The conditions across the
country and across the world are such
that millions upon millions of people are thinking about the necessity
for a new direction for the economy which serves the people and not the
rich. They aspire to nation-building projects which vest the
decision-making power in the people, not narrow private
interests.
Monday, April 19, the federal
Liberal government brought down a 724 page budget which
enunciates plans to pay the rich, one scam after another. Monies
supposedly targeted for child care programs or long-term care are
relatively small portions of the budget which are projected to be spent
spread over many years. Most of this kind of social spending is a
future plan or contingent on provincial participation with a very small
likelihood of ever seeing the light of day.
To
see the real priorities of the Liberal government it is important to
look at what is being implemented immediately. In this regard, the
budget is an exercise to cover up the pay-the-rich scams. It
is
written in a manner which serves to disinform, which is to say
wreck, the movement of the working people, women, youth and
Indigenous peoples across the country which is imbued with the
understanding that the fight for lives is the fight for
rights. The Liberal tactics underscore the cynicism
of the
ruling class which thinks the people are gullible and can be silenced
while they can control the competition for power between the cartel
parties by satisfying the oligopolies which demand the pay-the-rich
scams.
One of the immediate measures contained in the budget was announced by
the Governor of the Bank of Canada on April 21. The central bank will
continue to buy government bonds to the tune of $3 billion per week
with no end in sight, the governor said. This practice is called
"quantitative easing." The governor emphasized that this practice which
has been going on since the beginning of the pandemic, is now "more
under control" and this is a great advance. The fact that
since
April 2020 the Bank of Canada has been injecting $5 billion dollars
each week into government revenues and now this is being reduced to $3
billion is supposed to be somehow reassuring even though this
is
utter nonsense. It exposes the true character of a pay-the-rich economy
in which no money is made available for investments
in
education or health care, or to make adequate transfers to the
provinces for social programs.
The $3
billion allotted in the budget under the guise of rectifying the
disastrous situation in long-term care, may or may not be spent in the
next three or four years and will ultimately be handed to the private
monopolies who profit from the needs of the elderly for care, but
injecting $3 billion per week into the economy to satisfy private
interests has continued without fail every week since the pandemic
began and will go on indefinitely as far as the ruling elite are
concerned. The burden of paying for this practice of manipulating the
central bank plus the ongoing borrowing from foreign money lenders will
fall on the workers who must produce this value for decades to come. Of
immediate concern is the fact that it comes with all kinds of
structural changes which put decision-making directly into the hands of
the narrow private interests as well as ministers who use prerogative
powers to announce regulations and impose measures which inhibit
workers fighting collectively for their rights.
The
budget's centrepiece program on child care is an example. Its aim is
said to be to liberate women to join the workforce in pandemic
conditions. Its real aim is to divert attention from the heart of the
matter when it comes to that program and everything else the budget
contains.
The thrust of the government claim that
they are
looking after the economy is to satisfy the obsession of the oligarchs
with the labour participation rate of all workers and making sure they
do not fight for improved wages and working conditions. That is why the
budget begins to reduce worker pandemic benefits at the end of June and
completely
eliminates them in September. To increase the female labour
participation rate, business wants some form of daycare with
"affordable" user fees. The budget itself presents graphs showing that
Quebec's $10 a day daycare quickly improved women's rate of labour
participation by four per cent, soon leaping above the countrywide
average after its
introduction in 1997, which at the time was at a rate of $5 a day.
Getting the same done across Canada is intended to help big business
interests and government employers, not women per se, who
will nonetheless be forced to fend for themselves to find spaces and
make sure the conditions are regulated and proper wages and working
conditions are enforced. The business elite is demanding the provinces
follow Quebec's lead and meet the federal offer with equal funds to
subsidize private, or "regulated," daycare, as the Liberals like to
call it.
Not lost on young
people is the budget's failure to deal with the
crisis in post-secondary education by investing in education. The
privatization of post-secondary education is eliminating standards of
enlightenment and culture in favour of training cadre for big business
interests at the expense of the trainees. Northern Ontario is reeling
from the
attacks of the moneylenders and government on Laurentian University.
Youth throughout the country are either denied opportunities for
post-secondary education or end up with mounting student debt.
Opportunities exist for those able to participate in the cut-throat
competition which exists for jobs, which are not considered a right but
a privilege
granted those who remain silent about the exploitative working
conditions, especially in the majority non-unionized workplaces.
The rich elite are also manipulating the discussion around
pharmacare and the necessity for a human-centred solution that does not
pay the rich and bankrupt the country. Complaints that the federal
Liberals are not providing much needed pharmacare in this budget ring
hollow given the fact that during the pandemic the Liberals introduced
COVID-19 vaccine pharmacare to pay the rich. They are paying foreign
Big Pharma billions of dollars for COVID-19 vaccines that could just as
well be developed and manufactured through human-centred enterprises in
Canada that ensure the new value workers produce is poured back into
true pharmacare for all and does not pay the rich. The situation
is so scandalous that negotiations and contracts with Big Pharma to buy
COVID-19 vaccines are considered top secret classified information.
The Liberal budget follows the same old direction with regards
to
the disastrous situation in the long-term care sector. Instead of
building a human-centred system without private profit vultures, the
budget rewards them with $3 billion even though they have failed so
miserably to look after those in their care. The budget merely mouths
some
vague words that the money will go to "ensuring standards for long-term
care are applied and permanent changes are made." What are these
standards, many want to know. Thus far, governments have permitted
standards that result in unprecedented misery and death. The country
needs a new direction towards human-centred long-term care for all
who need it which is humane and enlightened and not a business to
fatten the pockets of oligarchs.
The budget makes
no mention of those things the workers have been
demanding such as paid sick leave. Workers and their organizations have
long pointed out this is a necessary "no brainer" social program in a
modern society. Without it, any talk about controlling the spread of
the COVID-19 pandemic is meaningless.
The regular
funds for the military, policing and government
bureaucracy are all rolled over in the budget without much ado. Also
"rolled over" without much discussion are the inadequate health and
education transfer payments to Quebec, the provinces and territories.
Meanwhile, the federal government enters directly into business deals
with health
providers and banks, eliminating competing authorities so that theirs
is the sole power which controls decision-making.
The
budget contains only policy objectives and words to deal with
the serious issues confronting Indigenous peoples. This is similar to
what governments have mouthed for decades without any substantive
improvement. It amounts to hot air while the plight of the Indigenous
peoples continues to worsen. It is unconscionable.
The
issue of corrupt government borrowing of funds from global
moneylenders is not addressed. Government borrowing from private
sources is simply glossed over with cheery words that interest rates
are low and the economy will grow, bringing prosperity back again. What
the borrowing from private sources will do is allow the
moneylenders to feast on the new value Canadian workers produce for
decades to come. The deficit is $354.2 billion this fiscal year,
$154.7 billion the next. By the end of that second fiscal year, the
federal debt is expected to climb to over $1.2 trillion. Much
of
this borrowed money will go to the many pay-the-rich schemes contained
in the budget plus the many more that will invariably arise as the
oligarchs demand money to "create or save jobs." The
fact is that at this point nobody can a predict where the pandemic is
headed and what it will take to finally bring it under control. The one
constant people can predict is that the government will continue to pay
the rich. The other constant that the people can predict is that they
will continue to fight for what belongs to them by right until they
succeed in tuning things around and the crisis is resolved in a manner
that favours them, not the rich. Government borrowing from private
moneylenders must cease as a starting point to turning things around.
Far from taking this measure, the federal government and Finance
Minister are past masters at finding new ways to pay the rich!
They equate the prosperity of the rich with that of the society even
though the society is being ground under. This must be
denounced.
All payments to the rich must
be stopped and instead that money should be dedicated to establishing
human-centred public enterprises and mobilizing millions of workers to
operate them and thus produce new value for the common good and not the
rich.
The pandemic has exposed
the failings of the
prevailing system of private for-profit child care subsidized through
government coffers yet still with large user fees. Quebec's ten dollar
a day daycare is presented as better yet how inadequate it is is not
discussed. It is a system heavily criticized for not providing
daycare workers with the conditions, training and pay they need and
demand. Furthermore, it fails to produce enough spaces and forces
families to add their names to one waiting list to be put on
another waiting list for a daycare space. Human resources are wasted on
complicated tax calculations and the fend-for-oneself dictate is not
addressed despite the
provision of this daycare system. Outbreaks of COVID-19 in Quebec
daycare centres have now also become another cause for anxiety.
Consternation
has arisen in business circles that the economy, especially certain
sectors, will not have enough workers to meet demand in the coming
period. They claim the pandemic means the number of immigrant workers
and temporary foreign workers that business regularly demands has
fallen. The biggest private interests are nonetheless
permitted to bring in contract workers unimpeded. Also, many women
workers have had to drop out of the workforce to look after their
children, either because daycare is not available, is too expensive or
the kids have been forced into online learning and require supervision.
Business circles want more women in the workforce. To fulfill
this
demand, it has occurred to the elite that some form of child care will
serve them to get women back to work. But of course, the business elite
refuse to pay for the value child care and early learning workers
produce and that is a major issue. They want payment to come from
government tax revenue and user fees and not in a proper exchange for
the value they receive and consume from both the workers freed to work
for them in the present and the future workers cared for and educated
socially.
Paying less for
child care services is a dire need for families who
cannot afford to pay the exorbitant fees child care currently costs
them. However, to believe that under a vicious anti-social offensive
whose aim is privatization and the dismantling of all public services
this will create public services would be a serious mistake. It is like
believing that
private seniors' homes look after seniors.
A
human-centred child care and early learning system is required which
expands the right to education for all from birth to passing away. This
requires new thinking to establish unity between aim and practice to
serve the people and not the oligarchs. To build a human-centred
education and child care system requires physical infrastructure and
trained workers and educators.
Building
infrastructure to serve the new requires human-centred
construction enterprises where the value workers produce is poured back
into the system for the common good and not captured in the coffers of
the global oligarchs. Training child care and early learning workers in
the necessary skills requires education infrastructure. Retaining
workers requires conditions of work and pay that ensure their
continuing commitment to the work.
A human-centred
child care and early learning system could become an
example and catalyst to fulfill the dream of the right to education for
all and even the right to housing for all. This could result from the
creation of permanent human-centred public construction enterprises
across the country to build and maintain infrastructure without
oligarchs sucking away new value from what construction and other
workers produce.
Only the concerted collective
actions of families and communities to
affirm their right to child care will provide the people with what they
require. The people of Canada must set the standards and make sure they
are enforced. Any other approach will be to mark time, which Canadians
cannot afford to do.
When the former Harper government started writing mega laws or
mega
budgets which were hundreds of pages and contained all kinds of hidden
agenda, the Liberals cried blue murder. Now they find
it
expedient to do the same.
The CBC report states:
"[...] in 2015, the
Harper government included a provision in a budget bill that
retroactively rewrote Canada's access to information law to protect the
RCMP from being charged by the Information Commissioner for destroying
gun registry documents before legislation to scrap the gun registry was
adopted by Parliament.
"The Liberal Party's 2015
campaign
platform sharply criticized the practice, saying Harper's government
had 'used omnibus bills to prevent Parliament from properly reviewing
and debating' proposals.
"'We will change the House
of Commons standing orders to bring an end to this undemocratic
practice,' Trudeau's Liberals vowed."
This budget
document includes, besides other things, "changes to Canada's elections
act, new rules for judges' pension, retroactive authorization for First
Nations to postpone elections during the pandemic, new powers for the
immigration minister to issue instructions on express entry for
permanent resident applicants."
"Budget 2021
proposes to introduce amendments to the Canada Elections Act
to specify that making or publishing a false statement in relation to a
candidate, prospective candidate, or party leader would be an offense
only if the person or entity knows that the statement is
false," reports indicate. It refers to a squabble between the
cartel parties over whether to include the idea that the person making
the false statement must know it to be false in order for the act to be
an offense. None of it contributes to raising the level of political
discourse in the country but, on the contrary, is a way to settle
scores with rivals or "quietly" clean up the corrupt practices which
exist within the liberal democratic institutions.
Media
reports
are quick to assure us that the practice started by the prior Harper
government of including non-budgetary items in a budget is now a new
normal without telling us what this even means for the polity. What
they consider to be normal is to remain undefined but its anti-social
content is evident. Both the budget, comments from the opposition
cartel parties and media reporting, along with endorsements from big
business all qualify as an attempt to stop any such discussion about
anything rational, especially about what can be done differently. All
of it is an exercise in making sure the stranglehold on power of the
rich remains intact.
There is nothing "normal" about
a society
that equates the prosperity of the rich with that of the society which
is being ground under because of the negation of the human
factor/social consciousness. Their motive for the economy
cannot
be allowed to continue if the human and natural resources of the
country are to be dedicated to the well-being of its people.
