Dear Mr. Martin and Mr. Mills:
I wish a written response to the material in this article.
Dennis Raphael
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Paul Jr., Paul Jr., my son, my son
RICK SALUTIN - Toronto Globe and Mail
Friday, March 3, 2000
The drag about writing Friday when Monday is budget day is you
weigh in so late. The upside is, you can cool down to a level of
detachment and equanimity. Ahhh. So let me say that Paul Martin's
budget showed, like nothing else, how vile and pusillanimous this
Liberal government can be.
Vile, not because the heavy tilt to tax cuts broke the Liberal promise to
devote half of any surplus to restoring programs such as health care,
but because you sensed Liberals don't even truly believe the tax-cut
hysteria. Pusillanimous, since there was no serious political pressure on
them to do it.
It's an odd situation when the only folks in the political realm who
seriously speak for democratic values are the pollsters. But all polls
show Canadians put tax cuts low among their concerns. Ekos's most
recent survey has health care at 90 per cent, with tax cuts at 60 per
cent and declining. There was, of course, a rowdy constituency for
cuts: business and the rich (to the extent they're distinguishable); the
Reform Party and the Black papers (to the extent they're
distinguishable). But there was no pressure from voters, and Paul
Martin knew it. So why did he cave? Social, not political pressure (to
the extent they can be distinguished), I'd say.
The tax-cut people are the people he hears from and runs into. If you
watched Royal Bank economist John McCallum on Newsworld's
Counterspin, you'd have seen him deflect almost every argument of the
Canadian Auto Workers' Jim Stanford, by referring to what people
with influence in Ottawa are saying. It had a veiled quality, like
conversations between courtiers behind the curtains in The Three
Musketeers. Like most of us, bankers, financiers or publishers usually
mean each other when they talk about "people" and what "people"
want. But most of us won't be personally or publicly haranguing the
minister of finance.
By caving on cuts, Paul Martin avoided taking crap from those people.
Instead, he got stunned silence (the Reform Party in Question Period),
penitence (Jonathan Chevreau in the National Post called for civil
disobedience before the budget but hailed "plenty of potential tax relief
on capital gains" after) or mingy praise: "Budget 2000: It's a start" (The
Globe and Mail); "the best Martin budget, as far as it goes" (Financial
Post). There were no headlines that read, "Martin ignores huge public
demand for health care, education"; and you can't picture anyone
making the point in the conference call he had with "Bay Street" next
day. Of the people he's in touch with, you might wonder only about the
voice of his late father in his head -- "the most important influence in my
life," says his son, of the man who built many of Canada's social
programs when he was a Liberal minister -- moaning, like King David
about the traitorous Absalom, "Paul Jr., Paul Jr., my son, my son."
As for those other people, sometimes known as "the people," they
aired their views from the cubbyholes they were granted: at the back of
the budget sections in the papers or after the pundit panels on TV.
What cuts mean to them is bus fares, videos, a few fill-ups at the gas
station, maybe pay down the mortgage a bit -- sometimes said with
irony, sometimes with real gratitude, 'cause it is better than nothing. But
they all expressed a quiet exasperation because tax cuts don't address
their real worries: health, the kids' schooling, caring for parents. Only
society-wide programs put in place through public means will ease their
troubled minds on those scores. But Paul Martin won't be too troubled
by their troubles. Where would he hear them? On the subway going to
work? While being shown to his table at lunch? Besides, they'll still vote
for him or his party -- if they bother voting at all.
For the majority, there isn't much to do with those tax bucks, even if
spending them does stimulate "the economy." Experience and common
sense show it's large programs that fill large needs, but the Martin
budget goes in the other direction: Give individuals the money and let
them sort out problems on their own. It's a neocon approach --
eventually the "market" will respond to your needs, trust us, we have a
theory -- and it goes down smoother coming from Preston Manning,
Ralph Klein or Mike Harris (already using the Martin budget to justify
privatizing health care, and who can blame him?) than from Liberals.
I'm not saying this nostalgically, as if Liberals once had the courage of
their social convictions. In the old days, Liberals went left largely due to
pressure from left parties, like the NDP and the Communists. But at
least it was political, not social pressure: a fear they'd lose votes and
power. On a venal level anyway, it was democratic. This season,
though, the tax-cut people -- Reform, the Black papers, business and
the rich -- took absolutely their best shot and failed to persuade the
Canadian people. So the federal government gave in anyway.
copyright the Globe and Mail
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Long have I looked for the truth about the life of people together.
That life is crisscrossed, tangled, and difficult to understand.
I have worked hard to understand it and when I had done so
I told the truth as I found it.
- Bertolt Brecht
********************************************************************
Dennis Raphael, Ph.D.
Associate Professor and Associate Director,
Masters of Health Science Program in Health Promotion
Department of Public Health Sciences
Graduate Department of Community Health
University of Toronto
McMurrich Building, Room 101
Toronto, Ontario, CANADA M5S 1A8
voice: (416) 978-7567
fax: (416) 978-2087
e-mail: [log in to unmask]
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