So many left behind — now we reap what we have sown
Roderick Benns is the publisher of The Advocate. An award-winning author and journalist who grew up in Lindsay, he has written several books including Basic Income: How a Canadian Movement Could Change the World.
Despite all the discussion about how divided we are as a nation now, there has always been one key reason for that division — and we have yet to meaningfully address it.
Inequality is the basis for virtually all the contentious issues that fester within a growing minority of the population. Name the issue — anti-vaccination sentiment, distrust of government, conspiracy theories, apathy – and inequality is a leading cause, either directly or indirectly.
There are concomitant causes, too, of course, such as living next to the most twisted western country in the world when it comes to social policy and paying too much attention to U.S. discourse.
Working-class Canadians have now grown up worse off than their parents. Too many cannot afford to save a down payment on even a modest home. It’s the people who hold more than one job just to make ends meet or who must use food banks to survive. “From the perspective of the past three decades or more, inequality has increased substantially,” according to the Institute for Research on Public Policy.
This is not the Canada of the 1970s, 60s or 50s. It is a Canada that followed the U.S. lead into corporate acquiescence. In the last 20 years, the corporate income tax rate was cut from 28 per cent to 15 per cent. The corporations grew richer, the people poorer. Did corporations use this money to reinvest in the national economy? No. They used it to enrich their shareholders in the form of dividends, as economist David Macdonald has written about. It could have been used for the good of all, had the government so directed.
So of course we have “anti-vaxxers.” Why would they trust a system they feel has never had their backs? (And saying you do, Mr. Trudeau, does not make it so.)
We cannot in good conscience just blame today’s freedom-loving flag wavers because many are the byproduct of a less fair Canada — their life prospects continue to be truncated. They are angry — and anger in the internet age easily finds a willing ear. That’s because, as Jonathan Gauvin and Angella MacEwen write in Share the Wealth, “Feelings of injustice and abandonment make people more vulnerable to populism, misinformation and division.”
This is what births a Pierre Poilievre, an apprentice of political darkness. It is easy to direct that rage toward a self-satisfied Liberal Party that has fanned the flames of division while doing mild wealth redistribution, instead of the needed fundamental economic rethink required.
We can expect more of this, not less, unless future leaders dig down deep to take steps to create a fairer society.
You had a logical and coherent argument going until you took the cheap shot at Poilivire. Too bad your partisan prejudice interfered with your thoughts. I had hoped you might be maturing into an unbiased observer and reporter of our events.
Perhaps you could identify the partisan prejudice at work here, considering I took shots at both the Liberals and Poilievre? The point is that successive governments, both Liberal and Conservative, have had the opportunity to fix this and have failed.
The separation of powers between Federal, Provincial and Municipal jurisdictions has allowed politicians to go “not my problem” at so many issues for far too long.
In Ontario, we can no longer trust the province with our Healthcare and education and we can’t trust municipalities to initiate sufficient housing development. As long as that’s the case, the federal Liberals will continue to campaign on “Look at your awful local leaders, we’ll protect you” while doing nothing.