Canada is a polite country and it’s sometimes possible for progressives to get a word in edgeways without a nuclear blast of scorn from the centre and right. That’s somewhat unlike the behaviour of our combative neighbours to the south.
Besides, Canada has behaved in polite (but largely cosmetic) flirtation with ‘progressives’ since the Great Depression (think New Democratic Party) with occasional eruptions of public embrace (think current New Democratic Party Government in British Columbia!).
So it’s only polite to give some consideration to progressive views on the rebuilding — sorry, building anew — of Canada’s economic structure. An article in Ricochet offers a thought-provoking set:
- building a better care industry for children and the elderly
- involving government and workers in the revival of small business and
- greening while rebuilding
Read more in Ricochet: Time for a ‘fundamentally different way of organizing the economy,’ say progressive economists
We’d have been happier if Ricochet labeled their article ‘Part 1 of a series’ or something similar, because surely they’re not going to focus only on tidying up the working family by farming out those in need of care to enlightened warehousing while the worker bees concentrate on reviving small business? (‘Greening,’ of course, is a compulsory addition to any kind of progressive activity these days.)
We hope they will expand their ideas to include secure and affordable housing. Then again, these days government economists (perhaps ALL free market economists?) seem blind to the fact that North America, including Canada, is a consumer society.
If consumers, from richest to poorest, do not have the ability to consume above a shaky subsistence level (e.g. by possessing disposable income) the economy can and probably will founder regardless how progressive its construction.
Let’s hear more about giving consumers with low incomes the security to spend by creating an abundance of social housing.
