The 3 pillars of a caring society should be that everyone has access to the services needed to maintain good health, education and safe, affordable housing.
The needs of the individual person must be recognise as a basic human Canadian right.
We must stop trying to hide the basic needs of society by fragmenting Canadians with convenient political jargon; the homeless, the unemployed, the working poor, the middle class and the wealthy. Enough, we are Canadians. We are a wealthy country and we should be ashamed of ourselves for not being able to maintain the basic needs to ensure that we have a healthy compassionate society that includes everyone.
The sad state of our social, health and education services didn’t happen by chance. It was a deliberate foreseeable by-product brought about over the last 30 years by our federal and provincial governments and their policies.
They each used the bait of offering to cut taxes to win elections. Having done that, the down loading avalanche began. The Feds downloaded what they had previously been responsible for to the provinces who in turn down loaded their responsibilities and obligations onto the municipalities and the general public. The result of all this abdication resulted in cuts to basic service and the ever increasing use of user fees.
The most obvious victim to this, here on the Island, is health care. Our hospitals struggle due to the shortages of nurses and specialists and wait times continue to be an ongoing major issue.
The shortage of GP’s is criminal.
Our general health has also been further compromised by provincial cuts to services that had been previously available. The reduction of rehabilitation services covered under our MSP for chiropractors, massage therapists, physiotherapists etc. has resulted in the totally unnecessary pain and suffering that follows, for instance, returning to work before the injury is sufficiently healed. What should have been a minor injury now becomes chronic, requiring more expensive treatment within the health system later.
The exclusion of a totally funded Pharmacare program is a national disgrace. Many studies have shown that a huge percentage of Canadians cannot, and do not, use prescriptions issued by their doctors because they cannot afford the user fee. This again causes needless pain and suffering and for many eventual admission to hospital and/or death.
All of these issues are caused by the myopic pursuit by governments to see who can boast the lowest level of personal and business taxes to garner votes and donations for political parties.
It is time for us as a country to decide what basic standard do we want for all Canadians to access health, education and housing. We must figure out what that cost will be and set the level of taxation to achieve that goal. This plan should set nationwide so that the system is balanced, fair and available to all Canadians, nationwide.
Roy Summerhayes.
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