Is There Hope For Palestine

 I wrote this in November 2007 on the hope for a solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict:

The solution essentially comes down to understanding the most and least that each side can accept.

We could argue forever whether the State of Israel should have been created the way it was but, as most Palestinians have come to accept, that is a historical fact that is simply not going to change. It has been a huge and difficult step for the Palestinians to accept that, after all it was their land that was stolen from them. But come to accept it they have. That is the most they can be expected to accept. The least they can be expected to accept is to have their own Palestinian State and have Israel give back the land they stole since the creation of the State of Israel with no exceptions. The original boundaries must be restored, including the status of Jerusalem at the time Israel was created.

The least that Israel can be expected to accept is to have their right to exist accepted by the international community, including Palestinians and Arab states. The most they can be expected to give up is all the land they stole after the creation of the state of Israel, a not unreasonable expectation. (Source)

Considering the current circumstances, conventional wisdom would suggest hope for any solution may have been set back for decades, or centuries, unless the backlash from the rest of the world (apart from the United States), along with that of the Israeli people leads to the establishment of a progressive pro-Palestinian Israeli government, and by Pro Palestinian I mean one committed to the right of Palestinians to live and a Palestinian state to exist. Then maybe such a two state solution can become reality. After enough time to build trust it would ideally lead to a European Union type alliance between peoples that are natural partners, having lived peacefully together in the past and being genetically related . My preference, but who am I to say, would be for a single multi-cultural, multi-ethnic, multi-religious secular state, because I believe religious based states are always a bad idea.

One might wonder if Hamas’s actions were based on a strategy of desperation, thinking that a massive terrorist attack would result in the expected disproportionate genocidal Israeli response, and hoping for a backlash from the rest of the world and the Israeli people, leading to change of government and policy in Israel. In effect, a sacrificing thousands of Palestinian lives (as Hamas certainly understands the power imbalance) in the hope of creating the conditions for the creation of a truly independent Palestinian state as a result.

It has been difficult for people to say out loud one of the statements above, not because the facts do not justify it, but because most of the world does not want to believe it

Can America Be Saved

 I am writing this as a citizen of a world that no matter where we live are strongly impacted by whatever America does and whatever happens in America

America is celebrating but it will take a lot more than the end of the Trump presidency to save America. Trump promoted and encouraged, and even used the office of the presidency to legitimize the worst of America. The worst of America existed before Trump, was made stronger with Trump, and will continue after Trump. It's proponents may even become more strident.

Saving America will require government policy changes, legislative changes and even constitutional changes, but most of all cultural changes.

The toxic and partisan nature of American politics is not going away quickly or easily and the politicians are not going to solve America's problems. Toxic partisanship means ideas from the other side are rejected and fought against because they came from the other side and are thus seen as evil. In the rare case they may be seen as good ideas they are opposed rather than supported so the other side cannot take credit for them.

How are Americans to come together to solve their problems in this political atmosphere. I would propose a constituent assembly of Americans to propose solutions together. This assembly should be diverse, include all incomes, occupational groups and the unemployed, come from all regions, religions, including the non-religious, and include people of all sexual orientations and gender identification. It should also represent a broad variety of political philosophies while purposely not considering party affiliations in the choice of participants.

They should sit down together as Americans to find away to make America the country that it can be and their political leaders should commit to implementing the required changes no matter how difficult it will be politically.

Now I can stop here and say let Americans fix America, but being who I am I cannot do that without proposing some solutions for some of the most obvious and worst problems facing America.

We just came through an American election so let us look at that first.

Election day is when almost all elected American officials are elected, federal, state and local. Nobody talks about this but that in itself is a major problem for democracy. Voters are expected to be able to make choices about who they want to represent them for a large multitude of offices. Can they really absorb and analyze all the information necessary to make informed decisions. This system, I believe, encourages voters to just give up on deciding who to vote for and just vote a straight "party ticket", further strengthening the hold of toxic partisanship on America's political culture.

The other fact, strange to me and I suspect the rest of the world outside America, is that America holds 50 separate elections for federal offices each with separate rules. How can every vote be equal when there are 50 different sets of rules for voters.

And then there is the election of the President by the Electoral College where some states elect more than twice as many electors per voter as other states, not to mention the fact that the winner take all system means close to 50 percent of a states votes may not count at all in the presidential election if the parties are close in that state.

The Electoral College supposedly protects the minority from the tyranny of the majority but is that not the Senate's role where Senators elected by a minority of voters have a veto over legislation passed by Representatives representing a majority of voters. The Electoral College system is more akin to the Tyranny of the Minority. Everyone voting for President should have an equal vote otherwise the President does not represent all Americans equally.

We have not even mentioned the fact the elections are run and controlled by (state) politicians where gerrymandering, voter suppression and other shenanigans are considered fair game as long as you can get away with it. American elections are simply a power game with only lip service played to democracy.

Other countries do it differently. Elections cannot be fair if they are controlled by one of the parties seeking office. America needs to have an impartial non-partisan agency to control their elections, and for federal elections the rules must be the same for all Americans. America should look at the Elections Canada model, perhaps the fairest and most effective model in the world, that not only ensures elections are fair but facilitates encourages the electorate to get out and vote.

‘A crazy system’: U.S. voters face huge lines and gerrymandering. How Elections Canada makes a world of difference north of the border (Toronto Star)

Elections Canada says its system protects Canadian voters from U.S.-style drama (CBC News) 

And then we have the American justice system where we have a misguided understanding of what democracy means.

In a democracy the laws should certainly be written by the elected representatives. However the application of those laws and the adjudication of them is something that must be done according to those laws, not according to the whims of public opinion. The police and prosecutors should enforce the law as it is written and judges should interpret it that way. There should never be a conflict between doing the right thing and keeping their jobs. But this is exactly what making these positions elected positions does. It makes law enforcement and the courts a matter of political partisanship and public opinion where they should only be guided by law and fact. We see this extended to an extreme in the appointment process for the United States Supreme Court.

The United States must depoliticize the legal and court system if it wants to be a true democracy and it must reform the Supreme Court appointment process.

They would be wise to look at the Canadian experience where one cannot predict how Canadian Supreme Court justices will rule based on who appointed them.

Nothing separates America from the rest of the western world more than the violent nature of their society, and in particular American gun culture, which is somehow grounded in the Second Amendment, considered part of the United States Bill of Rights.

A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed [Second Amendment to the United States Constitution - Wikipedia]

Oddly most Americans, apparently including their Supreme Court, seem to ignore the first part of that statement.

Why a clause providing a right to own the means of mass murder would be included in a document intended to protect human rights only the Americans can answer, but I suspect the answer would not be very convincing.

The most compelling argument seems to be that America has become such an irreversibly dangerous and violent and lawless society that it is a necessity for everyone to be armed. I prefer to retain hope that America need not be such a society. However, regulating and reducing gun ownership is an absolute necessity to eliminating American's crime and violence epidemic.

The rest of the civilized world seems to manage quite well by considering firearms ownership to be a highly regulated privilege similar to automobile ownership but America seems to believe it is still living in the era of the wild west.

Compounding the problem of the Second Amendment is the American absolutist approach to rights, which makes it not only impossible to properly regulate gun ownership but also makes it near impossible to outlaw hate speech or prevent terrorist white supremacist war lords from forming private armies and using them to intimidate other citizens, usually non-whites or non-Christians, not to mention their threat to democracy itself.

A charter of rights need not be absolutist, as clause 1 of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms demonstrates:

1. The Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms guarantees the rights and freedoms set out in it subject only to such reasonable limits prescribed by law as can be demonstrably justified in a free and democratic society. [Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms - Constitution Acts, 1867 to 1982]

I must say that the Supreme Court of Canada has done an admirable job in interpreting that clause in a reasonable fashion, without any sign of political partisanship.

We have looked at issues that have the most obvious legislative and constitutional solutions. We are not going to attempt to deal with all the challenges facing America today, including race relations, police misconduct, misogyny, sexual inequality, LBGTQ rights, Islamophobia, anti-science attitudes, and on and on. Most of these issues require changes beyond public policy, changes to the social culture of America.

But we would be remiss if we did not examine the two pillars that make America what it is, and I believe hold it back from what it could be, the worship of unbridled capitalism and individualism, coupled with an irrational fear of "socialist" ideas.

Interestingly enough U.S. News & World Report has just issued it's quality of life ratings and the top 10 countries are countries with "socialist" ideas.

Meanwhile, under American capitalism income inequality today may be higher today than in any other era. As an example, Amazon's Jeff Bezos made 1.2 million times the median Amazon employee in 2017.

Of course he receives that income because he works 1.2 million times as hard as the workers that actually provide the services Amazon sells. It has nothing to do with worker exploitation or predatory business practices.

Amazon is only one example of how American capitalism has come to work. America is a long way from the theoretical pretense of fair profits and and decent wages and working conditions.

American capitalism is inextricably intertwined with American individualism and the idea that not only can anybody, but everybody, can become a millionaire. There is no need for redistribution of wealth when capitalism can create an unlimited amount of wealth. There is no such thing as limits to growth as the earth has unlimited resources and energy and the planet has an unlimited ability to absorb the effects of unbridled industrial capitalism. All of this of course is what the experts refer to as bullshit but it drives the American capitalist philosophy because it is a simple answer to so many complicated questions.

It is this frame of mind that links capitalism to individualism and the idea that if everybody acts in their own self interests the interests of society as a whole will be served and the somewhat related credo that "what's good for General Motors is good for America". This is what enables so many Americans to put the interests of the wealthy and corporations before all else and explains why so many voters tend to vote against their own self interests.

It also explains the hesitance of so many in America, during this global pandemic, to make small sacrifices of individual freedom, like wearing a mask, for the sake of saving the lives of their fellow Americans and their willingness to simply disregard the advice of experts when it is inconvenient for them. Contrast that with other western countries where the sense of community is much stronger than individualism and the infection and death rates are much lower.

Electing a leader that does not depend on the worst of America for his base of support will certainly help but if America wants to solve its problems it needs to build a sense of community. America has massive problems that will require much more than people seeking to serve their own self interests. They require people working together for the good of the whole society.

It is becoming obvious that the measures necessary to fix American society will require a tremendous amount of political will and fundamental cultural changes. No doubt the usual political observers and experts will all agree that that simply is not possible. We know who failed to even try, but can the American people Make America Great Again.

Thoughts on the police

This post does not claim to have all the answers, or any answers, nor to be a comprehensive, or any kind of analysis, but is simply some thoughts on a subject that our society has finally been forced to deal with.

One's attitude to the police is clearly shaped by the reality one lives in. Unfortunately for too many people that reality is that the police are people who at worst kill them or their family members and at best treat them unfairly and discriminate against them. To others the police are people they depend on to protect them and in some cases to protect their privileged status in society.

Some will say this is an issue that we have imported from a racist United States. We know that to be untrue. Even those that say that know it to be untrue and the best they can argue is that it is relatively worse in the United States. Not being as bad as America is hardly a standard we should want to be judged by in Canada, particularly when strong arguments can be made that this is not true anyway, we just all wish it was.

Many will argue that abolishing or defunding the police are simply ideas that are too radical.

Indeed for untold decades suggestions for community building and crime prevention as an alternative to policing and incarceration have been met with support in principle without funding being provided, while police budgets have increased exponentially with little restraint. Indeed there seemed to have be an unspoken argument that we will find money for crime prevention when we no longer need it for the police because crime has disappeared.

We could of course reduce the need for the police by orders of magnitude if we stopped criminalizing what is a public health issue – drug use and abuse. We have done that for years with alcohol and tobacco use and cannabis just recently. There is no rational reason why all non-medical use of drugs should not been treated in the same way as a public health issue.

The funds are available to provide proper drug rehabilitation programs, sitting there in police budgets being wasted on treating a health matter as a criminal one. We could also use that money to provide mental health workers to deal with mental health crisis so the individuals receive treatment rather than being killed by police.

I dare say we have a huge amount of room to defund the police and put that money to better use.

We could put traffic enforcement in a separate organization with a greater emphasis on road safety rather than collecting fines,

What we have left within the police for traditional policing, crime investigation and law enforcement would still require major reforms. Reforms of the extent that could justifiably be argued would be best done by abolishing the police as they now exist and starting all over.

Metric for Americans

American exceptionalism often means things like calling football soccer while the rest of the world calls it football . Yes, us northern neighbours do the same thing but it's still wrong.

My biggest peeve about American exceptionalism is the fact they cannot get their political colours correct. Every American election period I am puzzled by which states are red and which are blue till I remember that the land of Donkeys and Elephants has it backwards. In the rest of the world red represents the left and blue represents the right but America chooses to do it differently. BTW Wikipedia's explanation is here FWIW.

Perhaps the strangest example of American exceptionalism is that after fighting a bitter war of independence from the British Imperialists they choose to be (almost) the only country in the world still using the Imperial system of measurement and not using the Metric system.

So for those leery of change let's do a quick comparison.

We can see the multitude of complicated calculations necessary to use the Imperial System while the Metric system simply requires an ability to move the decimal point.

So what would that mean for Americans. Probably less than they fear. In Canada, in some sense, we have a hybrid system. For almost everything official Metric is used. The most noticeable changes for the common person are weather and driving and we have adapted to this easily. Most of us don't relate to the old Fahrenheit units anymore. The same can be said of distances and speed limits.

For the home handyman little has changed. Plywood (and particle board) is still sold in 4 foot by 8 foot sheets, though sometimes the thickness will be in millimetres rather than fractions of an inch. And two by fours are still the same standard 1½ X 3½ inch size. In Canada most measuring tapes are marked in both Metric and Imperial measurements. So build away using your existing tools.

As for cooking have no fear. There is no Metric Fire Department burning your old cookbooks and grandmother's recipes and no Metric Police seizing your Imperial measuring spoons and cups. Indeed, most measuring spoons and cups in Canada are marked in both measuring systems. You simply gain access to both Metric and Imperial recipes.

So have no fear America, embrace progress and leave Liberia and Myanmar to fend for themselves in a Metric world.

Is American Democracy Fucked ?

So is the American political system completely dysfunctional.

I suppose the easy answer is to say they elected Trump so case closed, but of course it is much more complicated than that.

What advanced developed democracy cannot manage to keep it's government functioning.

The obvious answer should be “none” but of course we know that is incorrect.

Even countries that require months of negotiations after elections to form a coalition government do not let their governments shut down. They understand that government is more than just politics, that government is a good thing that provides vital services to the people. They have processes to allow the everyday work of government to continue while the politics is sorted out.

Take Canada for example. If a government cannot get its spending plan (in the form of an Appropriation Act) approved it is considered a loss of confidence in the government by the legislature and an election is called. However the Prime Minister and Cabinet (whom are all Members of the legislature) retain their positions and what are referred to as Governor Generals' Warrants are issued to fund the day to day operations of government. Government continues in a caretaker mode with no new policy initiatives undertaken until a new government is formed.

However the American system seems designed for deadlock with no confidence mechanism to break deadlocks by electing a new government. They have an executive with a Cabinet appointed and led by a President that is not responsible to the legislature and a bicameral legislative process, requiring the two legislative bodies and the President to agree for legislation, including government funding bills, to become law.

Currently the two legislative bodies are controlled by two opposing parties and the President who, while nominally the leader of one of the two main parties, is in reality a rogue actor with no political allegiance except to himself and no discernible political philosophy except for his own incoherent version of populism. This is a recipe for the chaos that is the current American political situation.

I can only suppose that when the founding fathers drafted the American Constitution they put a great deal of faith in the good will of the political participants to put the good of the American people ahead of petty politics.

Now let us look at the American electoral system.

We will start with Election Day when most (but not all as there are variations between states) Americans vote for federal, state and local officials. They could not design a better way to overwhelm voters leading them to take the path of least resistance and vote a “straight party ticket”. Just the mechanics of voting for that many officials (including many positions that should be public servants), without even considering the time and effort to consider local, state and federal issues and make meaningful voting decisions, must be completely overwhelming to voters.

Americans also elect prosecutors and judges. This raises the whole other issue of the politicization of the justice and judicial systems all the way up to a very politicized Supreme Court. This could be the subject of a treatise all by itself.

Looking at elections for federal office we have the absurd situation where the states set the rules and procedures for federal elections and these vary from state to state. So a federal election is not a consistent process with consistent rules for all Americans.

But the most egregious fact is that it is state politicians from the state's governing party that control the federal election process in that state, including the drawing of the electoral map with that infamous American institution of gerrymandering (to manipulate the boundaries of an electoral constituency so as to favour one party). This also includes the use of various voter suppression methods to reduce voting, usually of black and other minority voters.

Then we have the electoral college system which routinely elects Presidents that are not the choice of the majority of American voters. The system is somewhat designed to do that by giving smaller states relatively more electoral college votes but is made worse by the fact that in most states all of a state's electoral college votes go to the candidate with the most votes in that state. So if a presidential candidate gets 60% of a states votes he gets 100% of the states electoral college votes further skewing the results away from the popular vote.

Another concern is the primary system used to select the individual parties candidates, including the presidential candidates. Again we have an inconsistent system of primaries and caucuses that are different for each state. But perhaps the biggest problem is the timing of these primaries at different dates for each state. It makes for great drama and entertainment but the results of earlier primaries cannot help but affect the results of later primaries. There is a reason election results are not released before all the polls are closed – so that earlier voters do not influence later voters. The primary system seems designed to do just that.

A consistent federal election process overseen by an independent non-partisan agency (similar to Elections Canada) would go a long way to solving the structural problems with the American electoral system. The cultural problems of political corruption are another matter.

And we have not even looked at the role money plays in American elections which is a huge subject all by itself, especially the role of wealthy donors, PACs (Political Action Committees) and SuperPACs. No one in American government can possibly govern without constantly thinking about where the money is coming from for their next campaign. It is very hard to argue that that will not affect their decision making.

And it is almost impossible to do anything in the form of political financing reform as the Supreme Court has ruled that money equals free speech, effectively ruling that the wealthy have a greater right to free speech than ordinary citizens and a greater ability to promote their preferred candidates for election.

So with all of these fundamental problems how can American elections be fair. If American elections are not fair, they are not democratic, and if the electoral process is not democratic then the whole governing structure is not democratic.

American democracy is fucked.

Best American Political Poster Ever

Obama Gets it Right on Palestine

President Obama understands what I wrote three and a half years ago, that ending the Israeli Palestinian conflict depends on recognizing that "the solution essentially comes down to understanding the most and least that each side can accept".

We could argue forever whether the State of Israel should have been created the way it was but, as most Palestinians have come to accept, that is a historical fact that is simply not going to change. It has been a huge and difficult step for the Palestinians to accept that, after all it was their land that was stolen from them. But come to accept it they have. That is the most they can be expected to accept. The least they can be expected to accept is to have their own Palestinian State and have Israel give back the land they stole since the creation of the State of Israel with no exceptions. The original boundaries must be restored, including the status of Jerusalem at the time Israel was created.

The least that Israel can be expected to accept is to have their right to exist accepted by the international community, including Palestinians and Arab states. The most they can be expected to give up is all the land they stole after the creation of the state of Israel, a not unreasonable expectation.

Hard line Israelis, and their even harder line supporters in the United States, may not want to accept anything other than a solution dictated by Israel but the rest of the world knows, and President Obama understands, that Middle East Peace will require compromise, and while the hard liners may not want peace the rest of the world does.

Who Are Terrorists Anyway

To me, terrorists were always people who targeted innocent civilians going about their daily lives. So how does a 15 year old child soldier accused of killing an American soldier in a battle become referred to as a terrorist.

But my definition of terrorism (and genocide) includes dropping atomic bombs on civilian populations. However, my definition does not take into account that it's not terrorism if the good guys do it and only the losing side ever commits war crimes.

The American Dream and Lazy Poor People

As a Canadian I find it very difficult to understand the attitude of many Americans, and not just the extreme right, that the poor do not deserve health care and particularly that their hard earned tax dollars should not pay for it.

The only reason I can come up for this is that they really do believe in the America Dream - literally and completely. That dream being that if you work hard you can become rich. If you follow that reasoning to it's logical conclusion then, if you are not rich you did not work hard, and if you are poor it is because you are lazy.

While that may seem absurd, a lot of things Americans believe are pretty absurd by Canadian standards, as seen by the results of this public opinion poll.

Buses Speaking Truth to Power

Imagine these buses rolling down American streets.

Names of the Dead

President Barack Obama and the Nobel Peace Prize

Was anyone not surprised by the selection of United States President Obama as this year's Nobel Peace Prize recipient. While many, I am sure, saw him as a potential future winner, most saw the newly elected President as not having been in office long enough to have the accomplishments necessary to win the prize.

The Nobel Committee obviously saw it differently and I think that speaks to a number of things.

The Norwegian Nobel committee said the president was selected "for his extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and co-operation between people."

The committee attached special importance to Obama's vision and work for a world without nuclear weapons in the prize citation, which was read in Oslo on Friday.

"The vision of a world free from nuclear arms has powerfully stimulated disarmament and arms control negotiations," the citation said.
...

Norwegian Nobel committee chair Thorbjorn Jagland told CNN that the five-member committee had unanimously voted to select Obama as the Nobel laureate.

Jagland told CBC News the committee expected criticism about the selection. But the prize is meant to help "strengthen his role and his policy," he said.

Though Obama has been president for less than a year it has been "enough time to inspire the world," Jagland said.

The Nobel committee said Obama has created a new climate in international politics that has focused on multilateral diplomacy and an emphasis on the role of the United Nations and other international institutions.

"Only very rarely has a person to the same extent as Obama captured the world's attention and given its people hope for a better future," the citation said.

The committee seems to have put a lot of emphasis on the hope created by Obama's election. In a way they have given him the prize, not for specific accomplishments, but for setting the stage for future accomplishments.

This says a lot about the role and power of the United States as the world's only superpower. Simply indicating that a change in United States foreign policy is coming becomes a force for peace. It also says a lot about just how dangerous and damaging to international peace the policies of the former administration were.

But still one wonders why the committee did not wait for a future year to award Obama the prize in recognition of anticipated future accomplishments.

This may be where a possible darker side for the decision comes into play. The Nobel Prizes are only awarded to living recipients and the Nobel Prize Committee may have found it prudent to award him the prize while it was able to.

Only in Celebrityland

Only in Celebrityland would there be any debate or controversy over whether a 44 year old who had sex with a thirteen year old after giving her alcohol and drugs should be held accountable for his crime, especially when he was in a position of authority over her.

It just amazes me that people are defending him, including the victim, who at the time certainly was in no position to consent, especially after being drugged, and who since has received a financial settlement from the rapist.

His crime was against society and society has a right and responsibility to hold him accountable in the name of all the other victims and potential victims of such crimes.

References:

CBC News: Polanski to fight extradition

Ottawa Citizen: Polanski held on decades-old charge

Talking to Americans About Health Care

A Message From The Fifth Column To Our American Friends And Neighbours

As a Canadian, who like the vast majority of Canadians, would never give up my public health care system, I find the debate in the United States over health care to be quite perplexing. In fact in Canada whenever the prospect of a parallel private system is brought up the public quickly makes it known that a two tier system is unacceptable and any increased private role in the system is undesirable.

Indeed when I observe what is happening in the United States it sometimes appears that the best that can be hoped for is a compromise, a compromise that in all probability will not have the efficiencies of a universal single payer public system and a compromise that may end up being simply a government subsidy to the insurance industry.

But no matter what happens, the bottom line is that I do hope that our American neighbours at least end up with a system that does not see the middle class continuing to face losing their homes and having to declare bankruptcy due to health care costs and the poor continuing to die prematurely due to lack of health care.

What, of course, upsets us most in Canada are the misrepresentations and lies about the Canadian health care system (and public health care systems in general) that have become part of the debate in the United States.

It seems, and I do not want to get sidetracked into a different debate here, that some of the opposition to health care reform is driven by other agendas, and shall we say an inability of certain groups to accept the results of the recent United States election.

But I do want to raise one philosophical difference between Canadians and the Americans that health care opponents are trying to take advantage of.

This is the fact that Americans see themselves as more individualistic than Canadians and see government in a much less positive light than Canadians. Canadians on the other hand think in much more social and collective terms and see government as a means for the people to do things collectively.

At least that is the stereotype that the opponents seem to be using in decrying any government role in health care as being socialism and thus evil. Socialism is not a dirty word in Canada, and neither is liberalism. We like our single payer public health care system – call it socialized medicine if you like.

Interestingly enough, one of the differences in our political history, and one that relates directly to the establishment of Medicare (as we call our public health care system) in Canada has been the role of religion in politics. As a Canadian I find the role of the so-called Christian right in American politics to be perplexing, indeed absurd at times. While there are right wing Christian influences within our Conservative Party, the most significant religious influences in Canadian politics have come from the left, from the Social Gospel, led by preachers like J.S. Woodsworth, Stanley Knowles and Tommy Douglas from the CCF and NDP, who first proposed such things as public welfare, public pensions and Medicare, all of which have become part of the Canadian social fabric.

Indeed,Tommy Douglas, who, as Premier of Saskatchewan, first established Medicare in Canada, over the objections of the health care and insurance industries, even battling a doctors strike, was chosen by Canadians as The Greatest Canadian.

So how does Canadian Medicare work.

The Canada Health Act sets out the basic principles of Canadian Medicare.

Administration: - All administration of provincial health insurance must be carried out by a public authority on a non-profit basis. This authority must be accountable to the province or territory, and their records and accounts are subject to audits.

Comprehensiveness: - All necessary health services, including hospitals, physicians and surgical dentists, must be insured.

Universality: - All insured residents are entitled to the same level of health care.

Portability: - A resident that moves to a different province or territory is still entitled to coverage from their home province during a minimum waiting period. This also applies to residents which leave the country.

Accessibility: - All insured persons have reasonable access to health care facilities. In addition, all physicians, hospitals, etc, must be provided reasonable compensation for the services they provide.

What that means is that you go to your doctor and you get taken care of. You go to the hospital and you get taken care of. You are not asked for payment and you receive no bills. Yes you pay through your taxes and sometimes through premiums, depending on the province's funding system.

You choose your own doctors and you and your doctors decide what is the best treatment option. There is no one from the insurance industry approving your treatment. There is no one from the insurance industry denying you treatment because you've been sick before. There are no "co-pays" or payment caps. The minimum wage earner or welfare recipient receives the same quality of care as the corporate executive. No one can pay extra to jump to the front of the line. And the quality of care is excellent.

My last visit to the hospital involved a migraine that would not go away, and though I had a doctors appointment booked later that week I decided to go to the emergency department because I was getting fed up with the pain. I did have to wait awhile to see the doctor, then I got put on an IV pain reliever and waited some more, while the pain decreased. The doctor then saw me and referred me for a CAT scan and said it might be a few hours before they could take me, but actually it was about 15 minutes. The CAT scan was clear so no worries about brain tumours. We talked about putting me on beta blockers, which I was already discussing with my family doctor, but just waiting for test results to confirm I did not have asthma (from another hospital visit where I arrived early for my appointment and was able to have the test done right away). After seeing my family doctor I was put on beta blockers and have hardly had a migraine since.

I could relate all sorts of stories of the excellent care received by myself, my family and friends from our public health care system.

The most important benefit of public health care, especially for the poor is regular preventative care. When you have to decide between providing the necessities of life for your family or paying for a routine check-up, more often than not the routine health care is ignored, in some cases until it is too late. People die because of that. This is particularly important for healthy baby check-ups. When you have to decide between buying food for your baby or taking him to the doctor for a routine check-up what do you think the decision will be.

Yes there are problems. Wait times for elective and non-urgent procedures can be longer than they should be and we currently have a shortage of family doctors. These are not problems caused by the nature of the public health care system. Indeed adding a private option would only divert resources from those that need it most to those that can pay to jump to the head of the line. These are problems that to some degree require more funding and to some degree require the training of more doctors and specialized technicians.

There is one problem that I do consider systemic and that is the lack of coverage for prescription drugs outside of hospitals as part of the national system. That being said, private insurance coverage for prescription drugs is a fairly common employment benefit at a reasonable cost and the provinces do have programs to pay the drug costs of low income earners or residents with high drug costs in relation to their household income. But a national Pharmacare program is necessary to complete Canada's Medicare System

The other argument that is made in favour of the American completely private health care system is that only private for profit health care provides research and innovation. Have these people never heard of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (or for that matter NASA). Indeed more research is probably done in government facilities than in private ones. When it comes to hospital research, it is not whether it is a for profit hospital that determines whether research is done, but whether it is a teaching hospital. Indeed Canada, and other countries with public health care systems all have internationally respected teaching hospitals that are doing leading edge medical research.

Public health care is at the top the list when Canadians are asked what it means to be a Canadian, Indeed the idea of for profit health care or anyone getting better or faster health care because of their wealth or income is something Canadians consider to be unethical and immoral. Universal single payer public health care is a basic Canadian value.

And just so that I am completely clear, despite the lies that Americans have been told, there are no government bureaucrats involved in Canadians personal health care decisions and no death panels. There are no insurance companies denying care due to pre-existing conditions, There are no "co-pays" and there are no payment ceilings.

Final Words

I would hope that Americans do not let the misrepresentations about the Canadian health care system prevent the implementation of health care reform in their country. Indeed, I fear that the opportunity to implement single payer universal public health care for the United States has already been lost. And the public option is threatened by the massive lobbying campaign that is dominating the media. Health care reform is something that may not be attainable if left to the politicians. If the American people want health care reform they must stand up and demand it. Now is the time for the silent majority to be heard.


I have not included any statistics or links with these comments as I wanted to keep it to my own words but for those that are interested in further information I am providing the following:

Canadian Medicare and the Canada Health Act

Canada's Health Care System (Medicare)

Canada Health Act - Health Canada Information

Canada Health Act (text from Justice Department)

Canadian Health Coalition

Canadians (and Americans Living in Canada) on Canadian Health Care

Former Conservative Prime Minister Mulroney supports Obama's health-care fight

Defending Canada's Health Care: Truths and Lies - Jack Layton

Keep Canada Out of the U.S. Health-Care Debate - Bob Rae

Canadians Defend Their Health Care System

Universal Health Care Message to Americans From Canadian Doctors & Health Care Experts

Debunking Canadian health care myths

A puzzled Canadian ponders surreal U.S. health-care debate

Americans Who Can't Go Home

What they don’t want you to know about Canadian health care

My brain and the Ontario health-care system

The Truth About Canadian Health Care

Debunking the profiteers' lies about healthcare

What Shona Holmes wants for you......Here are the facts

Tommy Douglas

The Greatest Canadian - Tommy Douglas

Prairie Giant: The Tommy Douglas Story

Kiefer Sutherland introduces the Tommy Douglas Showcase

Tommy Douglas Showcase

Douglas, Thomas Clement - The Canadian Encyclopedia

Summer Blogging Frustrations and The War on Workers

Summer Blogging Frustrations and The War on Workers

Those who have followed The Fifth Column from the beginning will know that summer is a slow time for the blog when I find my time taken up with other things and the blog becomes intermittent.

This summer has been particularly frustrating because while preoccupied with other things I have found myself thinking about things to blog about but too frustrated to do it. This is primarily because we are in the middle of the War on Workers in this country at the same time as our American friends are battling the War on Health Care and, in particular, the War on Canadian Health Care.

I found myself vacationing in Sudbury when the vote results from Local 6500 came in. As a student at Laurentian University I worked for INCO and was a member of Local 6500 and walked the picket lines with my brothers and sisters who depended on working at INCO for their livelihood.

I call upon all readers of the Fifth Column to give their full support to my brothers and sisters in Sudbury.


Please feel free to use the following on your blogs or web pages.

Support Local 6500 Sudbury

Legalizing Spousal Rape In Afghanistan – Not So Foreign to Canadian Law

As the CBC reports, Afghanistan's proposed law to legalize spousal rape, or to put it in other terms “make it illegal for women to refuse their husbands sex”, has rightly been widely condemned.

However, we would be wrong to characterize this as some sort of Islamic barbarism foreign to western civilizations.

Indeed, as the Globe and Mail reports, the same provision existed in Canadian law up until 1983.

Indeed, the concept has had a long history in the jurisprudence of the United Kingdom, Commonwealth countries, Canada and the United States, as the following articles record:

Historical Development of the Offence of_Rape (Bruce A. MacFarlane, Q.C. Deputy Minister of Justice Deputy Attorney General for the Province of Manitoba)

Making Marital Rape A Crime: A Long Road Traveled, A Long Way to Go (Lynn Hecht Schafran, Director, National Judicial Education Program; Stefanie Lopez-Boy, Program Associate, National Judicial Education Program; Mary Rothwell Davis)

It took a long time to banish from the law books of the west, It should not be allowed to be put on the law books of Afghanistan at a time when Canadian soldiers are dying there, supposedly in the name of women's rights and human rights.

Out With The Old and In With The New

If ever there was a time to celebrate that it is today !

Dion to Liberals: We Don't Tell It As It Is

We knew that before but now it's official.

Liberal Leader Stephane Dion said he disagreed with Dallaire's choice of words, and hinted the senator could be disciplined.

"This is a matter to deal with the (party) whip, and we'll deal with that," Dion told reporters.

This is about what we have come to expect from the Leader of Her Majesty's Official Abstainers.

Omar Khadr Is a Child Soldier-Period!

If anyone can talk with authority on human rights and child soldiers it is Senator Roméo Dallaire.

The CBC reported that:

Canada has sunk to the moral equivalent of al-Qaeda by failing to treat Canadian Omar Khadr the same way it treats other child soldiers, Liberal Senator Roméo Dallaire said Tuesday.

Dallaire, who appeared before a foreign affairs committee on international human rights, said Khadr is clearly a child soldier who shouldn't be prosecuted by an illegal court system at Guantanamo Bay but reintegrated into society.

Canada is heading down a slippery slope by failing to obey the United Nations conventions on child soldiers to which it is a signatory, he said.

"The minute you start playing with human rights, with conventions, with civil liberties in order to say you are doing it to protect yourself … you are no better than the guy who doesn't believe in them at all," he said.

"We are slipping down the slope of going down that same route."

When Senator Dallaire speaks the government should listen and pay heed rather than countering with a political defence of the United States Bush government's illegal actions. Perhaps Stephen Harper prefers to shake hands with the devil.

Racism in the Context of Time - The Full Story

These words were taken from my Grade 13 history notes from 1968-1969 (Mr. Varpio, LaSalle Secondary School, Sudbury, Ontario). They are from a handout entitled "The Myth of Lincoln - Globe, April 14, 1965, By Harry Pitt, London Observer Service".

These words were stated by Abraham Lincoln in 1858 during the Senate election campaign in response to the incumbent Stephen Douglas:

I am not, nor ever have been in favor of bringing about the social or political equality of the white and black races - I am not ... in favor of making voters or jurors of Negroes, nor of qualifying them to hold office, nor to inter-marry with white people.

There is a physical difference between the white and black races which I believe will forever forbid the two races living together on terms of social and political equality.

Lincoln, in 1862, while President and prior to the Emancipation Proclamation, stated:

If I could save the Union without freeing any slaves, I would do it, and if I could do it by freeing all the slaves, I would do it, and if I could do it by freeing some and leaving others alone, I would do that also. What I do about slavery and the coloured race, I do because I believe it helps to save this Union.

I will leave you to come to your own conclusions on whether or not Abraham Lincoln was a racist.

Should Canadians Know Where Their Food Comes From

Apparently Canadian meat producers and the federal government do not think so. According to the CBC website:

“Canadian beef and pork producers want Ottawa to step up its opposition to a United States plan to place country of origin labels and tracking rules on their meat products”.

The groups say that county of origin labeling “would violate North American Free Trade Agreement and World Trade Organization rules”.

“Agriculture Canada officials were not available for comment. The government has written the U.S. government to formally oppose the plan.”

Besides being hypocritical, it would be totally contradictory to then argue that food products in the Canadian market should include country of origin labeling. This is clearly a case of “Free Trade Gone Wild”.

It is one thing to remove trade barriers such as tariffs and government regulations. It is another to prevent consumers from buying Canadian by not allowing them to know where their food comes from