Yes, but it would mean that the poor would have the same care as the rich, and the rich would pay for it.
The current system suits the people who run it just fine: they have access to primary care, they pay lower taxes, and they can make money investing in private health-care delivery. What’s the incentive for them to invest in public care?
It won’t. He has a bedrock of support thanks to basic political tribalism, and he and his handlers probably calculate that they run a greater risk of alienating their base if they run moderate, than running moderate and raising their ceiling. And given how badly the opposite strategy has worked for the NDP (which is alienating it’s base to chase the middle) he’s not wrong.
tl;dr: if he keeps acting like a protofascist, he’ll keep his job, and he might even win if enough people feel Trudeau has worn out his welcome.
We chose not to appeal but believe the fine is not at all commensurate with an administrative matter where there is no connection to money laundering or terrorist financing offences
Oh, I’m sorry, are you advocating for fines that scale to the severity of the offense?
Sure, let’s go with that. Next time some oil-patch developer pollutes a few thousand acres, it’ll be scaled to their profits and pegged in the billions. How about the next time a rich guy speeds on the highway? If the fine is $200 for a poor person, then Mr Moneybags is looking at a million-dollar speeding ticket.
It’s not so much that they refuse shelters and help, it’s that the help comes with strings that, for various reasons, they can’t deal with.
Sometimes it’s not being allowed to bring posessions, or to sleep separate from your spouse, but most of the time it’s drugs. Many shelters won’t let you use, or won’t let you be in the shelter if you’re obviously tweaking, and certainly won’t let you deal. This isn’t really a bad thing: it’s a serious safety issue to have someone out of their mind and/or around open flame and/or getting into fights.
So the homeless who can’t give up their addiction stay on the street, or in tents, or squatting.
The real problem is drugs. The real solution is to make drugs free, legal and only available in treatment facilities. Want to get high? Go to the facility. Want to get high but don’t want to go for treatment for various reasons (mental illness, psychosis and/or “I just wanna have a good time”). Nope, sorry.
Try to skirt the law? Involuntary-but-humane incarceration.
Plus, making drugs free pretty much cuts petty crime off at the knees. It hurts organized crime, too.
More than 1,200 vehicles have been stolen in Ottawa this year, a 16 per cent jump from the year before, with new model SUVs and light trucks the most popular targets. New model Toyota Rav4 , Honda CRV, Jeep Grand Cherokee and Ford F-Series trucks are especially popular, along with any vehicle with a push-button starter....
The Montreal mob are not exactly struggling to put food on the table, but yes, you’re not wrong in net terms, except for one thing: it’s not food, it’s drugs.
Front-line people steal in order to get drugs. You’d see front-line property crime almost vanish overnight if drugs were free and legal, with the proviso that you had to use them at an approved facility. Bonus if we can get some sort of housing security and/or comprehensive mental health service in play.
Either way, once you get the whole “money for drugs” thing out of the system, there’s almost no need for people to steal, and the aforementioned Montreal mob will have a world of trouble getting foot-soldiers when there’s no pool of desperate junkie labour to exploit.
It sounds expensive, but really isn’t when you look at the costs of policing and property crime.
That’s the problem, isn’t it? We, the people, can’t really pay for representatives to, well, represent us. The wealthy, on the other hand, have the best representation money can buy.
The NDP is depressingly not immune to this; with the decline of organized labour, less of the NDP membership, and even fewer NDP elected officials, come from labour.
It’s not “hard to understand” when you realize we’ve have thirty-plus years of neoliberal orthodoxy to overcome.
Basically, three generations of politicians and civil servants have passed since the idea of the government doing anything at scale was a thing. The very idea of direct public action at scale is barely in living memory, and certainly not within anyone with decision-making power…
…and that’s before we get past Boomers that are still scared of long lines at the DMV and “socialism”, or Xers and Millenial “thought leaders” that know nothing but the hustle.
Pivoting away from public-private partnerships (such a nice phrase, isn’t it? it’s so much nicer than calling it what is is: bribery and the mass-transfer of public wealth to private hands) is going to be very hard because the entirety of government and the media not only have a vested interest in the status quo, they can’t really conceive of an alternative. Try proposing this in government today and people will think you’re nuts, but talk about spending two to ten times as much on “tax cuts” or “grants” or “accelerator funds” and they’ll line up and cheer.
Government investment in things like this would be cheaper, but it would also mean the wealthy would pay more taxes and get less kickbacks, so you can bet that the right-wing machine will be screaming about this sort of thing in short order.
Want to fix this? It’ll take a) jail time, and b) asset seizure.
Corporate structure deliberate distributes responsibility for things like this such that:
It’s very hard to find one person to blame, let alone prove malfeasance.
If by some chance you do find a smoking gun, the fine for doing so is usually less than the profit of the transgression
If, eg, Howard Schultz and his direct-reports faced fines and/or jail time directly, and those fines were orders of magnitude the harms of the action, then you’d see some of this stop.
As soon as your accumulated capital becomes large enough that you earn your income only as a result of your capital, then you are no longer working class, and that’s when your interests diverge from the average worker and average homebuyer or renter.
Interestingly, almost everyone in government is a member of the capitalist class, largely because people that sell their labour can’t afford the time, let alone the money, to run for office.
In case you wondered why the interests of labour are grossly underrepresented in government, despite that vast, vast majority of both citizens and voters being of the working class, this is why.
Canada’s ‘haves-and-have-nots’ health system lags behind Europe, study finds (www.theguardian.com)
Research says funding cuts and poor organisation stop Canadians from accessing healthcare – and 20% have no doctor at all...
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RBC handed $7.4M penalty from financial intelligence agency (www.cbc.ca)
Housing advocates call for moratorium on winter decampments in Vancouver - BC | Globalnews.ca (globalnews.ca)
Vehicle thieves taking up arms, police chief warns (ottawacitizen.com)
More than 1,200 vehicles have been stolen in Ottawa this year, a 16 per cent jump from the year before, with new model SUVs and light trucks the most popular targets. New model Toyota Rav4 , Honda CRV, Jeep Grand Cherokee and Ford F-Series trucks are especially popular, along with any vehicle with a push-button starter....
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Federal housing minister floats Airbnb crackdown to boost long-term rental supply (www.cbc.ca)
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