The Hon. Ed Broadbent was the lunchtime speaker at an Alternative Federal Budget Roundtable held in Ottawa in November 2009. This is the text of his speech.
Proposition One
Virtually all governments in the developed democracies agree on one thing: our political and economic situation is the worst since the 1930s. So far most governments, including Canada's, believe any action taken must simply deal with the present crisis. This has meant short-run stimulus and minor regulatory adjustment. Then return to the 2008 status quo.
Proposition Two
Instead of asking how we can go back to the pre-crisis status quo, it’s precisely when confronted with a shock of this magnitude we should be asking a different question. Instead of demanding a modified version of the world as it was in the summer of 2008, we on the left should ask: What kind of Canada do we want? Where do we want to be not in 2008 but in 2018?
Proposition Three
Canadians are now more open to a significant role played by government in our lives than they have been during decades of free-market fundamentalism. Much more than our insufferably conservative political and economic elites, most Canadians want or at least are prepared to accept real change.
Much more than a year ago they distrust the self-serving groups in the financial centres of New York, London and Toronto. These wise-acres and their neo-liberal cohorts in the academy are finally on the defensive. We must show an open public how the instruments of government can be used to serve directly the interests and needs of the majority. An agenda based on the financial interests of the wealthy and the regulatory requirements of the corporate and particularly the financial sector – on the false trickle-down assumption that all others would indirectly benefit, has been thoroughly discredited.
Proposition Four
Our political vocabulary must inspire. We must talk about the twin democratic goals of liberty and equality.
Canadians want jobs, housing, food on their tables and adequate pensions. But they and their children also have dreams to become great musicians, athletes, skilled tradesmen, scientists, health workers, inventors, actors and writers. We must lift their spirits as well as reduce their burdens. In every young person there is an idealist longing to emerge and be welcomed. They want an exuberant Canada and an inspiring leadership that will draw them out.
Proposition Five
We must fully match our idealism about the future with the practicality of our solutions. Tommy Douglas inspired a generation with his passion, self-deprecating wit and commitment to social justice.
But he succeeded as a politician at his prime as Premier of Saskatchewan with the soundness of his programs. Tommy knew in his bones that people yearn for justice but that when they vote a powerful practicality comes into play: they need to be convinced. A government Medicare for all was inspiring in principle but it gained acceptance because it was seen as a workable solution.
Proposition Six
It’s the moment for Canadian social democrats to speak frankly and comprehensively about a market economy, not just about its limitations but also about its virtues. For most of the goods and services we want, we believe a market-based economy makes sense. We should say so.
We should also say that recent federal governments have been a disaster when it comes to managing that economy. The fact that we have lost 600,000 manufacturing jobs in the last seven years is the direct result of present capital conservative and previous Liberal ineptitude. Both accept a neo-liberal model for the federal government. Both deny the need for a nationally led industrial strategy that would provide appropriate policies for the resource, financial and manufacturing sectors. In promoting such a strategy we social democrats should challenge the view that once a small business becomes successful, for us, it suddenly loses its virtue. Finish, Swedish and Norwegian social democrats promote the success of their large corporations. So would we.
Proposition Seven
While we want an economy that largely responds to market signals, we do not want that economy to shape our society. The welfare state fostered after WWII has been the clearest illustration of Canadians’ determination to build a nation with non-market imperatives. For four decades, at the federal and provincial levels, we created a plethora of social initiatives – pensions, hospitalization, medical, employment insurance, employment equity, daycare, plus a Charter of rights that reshaped what it meant to be a Canadian. Let me be clear, I am not talking about safety nets. We took key goods and services out of the market and established them as rights of citizenship.
Because of the equalizing effect of putting in place this innovative set of social and economic rights we eventually started to talk about ourselves as sharing and caring. When complemented by public support for the arts and serious funding for university level research, we had moved well beyond a nation whose social life was entirely shaped by the priorities of the market. In Lincoln’s wonderfully precise language, we moved from government by and of to include government for the people.
Proposition Eight
Along with many, but not all, North-Atlantic democracies, our three decade long disastrous commitment to neo-liberalism, best illustrated by Paul Martin’s 1995 boast that government spending had been reduced to the level of 1951 (as % of the GDP), has produced record and shameful levels if poverty and inequality. The OECD and more recently the Conference Board, have underlined what a number of researchers in this room had already shown: more rapidly than most advanced democracies we have become deeply unequal. Virtually all the real income growth in recent decades has gone to the top 10%. Most Canadians are no better off than they were two decades ago.
During the 1990s, one of the best decades for economic growth, aided and abetted by regressive tax policies, while money trickled up and the rich got richer, child poverty increased in eight of the ten years. Our once globally praised set of equality building social rights has been profoundly shaken. Thousands of unemployed are denied benefits, pensioners once again are becoming poor, affordable housing has vanished from our largest cities and average families mortgage their homes to pay record high fees for their university age children. The noble post-war goal of citizens equality no longer sets the agenda.
Proposition Nine
Because of the recent groundbreaking research by the British epidemiologist Richard Wilkinson, we now know that more equal societies do better in virtually every respect. The evidence is clear. If you take the Nordic countries at one end of the spectrum (most equal) and the U.K. and the U.S at the other (most unequal) the Swedes, Norwegians, and Finns do much better: higher levels of health, less adolescent violence, higher levels of civic participation, fewer teenage pregnancies, higher degrees of trusting their neighbours and lower levels of crime. Instead of reducing freedom as too many continue to claim more equality produced a flourishing of liberty: precisely the kind of responsible individualism and citizenship favoured by the great liberal John Stuart Mill.
Inequality is unjust and dysfunctional. And equality works – for health, for freedom, for self-development.
Proposition Ten
It is time for a new people’s agenda. We need a government for the people in national politics. We progressives must speak with candor and confidence. We need an industrial strategy for the economy, improvements in our pensions and a serious approach to the environment. Above all, we require a reversal of government made policies producing greater inequality. In particular, social democrats should call for a new Carter Report, an up to date comprehensive reform of out tax system.
In the meantime, we should begin now by illustrating the direction. Instead of tax policies that disproportionately benefit the rich, we should do the opposite. Raising the level of income at which income tax should be levied would be a good start. And to pay for needed initiatives such as childcare and more low-income housing. We should also show where money can be found. If globalization and unfair tax policies have meant that in recent times the only real gains have come at the upper end of the income scale, then it’s neither theft nor class envy to increase their share of the tax burden. It’s called justice. For example, by increasing the tax rate from 29% to 35% on all those earning over $250,000 an additional $3.7 billion would be obtained.
If used entirely to increase the National Child Benefit Supplement the first major dent in child poverty since parliament called for its abolition twenty years ago could be achieved.
I want to conclude with this point. Our task is to restore the dream for social justice. We know it’s desirable and possible to create a Canada with more involvement by our citizens, a Canada where we see our neighbours, not as competitors but as friends, a Canada that is healthier and happier in every respect. Our task is to demonstrate in every conceivable way, that with more equality this Canada is possible.