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.
