Why Social Programs in Canada Always Fall ShortIn general terms social programs that benefit the people were established initially as compromises between the two main classes, those who own and control the socialized economy (the imperialist class) and the working class. Social programs in Canada have always fallen short of solving the intended social problem because the imperialists with their aim to expropriate maximum private profit remain in control of the economic, political and social affairs of the country. Social programs in general deal with symptoms arising from the social conditions, not the causes, and usually carry an element to pay the rich. Their aim is not to solve social problems as that would entail tackling the social conditions directly, forcing an awakening of the necessity for new socialized relations of production and a new pro-social aim and direction for the economy.
The disequilibrium in society caused by the neo-liberal anti-social offensive has been duplicated at workplaces with the general refusal of those who own and control the economy to recognize and negotiate collective agreements with their workers. Instead they use the massive global wealth and power of the oligarchy, legislation, the courts and other police powers to attack the right of the working class and its collectives to come to some arrangement with employers on wages, benefits, pensions and working conditions acceptable to workers themselves. In some ways social programs are similar to collective agreements at workplaces in that workers struggle to find some agreement with their employers and establish a certain equilibrium favourable to them, while not resolving the class contradiction of exploitation within an unequal social relation. The demands of the working class movement to increase investments in social programs, stop paying the rich, defend the rights of all and make Canada a zone for peace are geared to a nation-building project of the people's own making.
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The 30-year
neo-liberal anti-social offensive to defund social
programs, privatize both social programs and
public services, extend pay-the-rich schemes,
engage in endless aggressive wars abroad and
integrate into the U.S. war economy has created a
general disequilibrium in Canadian society between
the two main social classes. There is increasing
poverty with the rich becoming richer and the poor
poorer, destruction of the social fabric, abuse of
the working class, and other serious problems such
as endless wars, and now the crisis caused by the
refusal to take the measures required to bring the
COVID-19 pandemic under control by putting the
well-being of the population in command.