Introduction
MOST CANADIANS BRING A SET OF COMMON VALUES AND PRINCIPLES TO OUR COUNTRY'S NATIONAL LIFE. TOMMY DOUGLAS WAS SPEAKING OF THOSE VALUES WHEN HE USED TO SAY:
"THE MEASURE OF A NATION'S GREATNESS DOES NOT LIE IN ITS GROSS NATIONAL PRODUCT, OR THE SIZE OF ITS GOLD RESERVES, OR THE HEIGHT OF ITS SKYSCRAPERS. THE REAL MEASURE OF A NATION IS THE QUALITY OF ITS NATIONAL LIFE... WHAT IT DOES FOR THE LEAST FORTUNATE OF ITS CITIZENS, AND THE OPPORTUNITIES IT PROVIDES FOR YOUTH TO LEAD USEFUL AND PRODUCTIVE LIVES."
Community.
Equality.
Democracy.
Sustainability.
Cooperation.
Appealing to the best in all of us.
Each generation sharing in the world's work, and the world's struggles.
These are the values and principles Canadians want to see reflected in our country's economic and social policies.
These are the values the CCF/NDP fought for and fights for.
And these are the values sadly lacking from our national political life today, and sadly lacking in the global economic order today.
In the past twenty years, capital has broken the bonds of the nation-state. Investors' rights have globalized, through regional trading agreements like NAFTA, and decisively through the new World Trade Organization (the successor of GATT).
This new global economic reality is celebrated by some as a long-overdue return to the natural order of things. But most Canadians, like many other people around the world, are increasingly uneasy about the mismatch be- tween their values and the world being built for them.
In industrialized northern countries, more than 35 million people are unemployed. A century of patient construction of national civil societies is eroding before our eyes .
In the south, more than a billion people live in abject poverty.
Our world's environment is threatened everywhere.
In Canada, despite a growing nominal GDP and more jobs, the number of people who are unemployed and living in poverty has steadily risen, a little higher after each recession. The Canadian unemployment rate averaged less than 3 per cent in the 1940s. It rose to over 5 per cent in the 1960s, and hovers at 10 per cent in the 1990s. More than 1.5 million Canadians are unemployed.
Millions more are trapped by the growth of precarious employment - an economy of insiders and outsiders: those with stable, well-paid, full-time employment, and a rising, marginalized workforce with few benefits, uncertain hours, and an unstable future.
The Canadian federal government is over $500 billion in debt.
Health care, education, and income security are eroding before our eyes.
More of the same policies that created all of this won't make things better. Our country can do better.
Our purpose is to offer Canadians a real national alternative in the next elec- tion: a new approach to economic and social policy, that aims to apply the principles and values we believe a majority of the Canadian people share.
Canadians and other peoples don't have to accept that globalization is only for investors and their money. Ordinary people around the world have as much in common with each other as bond dealers do. Capital has globalized. It is time for social democracy to globalize as well, and time for Canada to begin working towards that goal.
Canadians don't have to accept that endlessly rising unemployment and poverty is natural and inevitable. There are 1.5 million unemployed today because of failed policies that can be changed. Canada can reverse current priorities and aim for sustainable full employment - building, step-by-step and brick-by-brick, a better, more prosperous, communitarian, egalitarian and co-operative economy.
Canadians don't have to accept the dismantling of our health care, education, or income security. Instead of destroying the sinews of our economy and our society, we can renew and rebuild them.
We believe these priorities reflect the values and principles Canadians hold in common and want to see implemented - realistically and responsibly, in a manner that reflects the fact that Canada faces real fiscal, economic and environmental limits, and those limits mean setting priorities and making choices .
In short, we believe Canadians want to see their values and principles reflected in the policies of their federal government.
Achieving this goal is our purpose as a federal party.
In this paper, we summarize some of the basic directions proposed by renewal panels for our Party's policy programme, on the issues of globalization, the economy, and social policy.
We propose that the 1995 Federal convention adopt this report (as amended as necessary) and refer it to executive for consideration during the drafting of our 1997 election platform.
3. Social Policy
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