut down or become virtual during the pandemic when they should have been part of the response to it. Family physicians provide the first source of diagnosis for many serious illnesses like heart disease and cancer where early detection can be a matter of life and death. The system may respond quickly when these diseases are diagnosed but it does not respond at all when they are not detected. And why was the network of family physicians not used for pandemic testing and vaccinations.

And what of government policies. The big thing we got right was vaccines. In comparison to some jurisdictions to the south of us, all jurisdictions understand the importance and effectiveness of vaccines. The federal government did an admirable job of making vaccines available to the provinces and the provinces did a decent job in administering them. The main things Ontario could have done better was utilizing doctors offices and the school system to more efficiently get vaccines to the public.

As to the timely and appropriate response to the threat that is where we could have done better. We knew it was coming but we didn’t know what it would be like so it was a learning process. There is lots to criticize in hindsight but more importantly is learning going forward.

The biggest lesson was that internationally jurisdictions that put public health first and took strong, even drastic, measures quickly were able to get out of it faster than those that took half measures being more concerned with protecting the so-called economy than the public’s health. Having a provincial leader that considered himself a “businessman first” and by implication a Premier second did not help. We are still stumbling through in Ontario.

What is saving us is our sense of community. This works on two levels. On the personal level, it means in our personal behaviour, such as distancing, mask wearing and getting vaccinated, we base our decisions not just on what will keep us safe but also on what will keep our neighbours safe. This has made the big difference on how Canada has fared, compared to the United States, who arguably had better resources available to fight the pandemic.

The other level is the collective level, our collective actions taken together through our governments.

Here we are talking about three levels of government, federal, provincial and local, sometimes with differing philosophies and priorities. We really need to find a way to make federalism work better in these sorts of, not just national but international emergencies, climate change being another example.

If the pandemic has shown us anything is that individual action cannot replace collective action, and some things are just done better by acting collectively rather than acting individually. This is where we need to do better, particularly by strengthening our health care system and providing social supports. We are not financially prepared for the next pandemic because the political parties in power have chosen to go down the populist road of under-taxation thinking that would buy them votes. This is perhaps the most disastrous public policy position of the last half century.

Fortunately, because of that trend, there is substantial room to increase taxes to fill the void, particularly on that portion of the population that are excessively wealthy and under-taxed. This is a group in society that actually stands to gain more from collective spending by government than they can from individual spending by themselves. There is only so much you can spend on a wealthy lifestyle and the benefits of a better society far outweigh the benefits of people who have everything buying more everything for themselves.

We can be better prepared next time, and there will be a next time, but only if we choose to.

And the fantasy part – the belief that those in power will actually choose to learn these lessons and implement the necessary measures.

Now Comes The Necessary Part

 We can argue all we want over whether the election was necessary but what is definitely necessary is the government tackling the pressing issues of the day, issues that have been pressing for decades and in some cases since before Confederation.

Indigenous Reconciliation

The longest standing issue in Canadian political history is the plight (struggled over what language to use here) of the original inhabitants of North America and the effects of European “discovery” and colonization.

[Side note: I often think the dictionary should define “discover” as “stumble upon”.]

The recent discovery of 150 (latest count Canada wide 6,000 and growing) unmarked graves at an Indian Residential School in British Columbia has focused Canadians thoughts on the treatment of North America’s indigenous peoples from unfairly negotiated treaties to the lack of clean drinking water on reserves.

People are finally realizing that it was not simply a problem of a few bad people abusing a few children in a few schools but a systemic policy of cultural genocide (“take the Indian out of the Indian”) seen as, in the words of the Indian Affairs Department, the “final solution to the Indian problem”. The facilities included such high levels of neglect and abuse that the likelihood of dying in an Indian Residential School was slightly higher than the likelihood of dying as a soldier in World War II.

Of course the term school for these facilities is inappropriate. Schools have graduates, not survivors.

It is no wonder there are problems in indigenous communities when the destruction of indigenous families and culture was government policy for so long.

Governments have committed themselves to reconciliation but what will that be. From my euro-centric viewpoint I would see it as a new social contract between Indigenous Peoples and the rest of Canada, something that will have to be achieved by consensus. But it will be up to Indigenous communities to decide when reconciliation has been achieved as they are the only ones capable of judging that.

[Another side note: Until then the flags should stay down.]

Health Care

Public health care, or Medicare as we Canadians call it, was first implemented in Saskatchewan in the form of hospital coverage in 1947, followed by full health care coverage following the 1960 provincial election. Federally the Medical Care Act was passed in 1968, followed by the Canada Health Act in 1984 which affirmed and clarified five founding principles: public administration, comprehensiveness, universality, portability and accessibility.

However in the over 50 years since then the system has stagnated, indeed it has gone backwards with the federal level of funding decreasing over time. We need to finish building the system and we cannot wait another 50 years to do it incrementally. The government must act now to extend the system to include:

- at least 50% federal funding

- a family doctor for every Canadian

- full mental health care, including psychology services where medically necessary

- full long term care for those requiring residential care

- full prescription drug coverage

- full eye care coverage

- full dental care coverage

- full physiotherapy coverage where medically required

Climate Change

The first warnings of climate change and it’s effects were noted over 50 years ago and the warnings have become more dire year after year with governments responding with lots of promises but little real action. The irony of all this delay is that the longer we wait to act, the more drastic actions we have to take to respond to this crisis. Those against taking drastic measures should have been calling for us to take action sooner rather than arguing against taking action at all.

The idea of starting new fossil fuel projects at a time when we need to start phasing out fossil fuels is simply ridiculous yet it is treated as a serious option in industry and government circles. How drastic to we want the measures to have to be when we finally realize we have to take action before it is too late.

From an economic point of view there are a tremendous number of opportunities available in the renewable energy sector. Call it whatever you want but the concept of a Green New Deal may be the economic and environmental salvation of our future.

Inequality & Under-taxation

Ever since the creation of capitalism there has been inequality because the system is designed to create and reward inequality.

However I have to say that during my lifetime (since the 1950s) it has become noticeably worse. One factor is that the wealthy capitalists have moved the means of production to low wage countries so that their portion of the rewards of labour has increased, while the jobs left behind in North America are lower wage jobs.

They have invented a whole new sector of the economy based on piece-work to avoid paying the existing minimum wages or providing employee benefits and they give it a snazzy sounding name, the gig economy, to try to convince people they are freeing them from wage drudgery and letting them be their own boss when in reality the corporation has more control over them than if they were unionized wage workers.

At the same time the taxation of corporations and the wealthy has declined, partly in response to corporate blackmail threatening to take more jobs elsewhere if they are forced to pay fair levels of taxation.

It is also because wealth equals political power and excessive wealth equals excessive political power and that power is used to enact polices that favour the wealthy.

Governments need to enact policies that are actually designed to serve working people and dedicated to their well being, policies that will counter inequality and under-taxation.

Let us start with decent minimum wages and labour laws designed to encourage and assist workers in organizing unions. Minimum wages should not be designed to keep workers just above the poverty line but designed to provide workers with a middle class income. Our economy has the money to do that it just requires a little redistribution from those with excessive wealth to the people that actually produce that wealth.

We also need a guaranteed basic income for those that for whatever reason are unable to be employed at any particular time.

We can increase employment by redistributing money from the private sector to the public sector via a tax on excessive income and wealth to provide jobs building public infrastructure and affordable housing for everyone.

As for taxation, we can start by raising the level at which people start paying income taxes and increase the amount of tax paid in the higher marginal tax brackets. We also need dedicated taxes on excessive levels of income and wealth. I would tax away all excessive income (above $1,000,000 annually and all excessive wealth (above $100,000,000) but I do not expect any government to go near that. However that leaves a huge amount of room for a wealth tax that will have little practical impact on the standard of living of the excessively wealth while providing great benefit to the common good.

This is not in any way proposed as a punishment but just a means for them to create a better country/world with no impact on their personal well being.

Electoral Reform

Winston Churchill is often quoted as saying “democracy is the worst form of Government except for all those other forms”.

Ever since democracy (“rule of the people” in Greek) was invented by they Greeks we have been looking for ways to make it less worst.

[Yet another side note: My Eurocentric education tells me democracy was invented by the Greeks but I would not be surprised if forms of democracy were being used in non-European cultures before then.]

The key to any democracy is the electoral system, how the people actually select the people to represent them in government.

The system we use now is Single Member Plurality (SMP), more often referred to as First Past The Post (FPTP), an objectively silly name. In Single Member Plurality systems the country (or other jurisdiction) is broken into constituencies and each constituency chooses a representative to send to the legislature. Whichever candidate receives the most votes becomes that representative. We use the term plurality because the candidate does not have to receive a majority of votes cast, just more than any other candidate.

The main benefit of SMP is that voters elect local representatives.

The main drawback is the elected candidates could possibly be the last choice of more voters than they are the first choice. Also theoretically a party could elect 100% of MPs with less than 50% of the total votes, though in practice a typical result may be more like 60% of MPs with 40% of the votes.

There are two main proposals to replace this system: Ranked Ballots (preferred by the Liberals but not in their platform) and Mixed Member Proportional (proposed by the NDP in their platform).

Ranked Ballots solves one of the problems of SMP in that it avoids the last choice of a majority of voters being elected as MPs or forming a government. It however will likely create an even less representative House of Commons based on voters first choice party preferences.

Under Mixed Member Proportional (MMP) a majority of Members of Parliament are elected in the same manner as SMP to represent defined constituencies. Then an additional number are selected from party lists in order to balance the percentage of MPs from each party with the percentage of total votes received by each party (often referred to as the “popular vote”) to form a House of Commons representative of the views of the total population. Under MMP there is usually a threshold of percentage of total vote required to be allotted seats, often 5%, to avoid radical fringe groups having representation. However if that threshold is met a party receives representation. But is not representation of all voters what democracy is about.

One of the main criticisms of MMP is that it is unlikely to provide one party majority governments (unless a majority of voters support one party). But is that not what democracy is supposed to provide, a legislature that reflects the will of the people. Would we not be better off if parties learned to work together for the common good rather than simply engaging in political posturing. By reducing the power of a single party in government you reduce the power of a single person (the majority party leader), and perhaps get back to actual representative government rather than the trend of effectively electing (even if indirectly) a dictator to rule over Parliament.

Changing our electoral system to a more democratic one, MMP, is the most important thing the government can do.

Conclusion

These are not the only issues of importance but ones that have not been properly addressed over decades and more. We need the political will to address them all now without the excuse that the solutions need to be implemented incrementally.