The five giants

By GRAHAM RICHES
director, School of Social Work and Family Studies, University of British
Columbia
 Friday, Jun 25, 2004

 Vancouver -- As voters prepare to cast their ballots, André Picard (Keep
People Healthy In The First Place -- June 24) is right to remind us of the
sage advice of the Lalonde Report (1974). The significance it attached to
the socio-economic determinants of health and to prevention and care
remains critical to Canadian's future social being.

One could go further back in history to the 1942 British report of Lord
Beveridge and his identification of the five giants of "idleness, want,
squalor, ignorance and disease" and his proposals that ushered in the
welfare state; and in Canada to the Marsh and Heagerty reports (1943),
important early influences on the creation of our own systems of health
insurance and social security.

It was the minority governments of Lester Pearson in the 1960s supported by
the NDP that ushered in Canada's golden era of health and welfare-state
development.

Of course, no politician today wants to talk about welfare states and
particularly not during elections. However, Beveridge's concerns regarding
idleness (unemployment), want (hunger and poverty), squalor (homelessness),
ignorance (unaffordable education/high student debt load) and disease
(obesity, chronic illnesses) remain critical issues for millions of
Canadians.

If these basic needs are to be addressed in compassionate, efficient and
socially just ways, the grander vision of a newly recreated and re-thought
welfare state with the full participation of civil society must be
realized.

History at least suggests that the election of a minority government on
Monday could move us in such a direction, unless, of course, it is one that
might tear the country apart.

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