EDITORIAL
Budget wish list All eyes are on Chrystia Freeland now as Canada’s finance minister gets set to table the nation’s first budget in two years. Here are a few things we hope to see. Basic income: The Liberals’ own grassroots and many MPs are interested in this forward-thinking policy, as are the NDP and Green Party. Time to put faith in an upstream policy — getting to the source of social policy ills, which is often income — that will prevent poverty and poor health. Pharmacare: Universal pharmacare is the missing piece of Tommy Douglas’s Medicare legacy. We want everyone to have free access to a common list of drugs. National childcare: Women have been disproportionately disadvantaged during the pandemic and, more often than men, felt obligated to stay home with children, creating an imbalance in the labour market. Former Conservative and Liberal prime ministers Brian Mulroney and Paul Martin both saw the need for it. It’s time to make it a reality. Long-term care: No group was more tragically affected by COVID-19 than Canada’s seniors living in long-term care homes. We need national standards of care for provinces to follow and more funding from Ottawa to make it happen. Affordable Housing: It’s one of Maslow’s foundational needs — a roof over one’s head. Yet too many Canadians — including residents of Kawartha Lakes — do without. More funding and planning, in conjunction with provinces and municipalities, is integral. Green economy: Grants for electric vehicles are great but we’ll need the infrastructure for charging stations too. We must invest in meaningful, well-paying jobs that serve a green social purpose. Footing the bill: We can’t responsibly address these social and economic needs without doing a few things simultaneously. That includes overall income tax reform, creating a wealth tax and setting up a sovereign wealth fund — a state-owned investment fund set up for a social purpose. These policies are within our reach if the political will is there.
LETTER SPOTLIGHT Trevor’s Take should take on more than Conservatives I read with interest your monthly publication and find the local stories informative. I do take issue with Contributing Editor Trevor Hutchinson’s political commentaries. He appears to have an obsessive animus for all things Conservative. Last month Erin O’Toole was a wolf in sheep’s clothing. This month Education Minister Lecce is a magical thinker. Do Conservatives have a monopoly on magical thinking? Prime Minister Justin Trudeau‘s assertion that “budgets balance themselves” must have escaped Hutchinson’s magic exposé. If the SNC-Lavalin or WE scandals or the botched CanSino vaccine deal with China had occurred under a Conservative government, one could assume Hutchinson would have readily shared his condemnation. He ended with “lots of jurisdictions, including in Canada are doing a better job at COVID than Ontario.” He conveniently omitted that many countries are doing a better job at COVID than Canada. Nothing was reported about the federal government’s failure to implement a national COVID strategy or their created chaos at airports. Hutchinson’s political commentaries would be far more effective and appealing if they were fair and balanced, instead of his monthly anti-Conservative editorial. Michael Catling, Cameron
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