Hi,
I thought this study might be of interest around the subject of funding
population health.
 http://www.health.gov.au/pubs/hfsocc/ocpahfsv7.htm
Erica MacIntyre, Health Planner

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Health Promotion on the Internet [mailto:[log in to unmask]]On
> Behalf Of Dennis Raphael
> Sent: December 20, 2002 2:37 PM
> To: [log in to unmask]
> Subject: no money available for health in Canada?
>
>
> You may recall that PM Chretien recently commented that money
> was not available for...
> Romanow Report recommendations: $15,000,000,000  (fifteen)  and
> by the way...
> Universal childcare :  $7,000,000,000 (seven billion)
> and a subway to York University $1,700,000,000 (one point seven billion)
> and public transit
> and ...
>
> TOTAL $23,700,000,000  (23.7 billion)  A LOT OF MONEY?
>
> The amount of money given away by Paul Martin in the last Liberal budget
> over the next five years to corporate tax breaks and income tax reductions
> (not even debt reduction) that primarily favour the rich:
>
> $100,000,000,000  (one hundred billion dollars)
>
> No money available?  Certainly available for the wealthy, but not for most
> Canadians.
>
> See below,  the report referred to is available at:
>
> http://www.policyalaternatives.ca
> -------------------------
>  Dec. 20, 2002. 01:06 AM
>
> http://thestar.ca/NASApp/cs/ContentServer?pagename=thestar/Layout/
Article_PrintFriendly&c=Article&cid=1035775777553
>
>  CAROL GOAR - Toronto Star
>  Requiem for a Just Society
>  Steve Kerstetter waits for Statistics Canada's Survey of
> Financial Security the
> way kids wait for Star Wars movies or  oenologists wait for
> Beaujolais Nouveau.
>
>  Finally in the spring of 2001, the federal agency released its
> motherlode of
> data about personal wealth; a massive compendium of charts and
> tables showing
> how the country's $2.4 trillion in assets are divided among its 12 million
> families.
>
>  The Vancouver social policy analyst dove in with relish. Twenty
> months later,
> he has emerged worried and angry. His study, Rags And Riches,
> reflects those
> sentiments.
>
>  The Statscan survey, which measured the personal worth of
> Canadians in 1999,
> showed that the richest 50 per cent of families held 94.4 per cent of the
> nation's wealth (or $2.3 trillion). That left the other half of
> the population
> with just 5.6 per cent (or $137 billion.)
>
>  But rather than trying to counter this skewed distribution of wealth,
> Kerstetter noted, the federal government and most of the
> provinces were wilfully
> exacerbating it. They were offering tax relief to those who
> needed it least,
> while scaling back the social programs that kept the poor from
> hitting rock
> bottom.
>
>  "Extreme inequality may not be inevitable in Canada, but it does
> seem destined
> to continue in the absence of radical changes in government policy," he
> concluded dejectedly.
>
>  The wide gap between rich and poor did not surprise him. It had
> been there
> since Statistics Canada started tracking wealth distribution 30 years ago.
>
>  What did unsettle him was the dramatic polarization of the last 15 years.
>
>  Until the mid '80s, the haves and have-nots in Canadian society
> moved ahead
> more or less together.
>
>  But after 1984, the pattern shifted abruptly. The richest 10 per cent of
> families made substantial gains at the expense of the other 90
> per cent of the
> population.
>
>  That was the era of the "trickle-down" theory, popularized by former U.S.
> president Ronald Reagan. Kerstetter, who worked in Ottawa at the
> time, watched
> it infiltrate Canadian thinking.
>
>  "Politicians from along a broad range of the political spectrum
> argued that
> growth was a prerequisite for almost anything else governments did," he
> recalled. "Baking a bigger economic pie made far more sense, they
> said, than
> simply searching for new ways to slice up the pie already on the table.
>
>  "But literally millions of families and individuals have ended
> up on the brink
> of financial disaster, while others have managed to accumulate
> huge slices of
> the wealth pie."
>
>  Although Kerstetter has no statistics to prove it - and it will
> be years before
> StatsCan produces any - he suspects that the polarity has
> worsened since 1999.
> And he lays the blame firmly at the feet of the man who would be
> Prime Minister.
>
>  The centrepiece of Paul Martin's 2000 budget was a plan to cut
> taxes by $58
> billion over five years. The former finance minister upped the
> ante to $100
> billion, eight months later, in a pre-election mini-budget.
>
>  Martin claimed, at the time, that low- and middle-income
> Canadians would be the
> primary beneficiaries of his tax relief. He highlighted the savings that
> families with incomes between $25,000 and $60,000 could expect.
>
>  What he failed to point out was that families with incomes above
> $60,000 were
> in line for much larger gains than their less affluent
> compatriots. Not only
> would they get an income tax break; they'd pay less in capital
> gains tax, they'd
> be able to shelter more money in registered retirement savings
> plans and they'd
> be able to shield stock options from the taxman.
>
>  A few journalists, such as my colleague Tom Walkom, figured out
> from the tables
> published in Martin's background documents, that a
> disproportionate share of the
> minister's tax relief was going to families with incomes above $60,000.
>
>  But even the most diligent analysts could not calculate the
> impact of Martin's
> tax changes on the highest earners. The finance department's
> tables stopped at
> income levels of $125,000. "The biggest cuts really went to the
> rich and super
> rich," Kerstetter said.
>
>  Asked what advice he would offer the next prime minister to make
> Canada a more
> equal society, Kerstetter had three suggestions.
>
>  The first was the re-imposition of an inheritance tax. Canada is
> one of the few
> Western democracies that doesn't have one. Ottawa abolished its
> succession duty
> in 1972.
>
>  Kerstetter believes that some kind of estate tax would help
> whittle down the
> advantages of those who start with wealth, privilege and
> connections. It would
> also provide Ottawa with money to repair the nation's ripped
> social safety nets.
>
>  His second proposal was an overhaul of the tax system.
> Conservative finance
> minister Michael Wilson made it less progressive in 1987. The
> Liberals have been
> adding loopholes that favour the rich ever since.
>
>  If Kerstetter had his way, Canada's next government would create new tax
> brackets for those at the upper end of the income hierarchy and cancel the
> special deals that allow corporations and wealthy individuals to
> escape paying
> billions in taxes.
>
>  Finally, he would urge the incoming prime minister to reinvest
> in the social
> programs that were chopped to balance the budget.
>
>  "Millions of families are much closer to the precipice than anyone would
> imagine," he said. "The poorest 20 per cent would be destitute
> within four to
> five weeks if their income dried up."
>
>  Kerstetter is still poring over Statstics Canada's survey. "It's
> a gold mine of
> information."
>
>  But each fresh nugget hurts.
>
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