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Toolkit for a New Canada
Gonick, Cy (Coordinating Editor)
Publisher: Canadian Dimension, Winnipeg, CanadaYear Published: 2008 Pages: 32pp Price: $5; bulk rates available Resource Type: Pamphlet Cx Number: CX7788 A pamphlet providing a snapshot of what the contributors, brought together by Canadian Dimension magazine, believe are the big issues facing Canada in the first decade of the 21st century. The articles are all short and offer concrete suggestions for the way forward. Abstract: - Table of Contents: Climate Change Energy Security Water Deep Integration Security State Foreign Policy Hollowing Out Manufacturing Crisis Tax Reform Aboriginal Policy Excerpts: Canadians are ahead of politicians, ranking the environment as a top issue and supporting the return of economic nationalism. A September 2005 Leger poll showed that 51 per cent of Canadians who had an opinion were to the left of the NDP on the government "nationalizing" oil corporations. Thirty-four per cent of Albertans agreed. Similarly, the majority of Canadians want to reverse foreign ownership and control of the economy. Tough environmental policies will not help much as long as Canada is locked into energy exports. Canadians are unlikely to lower consumption much if most of the energy saved is exported to the wasteful U.S. Canada would still be as big an international GHG culprit, and still turn northern Alberta, an area larger than the Maritimes, into a moonscape. We are on the threshold of a global water crisis. Around the world, 1.1 billion people do not have access to clean drinking water, and more than 2.5 billion people do not have access to basic water and sanitation services. The depletion, pollution and mismanagement of our freshwater supplies combined with deeply inequitable access to water services have created the single greatest environmental and human rights challenge of our time. First nations' communities suffer the most. In Canada, contamination and inadequate water and sanitation services in First Nations communities pose a huge danger to human health and the environment. There are currently 80 First Nations communities under a boil-water advisory and 21 communities are deemed at severe risk. Water is not a commodity to be bought and sold. Bulk water exports will not address the issues of water scarcity, urban sprawl and wastage. Allowing water to be traded as an export would create a market system that would determine access to water by ability to pay. Those can afford it can have all they want while those who cannot will be forced to go without. Canada and Mexico joined NAFTA with the hope that it would put an end to American protectionist trade policies and give their businesses unrestricted access to American markets. However, U.S. predatory trade policies have not abated in the least as can be seen in the case of Canadian softwood lumber and wheat and in the case of the Mexican trucking industry. There can be no doubt that in Canada the deep integration agenda is driven by big business and that whatever distinctions that may have existed between Canadian and foreign corporate capital are now trivial at best. Canadian capitalists have as much interest in securing their position in the U.S.A. as U.S. capitalists have in securing their future in Canada. Surrendering sovereignty over immigration policy, foreign policy and water and other resources, is of minor concern to them. Canada must: Terminate the infamous Chapter 11 that gives transnational corporations the right to sue Canadian governments to stop them from introducing legislation and regulations that might impinge on their current and future profits. Moreover, over the past 15 years, while manufacturing employment is indeed down, the output of Canadian manufacturing hasn't fallen, but rather increased in real terms by almost 50 percent. This shifts the focus from globalization to how productivity is shared. Some will argue that wealth taxes are hard to administer and unfair because they might require some taxpayers to liquidate some of their holdings in order to pay the tax. These arguments are unpersuasive. Consider what little concern is shown for these considerations when it is the assets of the economically weak that are being considered. When workers lose their jobs and have exhausted their Employment Insurance benefits, before they can qualify for social assistance they must value all their assets (except their homes) and systematically liquidate them, until they have only assets valued (in some provinces) at less than one month's entitlement to general welfare assistance. The only thing more offensive than not requiring the rich to pay their fair share of tax is allowing them to direct where and on what government money is spent - that, of course is exactly what the tax credit charitable contributions does. It allows high-income individuals, in the main, to direct the spending of hundreds of millions of dollars of government money in a way over which the government nor anyone else has any control, for which there is no public accountability, that is not transparent, and which allows them to buy public monuments and recognition for themselves and to give legitimacy to their social indifference. Many measures have to be taken to ensure that corporations pay tax on their worldwide profits; however, a good place to start would be to make the tax returns of corporations over a certain size into public documents. In this way the public could see precisely how much tax they were paying - or not paying. Subject Headings |