With a U.S. recession looming, and a credit crisis over-hanging the world economy, Canada needs an activist government ready to turn its back on 25 years of neo-liberal economics.
In 2008, a likely election year, the NDP is the only party able to present an alternative agenda for the country.
What is needed to make 2008 Jack’s year to set the policy direction for Canada? How about: something old, something new, something borrowed, and something true.
The something old is the concern for the less fortunate that has motivated New Democrats since the adoption of the Regina Manifesto in 1933 by its predecessor the Co-operative Commonwealth Federation (CCF), and that brought Jack Layton into national politics.
The something new is the call for action on climate change and the global environmental agenda that characterized Layton’s successful campaign for the leadership of the party, making him the first green national leader.
The something borrowed is the recognition that in a big country with a small population, public investment and ownership works, and will continue to work with borrowed money, despite business voices to the contrary.
The something true is that the U.S. economy is faltering, and the world needs a multilateral leadership alternative to U.S. hegemony.
Canadians expect New Democrats to advocate for closing the gap between rich and poor. It is time to get very specific. Measures adopted in Finland, Norway, Sweden, and Holland have reduced the number of poor citizens in those countries, and the depth of poverty they experience. We need to hear from the NDP about how poverty reduction strategies from elsewhere would work here as well. The city of New York (population 8.6 million) now provides 600,000 social housing spaces. Canada (population 33 million) has about the same has about the same. How did this happen?
The NDP should press for poverty reduction targets with price tags. The goal should be unambiguous: do as well as Northern Europe. And yes, no Canadian should be sleeping outside because they do not have a place to go.
We are living a global warming emergency, and the green agenda must reflect this through the promotion of hard caps on major polluters as the top priority for the federal government, starting with the Alberta oil industry. The NDP should expose the environmental folly of proceeding any further with development of the tar sands, and call for an immediate moratorium. Many Albertans will support this.
Successive Liberal governments and now the Conservatives have been proudly producing surplus budgets, and paying down the debt. It would have been much wiser to have invested in education, health care, poverty reduction, urban transit and infrastructure, recreation and culture.
Which makes more sense for Canadian financial institutions, stocking pension funds with the toxic sludge of sub-prime mortgage related debt, or buying Canadian government bonds?
Paying off debt, and pretending surplus budgets produced no costs may have been the worst Canadian public policy miscalculation of the last fifty years.
Private finance needs to be regulated and public ownership is often the best option. Is there any party, other than the NDP, with the courage to explain that these practices have been tried and worked with great success around the world? The latest estimates of losses for financial institutions worldwide is $160 billion, thanks to de-regulation. Most of the worldâe(TM)s oil reserves are controlled by state enterprises. Why not give windfall profits from oil price increases to citizens rather than foreign owners?
The Wall Street Journal wants the U.S. government to equip itself with F-22 Raptor fighters at a cost of $100 million each, presumably in case air to air combat again reaches the importance it had during the First World War (1914-19).
When will a Canadian government explain publicly that unilateral U.S. arms expenditures are not going to reduce the type of conflict the world is experiencing today, and that all countries need strengthened multilateral security arrangements? When will a Canadian political party, other than the NDP, call for Canada to reach out to allies around the world to build needed international institutions, even in the face of U.S. opposition?
Nobody says it’s going to be easy, but 2008 could be Jack’s year.
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