"The Challenge Ahead in the Post-Deficit Era: Reviving the Notion of the Common Good by Linda McQuaig Stanley Knowles Visiting Professor of Canadian Studies March 8, 2001

Thank you very much Robert [Campbell, Dean of Arts, Wilfrid Laurier University], for those very kind words and thank you very much for that very nice welcome.

Let me start by saying what a terrific honor it is to be asked to give this lecture. It is, of course, inspired by the spirit of Tommy Douglas and Stanley Knowles, both of whom presented a vision of Canada. A vision of inclusiveness and equalitarianism, which is quite at odds with the full-throttle capitalism that, is so common today. That vision of Canada has inspired many many Canadians and I count myself among those that have been inspired. So, thank you very much for the honor of asking me to give this lecture.

And it’s a tremendous honor to be lumped in with the others that have also given this lecture in the past. A very notable crowd. I follow quickly in the footsteps, for instance, of last year’s speaker, Dalton Camp, who is certainly a hero of mine. It’s wonderful to see the way he comes dramatically from being such a prominent person on the right to being quite a progressive force. Many people have pointed out that this seems to have something to do with the heart transplant he had a while back. Now if we could only work on getting the rest of the right to have heart transplants, we’d be getting somewhere.

It’s also, of course, a great pleasure to speak in Waterloo. I particularly find there seems to be a progressive culture here and it’s always nice to speak to a group that’s progressive. From time to time I’m invited to speak to groups that aren’t progressive and those talks never seems to go quite as well. I remember one time I was invited to speak to a business group -- that doesn’t happen too often -- but I decided to accept the invitation and I showed up at the event. It was one of those black-tie events in one of those swanky downtown Toronto clubs. I was surprised when I got there because the place was packed. And I thought, maybe I’m wrong, maybe business is really interested in hearing what I have to say -- you know -- in hearing me tell them how they should pay more tax and all that sort of thing. But I must say my heart sank that night because just before I got up to speak, the man introducing me used words that were different than the kind words of Robert Campbell a few minutes ago. The man introducing me began with an apology. He said, "Gentlemen, I’m very sorry to tell you we have with us here tonight Linda McQuaig. She is here due to the cancellation of our real speaker, the man you all came to hear, Conrad Black."

And of course there’s a particular irony in that because, as you may know, Conrad Black has said that I should be horsewhipped -- and terms of that nature. There’s a double irony because I now write a column in Black’s National Post. In fact, some of my friends have accused me of going over to the other side. They say, "Oh you’re just working for Conrad Black now." But I like to point out I’m in fact still working against Conrad Black. I’m just now doing it in his newspaper and at his expense.

In any event, I want to talk about The Challenge Ahead in the Post-Deficit World: Reviving the Notion of the Common Good.

What I’m trying to get at is that there are two conflicting visions. One vision I think we’re all far too familiar with, we see too much of it everywhere and that’s the notion that "it’s every person for himself" -- it’s the 'survival-of-the-fittest; mentality; that humans are basically motivated by nothing but greed and material inquisitiveness. This notion is captured in economics with the concept of homo-economicus – a human prototype that is just a set of economic or material appetites.

There’s another vision though. A vision, that frankly, we hear far too little of and that’s the vision of Tommy Douglas and Stanley Knowles and others. That vision says: yes, we are all individuals, but we’re also part of community. And yes we want individual rights but we also want to be part of a strong and effective community. We want to be part of a collective. And we recognize that we’ll be stronger if we work together, if we take collective action on things, if we pool our resources. In other words, through things like the tax system, we are able to come up with national health and with education programs that create rights and accessibility to major things that we all need. And we create a sense of belonging, a sense of inclusiveness, a sense of accessibility. This vision essentially says that the vision provided by homo-economicus, that notion that we are nothing but a collection of greedy appetites, is in fact a complete misrepresentation of human nature. It’s overly simplistic at best. It creates a cartoon character of human nature. At worst, homo-economicus is a fraudulent distortion of real human needs and human values. Humans in fact are capable of much more.

When we talk about the challenge ahead in the deficit world, what we’re really talking about is the challenge of moving towards that second vision. It strikes me, however, that in the past two decades, we’ve been dominated by the notion that it’s not possible to have those kinds of social programs. So, we’re constantly hearing about the deficit. Remember the constraints of the deficit? The deficit it was argued prevents us from having the kinds of programs that we all apparently wanted. And we were told we had no choice. We had to cut back and learn to do without, etc. etc.

Now, of course, the truth is the deficit constraint was always terribly exaggerated, always made into a much bigger a problem than it actually was. But the interesting thing is that even if you accepted all the rhetoric about the constraints of the deficit the deficit is now gone. In fact we now have a situation where rather than being in deficit we are in surplus. Even Paul Martin has predicted a surplus in the area of a 120 billion over the next five years. So in a sense everything has changed. But on the other hand, nothing has changed. In other words, the post-deficit world that we are now in and that we struggled so hard to get to, looks surprisingly like the old deficit world that we were struggling to get out of. We are still told that we can’t possibly afford the things that seem basic and important to us.

I was really struck by this thought through reading a story in the Toronto Star on the weekend, about how school-librarians are almost impossible to find these days. Schools can’t afford them. It was a heart-rending story about how schools are forced to choose between librarians or gym teachers, or music teachers. You can’t have all these things. Well how will they choose? The story was concerned with, as we hear on the radio, how literacy is declining and how related this was to the lack of school librarians. Reading this you can get an utter sense of helplessness, of, "What can we possibly, possibly do?" How can we possibly manage to give our children the things that we enjoyed. And yet, nobody seems to point out how absolutely absurd this is. In fact, the truth is, though we are living in North America, in the richest society that has ever existed in the history of the world, we have somehow convinced ourselves, or allowed ourselves to be convinced, that we can’t afford to give our children the things that we enjoyed when we were growing up. And we are wringing our hands and saying "What are we ever going to do?" Did anyone ever think of the obvious? How about invest in our schools. Wouldn’t that be one obvious solution?

It strikes me as a perfect illustration of what I like to call a kind of cult of impotence that has developed. I should point out, in these days of Viagra, when I use the word, impotent that I’m talking about a kind of democratic impotence. I think Robert mentioned that I have a book The Cult of Impotence and I wouldn’t want anybody to go out and buy it and find it had the wrong information.

If I can just elaborate for a second. When you write a book with such a title you do get into some funny situations. When I was working on it, I ran into a friend of mine and he asked "What’s the title of the book you’re working on?" I said, "oh, it’s called The Cult of Impotence. And he looked at me with incredible relief. I asked "What is it? And he responded, "I didn’t know it was a cult."

There is also the problem when you write a book with such a title as that, that sometimes people don’t really want to be associated with you, particularly men. The man I was going out with at the time I was writing it actually encouraged me. He thought the title was cute and he encouraged me to use it. But he wanted me to promise him that under no circumstances would I dedicate the book to him.

But getting back to the more serious point. The whole reason we supposedly are impotent, that we can’t have the kinds of things that we want, is because there’s no money. And, of course, the reason there’s no money is because we’ve just given it all away in the form of tax breaks. Ontario just gave out $200.00 to every taxpayer in Ontario. That cost a billion dollars. Well, right there is more than enough money to cover librarians for every school in the province, not to mention enough to buy a few MRI’s, and to make university affordable, etc. etc. And yet, that money just doesn’t seem to be available. The point I want to make is that under-funding happens not because we cannot afford these programs. And it’s not because it would be fiscally irresponsible of us to reinvest in those programs. It’s simply because the powerful interests in this country have managed to push tax-cuts to the very front of the agenda. And the reason they’ve done this, of course, is because it’s very much in their interest to do so. And they are effectively going to be remaking our entire society so that it is far less equalitarian.

I want to illustrate this with just one quick example. The market distributes income in Canada, and elsewhere for that matter, very unequally. The people at the top-end, end up with far more income than people at the bottom. For instance, take the top income group, that is the top ten percent of income earners in Canada. The income they get from wages, salaries, and private sources of income, from the market place, is 27 times what bottom income groups obtain. Twenty-seven times is a huge gap. But once we add in taxes and social transfers -- unemployment insurance payments and pensions -- that picture changes dramatically. Instead of the top group getting 27 times the bottom group, the top group is left with only 8 times what the bottom group gets. That’s a substantial difference.

I want to include one other layer and add in the financial benefits of social programs that are not received as actual payments as are unemployment insurance or pensions. I include in this layer, for instance, the financial benefits of health care, medicare, and the financial benefits of education. If we add in the financial benefits of those broad-based programs, it works out to roughly, its has been calculated to about $16,000.00 per family.

Once we add that in, we get instead of the top income group having 27 times or 8 times, we get only a difference of 4 times what the bottom income group obtains. In other words, social spending, social programs, make an absolutely enormous difference. They have a huge impact in reducing inequality. That is the good news. The sad thing -- the bad news -- is that we just came through an election in the Fall of 2000, in which we voted for political parties, particularly the Liberals, but also for the Canadian Alliance out west, that are in favour, dramatically in favour, of cutting back taxes and relying more on the way the market distributes income. In other words we’re moving back towards the direction that allows the market to distribute income so that the top group gets 27 times what the bottom income group gets.

In other words, we have voted for a massive transfer of income away from ourselves, and to the people at the upper income level. I don’t think that is deliberately what people meant to do. I don’t think people intended to vote to have money taken away from themselves and given to other people. I think its largely the case they don’t really understand that that’s what they’ve done. And of course, it’s never presented that way, so why would they in fact understand what they’ve done. In fact, of course, these parties always go out of their way to obfuscate and pretend that they are doing anything but that.

I would argue there is another reason that this has happened. To some extent, people have been spooked. Just as they were spooked by the deficit into giving up programs that polls showed they were very attached to, they have been spooked by the whole tax question and the idea that if we don’t reduce our taxes dramatically, particularly at the upper end, we will lose our best and brightest people to the United States and we’ll be left here barely able to figure out how to turn the lights on.

I’m referring to the brain drain. I want to address it just for a minute because it is the new excuse. It is the new constraint to replace the deficit as an excuse. You know they briefly tried out productivity, to use low productivity as an excuse, but it just bombed, so they moved on to this brain drain problem. I’m quite serious. But, I find it fascinating because you know, the deficit, as much as I say it was exaggerated, at least it was real. At least it was a real deficit. The brain drain isn’t even real. The brain drain is largely a figment of the imagination of Conrad Black. And I mean that quite literally. Let me just give you a couple of quick numbers. The number of Canadians leaving for the US is now at the lowest level its been at since Canada started keeping records back in 1851. I got that from Statistics Canada. In fact, we gain more educated people every year than we lose. Statistics Canada, points out, for instance just take computer scientists, now that’s the new economy -- computer scientists. Right? We lost to the United States 139 computer scientists a year, on average, through the 1990's. This sounds bad, until you find out that we actually gained 26,000 computer scientists a year throughout the ‘90's. So, all-in-all, not a bad deal. In fact, the obsession with the whole brain drain issue in public debate, I think, really, does come out of the National Post. The National Post has had a huge impact in pushing public debate in this country to the right. I think of the National Post as a kind of neo-conservatism on steroids. Another way to characterize the Post is neo-conservatism with cleavage. Its obsession with taxes is really quite extreme. The Post has a whole tax-rage section. There’s sports, travel, entertainment, and tax rage.

In fact the truth is, the polls show that tax rage is not really that much of a phenomenon nationally. Of course, if you ask somebody, "Would you like a tax cut? Would you like some chocolate? Would you like some ice cream? Would you like a tax cut? Yes, they’ll say "yes they would." But, if you ask them to choose between items, would you like a tax cut or would you like reinvestment in health care and education, it’s dramatic. There’s a dramatic favouritism in the direction of social programs and social reinvestment. In fact, that is pretty broadly true across the country. Interestingly, polling suggests, the one group that its not true of is older males, for some reason, rich, older males.

I don’t know if you’ve seen the publication, The Wealthy Boomer. It comes free with the Post sometimes. This is what happens when you write for the Post -- you get a free subscription. But The Wealthy Boomer is a publication that is all about tax rage. It has nothing in it but articles about tax rage. The only other thing in it is ads for Viagra. So it makes me wonder, does tax rage cause erectile dysfunction. Or, is it the other way around? I can’t remember.

Conrad Black himself added to the brain drain thing recently. He wrote an article in which he was talking about the huge brain drain from Canada and all these talented Canadians leaving for the US and Britain. And I thought, Britain? And then I realized, of course, just who were the talented Canadians that were leaving for Britain. He was referring to himself and his wife! I think the truth is that, as I said, the brain drain really doesn’t exist. And to the extent people are going to the States, there’s always been some of that. You always find a certain number of talented and untalented who will be attracted to the bright lights somewhere. If it’s from all over the States they are attracted to New York, or from all over Canada people are attracted to Toronto. From all over south-western Ontario they’re attracted to Waterloo. Right? This is just a phenomena of big cities and big metropolis. And the US is a big place and people are attracted there. But to redesign your tax system around that seems foolish. Thua, if Timmins had completely eliminated its municipal tax base, would we assume that Shania Twain would still be there, playing the local clubs.

But you know all this media hype about the need to cut taxes for high income people, its all part of a new pandering to the rich and to the business elite. Have you noticed the tendency in the media these days to treat businessmen as heros? You see them celebrated as trail-blazers and what’s the word they use, risk-takers. Risk-takers! Boy! You know I find that really odd. Remember, that story last fall with the construction workers in Windsor, up on that scaffolding, painting that bridge over the harbour and the scaffolding collapsed with four guys suspended. Three of them ended up in the water. One of them drowned. Just imagine, four men left dangling by their safety straps, fifteen stories above choppy, icy water for a couple hours. Now, that’s a job that involves risk taking -- not this business of sorting through your stock portfolio. Imagine if it had been businessmen left dangling for a few hours above the Detroit River, imagine the tax fix we’d have to come up with then.

We almost never hear about the contribution made by ordinary people, ordinary working people. You constantly hear about the contribution made by businessmen. They are called the creators of wealth. There was a column, again in the National Post, by a woman named Elizabeth Nixon. Titled "How I learned to love the rich" it was all about how she used to resent the rich, until she discovered the enormous contribution that they made to society. And of course she was arguing about the need for tax breaks for them. And she went on to talk about, this is an actual quote, she said "We’ve so marginalized the creators of wealth in this country." We have? Really! The last time I checked, they were pretty much running everything. They owned all the media. They owned all the other big corporations. They dominated the public debate. They controlled the political parties. They lived in the best houses. They ate in the best restaurants. If that’s marginalization, bring it on. We should all have a little bit of that kind of marginalization, We don't need empowerment.

All this pandering to the rich is all part of the new approach. This attitude of celebrating winners, and the corollary of celebrating winners is discarding losers – its the survival of the fittest mentality, that to the victor go the spoils, the winner takes all. It’s clearly very much different from the kind of vision of living in a community and of trying to do things together and in which the common good is considered more important than individual greed

It seems it has become fashionable these days to dismiss the notion of the common good. You see this in right-wing commentators, in people like Michael Bliss at the University of Toronto. He and Conrad Black, ridicule the notion that something like medicare, a kind of national project like medicare, should be a source of national pride. They think instead that countries should be proud of their military power or their space exploration or their prowess at the Olympics. But such feats of muscle power pale in comparison to a national project like medicare. The concept that through pooling our resources we can create something that will provide a vital service for every member of the community. That is and has been a phenomenal achievement and ought not to be denigrated at all. Now, of course, in denigrating this kind of thing what they try to do is either pretend it is, or dismiss it as, utopian. That it doesn’t really work. It doesn’t really properly fit with the kind of human nature that they have defined -- built around greed and material acquisitiveness. And so they define the common good as unnatural in a way.

But I’ve got to raise the issue of reviving the notion of common good. In doing so I want to raise the question of whether we have really got the right conception of being human? Does the conception of homo-economicus, that notion that we are just basically a set of material appetites, adequately represent human nature? Or does that notion represent what economists have constructed human nature to be. I want to point to the work of the great economic historian Karl Polanyi. [Polanyi, K. The Great Transformation, (Boston: Beacon Press, 1960).] Polanyi makes the point that the market economy, the economy that we live in today, well actually we live in a very extreme version of it today. But the whole notion of the market economy is really based around the notion of greed. And that everybody will be out there pursuing their own material self-interest and material acquisitiveness. But Polanyi makes the point that the whole notion of the market economy built around greed, which may seem so totally natural to us, has really only emerged in relatively recent times. It only emerged in the west in the last several hundred years. So if you look at the whole of human history, which surely we would want to do if we want to get a sense of what human nature really is, this intense focus on greed that you see in capitalism is actually a bit of an aberration. And Polyani makes the point that no other society in the history of the world or anywhere in the world, has given such prominence to greed as our society does today. Nowhere else in history has greed essentially been made the central organizing principle of society. And this is not to say that greed and material acquisitiveness didn’t exist before. Of course they did. They’ve always been a factor in human society, and that is part of the necessities of survival and the human instinct. But, traditionally, greed and the material acquisitive appetite were not considered the central motivating force in human motivation. Greed was only one fact and it wasn’t the dominant one and no society ever encouraged it, never actively fanned the flames of it the way we do today. And no other society made the market the dominant institution of society. Instead, other things, religion, clan, family, tradition, law, even magic sometime, very different things were the dominant institutions. In other words, in all other societies in history, markets and the whole idea of the centrality of greed in the human personality were made to be subordinate to society in general. To the organization of society in general and to the broad interests of the whole community. There is a wonderful quote that expresses the sanity of this approach. It’s from the late British historian, R.H. Tawney. Tawney says

In other words, not to deny the economic appetites, or the enormity of material desires, but to put it in its proper place to make it the servant, not the master of civilization.

And it’s only really in our modern capitalist economy that markets have been allowed to dominate and that greed, individual personal greed has been encouraged and been allowed to dominate over the common good. Polanyi argues that this is in fact quite a serious distortion of the human personality -- that material acquisitiveness, he argues, is not the central thing.

Along with philosophers going all the way back to Aristotle, Polanyi makes the point that more than humans being materially acquisitive beings, we are first and foremost social beings. That is, we want to have connections with other human beings. We want to be part of communities. In fact, many people, including Polanyi, have observed that the desire to acquire material things is itself a social thing -- a desire to position ourselves in the social order.

Polanyi also makes an interesting point of comparison. He talks about the economic appetites and the reason why you wouldn’t want to encourage them the way we do. He draws the comparison, for instance, to the sexual appetite as a similar kind of appetite. We have recognized throughout history that you can’t just encourage wanton sexual behavior. You’ll have chaos. So, every society in history has had some institutions in addition to laws against rape and that sort of thing. We have the institution of marriage. The whole point of marriage is to give a positive social construct to the sexual appetite can be channeled so it doesn’t become a destructive force that would wreak havoc on the whole society. The institution of marriage continues to be very strong today. Outside of everything, pretty well except perhaps Temptation Island on TV, we have recognized that the sexual appetite is too strong to be let loose. But, interestingly, we don’t recognize the same danger in freeing up the economic appetite or the material appetite. Our whole system is geared around fanning that appetite as much as possible. I was thinking of this when I saw an ad depicting a business-man with all kinds of indulgences being offered to him. It said: "The world doesn’t revolve around you, [and the cut line was] but we’re working on it." It was an ad for one of those inter-connected systems that would do everything. It’s this whole notion that we will try and encourage greed as much as we possibly can. And that’s what makes this system work. We’ve made greed the master, not the servant of civilization. And how odd that is if you compare it to the sexual appetite and how we’ve wisely not done that in the sexual sphere.

The point I’m trying to make is that in fact, as Polanyi argues, we are really first and foremost, social animals and we naturally form ourselves into communities. We organize those communities and we have restraints built into those communities against individual greed and we emphasize the common interests. If you go back and look over the past 400-500 years, as capitalism has been taking off, its the history of the rise of capitalism, but its also the history of resistance to the excesses of capitalism. If you go back to the enormous fights in history, we’ve almost completely ignored them now -- the fights against the enclosure movement. Fights against the removal of common rights. The move to unionize. To set up political parties. To regulate. To have government regulation. All these things are in fact, part of the desire to assert some degree of community control, a sense of the public good over individual greed. In many ways these movements culminated in what we call the welfare state, in the early post-war period. So the welfare state was all about placing limits on individual greed, in the interests of empowering the community as a whole, and establishing the dominance of civil society.

In fact, internationally, that was very much what was going on in that period, through the Bretton Woods system. The Bretton Woods system, among other things, imposed controls on the movement of capital, gave governments the power to control the movement of capital in and out of their borders. And the whole point in doing this -- John Maynard Keynes, the key architect of the Bretton Woods system, was very explicit why he did this -- he wanted to empower governments as the closest thing we have to the embodiment of the community. Keynes wanted to empower governments over the private interests of corporations. Let us not forget, because there’s a tremendous tendency to denigrate that whole period 1945 -1975, that was a period of absolutely enormous advances. This country became a much more egalitarian society. A much more inclusive society. I would be the first to admit that we had and have a lot further to go, you know, in areas like the environment, in the position of women and all kinds of areas where there are incredible things that remain to be tackled. But I think it’s very important that we not lose sight of what really was achieved in those years and how tragically we’re moving away from that. Because one of the central things about that period was that there was some recognition of the common good. There was a shared idea that the common good should have precedence over individual greed and self-interest that there was a legitimate role for government in imposing limits on how far individual greed could go.

And now, in fact, we’re moving in exactly the opposite direction with things like the WTO, the MAI, [Multilateral Agreement of Investment] if it comes back, and, of course, the NAFTA. These are attempts to establish treaties, which in effect enshrine the rights of individual greed, over the rights of the overall community. They are declarations of rights of investors and they set out how the rights of the overall communities will in fact, be restrained in the interests of protecting the rights of investors. This is exactly inverse of the idea that Tawny was talking about [Tawney, R.H. The Acqusitive Society, (Brighton, Sussex: Wheatsheaf Books Limited, 1982); Tawney, R.H. Equality, (London: George Allen and Unwin, 1964). (First published 1931)] and that societies traditionally have sought to avoid. For what we’ve done is elevate greed, not just to the top organizing principle but we are now enshrining it in law. We’re enshrining the supremacy of greed in law. And you can see this very clearly if you look at what’s happening in some of the NAFTA cases, particularly, the metal-clad case that came up very recently in Mexico and is now being contested through the courts here in Canada. We can certainly talk about that in the question period if anybody wants to get into that.

You know, it sometimes strikes me that the ultimate goal of neo-conservatives these days is to destroy our sense that we are even capable of acting collectively, so that we are incapable of taking collective action that would defend the common good. You get the sense they’re trying to make us believe we can’t even do that any more. We’re not capable of it. And therefore, there’s no point in trying to achieve these ambitious national projects like medicare, or a national child care program. Remember that one?

I was struck by this sort of thing recently when I saw the cover story in Saturday Night magazine about Tim Horton’s. Let me explain how that ties in. It’s all about the "Success of tomorrows. It has its own lingo. It has its own legends. It has its own cultural legacy. Tim Horton’s occupies a central place in Canadian life. But what does it tell us about us [the article said] that our only national institution is a donut shop."

It’s sort of funny but at the same time its just absolutely ludicrous. I confess I like donuts and coffee as much as the next person. But, to call Tim Horton’s a national institution is ludicrous. Of course it offers no meaningful interaction among Canadians. No shared project. No shared vision. I’ve been into dozens of Tim Horton Shops and nobody ever talks to others. All you do is you line up and pull out your wallet and you pay. So I would say that the success of Tim Horton’s, in fact, tells us absolutely nothing about Canada or its institutions.

But the article tells us a great deal about the neo-conservative vision for Canada. About their desire to in fact, destroy our sense of national projects, that we are capable of doing things effectively, collectively together. What they’re really trying to do is reduce us from citizens to consumers. So that we won’t have any sort of strong public programs. We’ll only have a series of retail outlets in a giant mall called Canada. The closest we’ll come to ever acting together, acting collectively, will be when we pull out our wallets all at the same time at Tim Horton’s. That’s their idea of collective action. I think I’m running out of time here but I figure you’ve always got time for Tim Horton’s.

Let me just say that there is an answer to this elevation of a philosophy of greed to the central organizing principle of society. The answer, it’s the answer I’m sure Tom Douglas or Stanley Knowles would have given, and that is to reject it. To fight back. To resist. To organize and to collectively assert our rights.

I would add to that, that is difficult to do. It’s very discouraging. It’s very discouraging to see the line-up of forces against us. To see the kind of lack of interest in many quarters. And it’s very tempting to give up. But as tempting as it is to give up, it’s amazing how effective we can be when we actually do get organized. I know it seems like there’s these huge forces already against us. And there certainly are. But look at what has happened when people have actually taken the time to organize. And look how effective they’ve been. I point to the example of the MAI. With some pretty limited resources, a rag-tag group of protestors and resistors, actually managed to inform a fairly large segment of the public in Canada, in France and the United States. There was enough of an outcry that that kind of sense that things were impossible was overcome. Though MAI negotiations were going on behind closed doors, they were brought out into the open and there was such resistance to it that they actually backed down. Now that’s not to say that they won’t try it again. They’re trying it again in dozens of ways. The GATTS Treaty that they’re working on now. The point I’m trying to make is look at what that bit of resistance did to derail their schemes.

Lets look at the situation of the bank merger. The bank merger is another example of something that seemed like a shoe-in. But with a little bit of organization and a little bit of resistance the government backed down. That doesn’t mean that they’re not going to try it again. They’re going to try it again very soon. The question is will we be organized again.

Let me mention quickly the Tobin Tax. Are you familiar with that? The Tobin Tax is an idea for an international tax on the movement of short-term capital around the world. That’s the rapid, kind of casino capitalism where money is traded from one currency to another, 1.6 trillion a day. The idea is to tax that, partly to raise money for third world countries but mostly to slow down speculative capital movements. The point is that even with a very small tax, given the money that’s moving constantly from one currency to the other, capital movements will be discouraged.

The Parliament of Canada became the first parliament, the first elected body in the world, to pass a resolution in support of a Tobin Tax. The reason that happened was basically because a group of people organized and pushed the idea. And in fact they lobbied parliamentarians. Well "lobbied" is even the wrong word in this context. They explained what was going on to parliamentarians. The parliamentarians recognized that rapid speculative capital movements were something their constituents wouldn’t like because that kind of casino capitalism, is so destabilizing to many countries around the world, and is so counter-productive. When the vote came up in Parliament it was introduced as a private member’s bill. Private member’s bills normally don’t get passed. Certainly not when they’re on something as highly controversial as that. The Liberals, however, decided to make it a free vote and it passed overwhelmingly. In fact, it passed with two-thirds support in the Canadian Parliament -- which is simply phenomenal -- making us the first elected body in the world to support that tax. So, what I am saying is, that with a little bit of organization and effort, its amazing the inroads that can be made. And this is not to say we won’t encounter resistance. The problem is, the reason that nothing seems to get done most of the time is most of the time we simply don’t resist. We simply accept. We submit. We submit to the argument that we’re helpless in the global economy. In fact when citizens are organized and informed, governments can’t really afford to ignore them in a democracy.

Going back to the bank merger. I think it was absolutely clear that Paul Martin would have liked nothing more than to approve that bank merger. His leadership bid was coming up and it would have been nice to have all those banks contribute to his leadership fund. He would have loved to have approved that merger. But he didn’t dare because he also has aspirations to be Prime Minister. He knew the opposition was sufficiently strong that if he approved that bank merger it would be over for him. It was so interesting, I noticed when he turned it down, the reaction, particularly in the business media, was that he was absolutely denounced. They dismissed him as opportunistic. They said "He just wants to be Prime Minister. He’s bowing to public opinion. And I thought, "Yeah! Isn’t that what’s supposed to happen?"

One really revealing comment was, in a piece by an economist, David Bond, a B.C. economist. He was denouncing Martin in all the standard ways. And denouncing Canada, for at the same time Canadians were opposed to the bank merger. Bond ended his column with these words, describing the resistance to the bank merger he said "How sad, how Canadian." Let us be clear. He meant that as an insult. He meant, "You silly Canadians, you silly little Canadians, for failing to accept the reality of the global economy. For not adapting to the dictates of globalization."

But I must confess, I felt a shiver of pride when I read that. The idea that to be Canadian meant to be defiant. To stand up against the juggernaut of global capitalism. That is exciting.

And so in closing, I just want to call on you, or to call on all of us, to join in a sense of resistance. I think what we need in this country is much more of the spirit of Tommy Douglas and Stanley Knowles. What we need essentially, is a lot less adjustment and a lot more defiance.

Thanks very much.

Audience: What I got from this, was even though its called the cult of impotence, I got from it was a feeling of empowerment. That if we are accepting a cult of impotence, we can also accept a cult of empowerment. Our two biggest leaders, as you say, and a lot of our provincial leaders, including Ralph Kline and Mike Harris and you can name a few more, are promoting this cult even though, as Canadians, like you say, we have a history of defiance and a history of stubbornness. Now, my question to you is: Why is it that we don’t hear that voice? It comes often from the NDP and from people who promote Tommy Douglas’ vision, from people like yourselves? Why is it we don’t hear this message more often because most Canadians would say "Rah, Rah Rah, lets go." Is it because the reins of the media are in the hands of the rich? And if so, can we take advantage of the media -- like the Internet, and other forms, that can really get this message out?

LINDA MCQUAIG: There are a number of things you said Laurie. All very interesting points. First of all, it is true that the whole notion of impotence is a very selective one. We are supposed to be disempowered, but everything to do with business is super-empowered. Right?

When was the last time that you knew of a CEO to get up in front of his company and say: "You know, I just can’t do anything." Well, actually, I guess John Roth did it the other day. But generally, its all sort of on the up and up. There’s nothing in the global economy that they can’t tackle as long as they have the right tax breaks, back here.

Of course, its just us, when it comes to democracy we are supposed to be disempowered. Now you’re saying: Why don’t we hear those voices? Well, you did sort of answer your own question when you said the corporate owned media. You don’t want to sound too conspiratorial about these things, but in fact, that’s the answer, I would say. Not to put too fine a point on it, the truth is that in fact the media is owned by very large corporations. Its owned by Conrad Black. Its owned by Ken Thompson. Its owned by Ken Rogers; Izzy Asper. These are not forces of progressive thought.

Imagine if the entire media was owned by environmentalists or by lesbians, you know what I mean -- I’m just trying to pick different groups. You would expect to find a certain slant in the media, that was pro-environment or pro-lesbian or whatever. You’d expect that. So, why would we not expect that when corporations own the media. Of course they’re going to have a very strong corporate slant. And so there’s this kind of feeling, you know, the media will just let anything in and say anything to attract readers. That is not true I’ll tell you. I’ve worked at the media. It’s much more tightly controlled than that. In fact, if your point of view is not very similar to the point of view of your newspaper, you remain at a very low level in that newspaper and you aren’t in a position to express a point of view. Sometimes its subtle. Sometimes its not subtle at all. You mentioned Ralph Kline. I’m just thinking of the coverage, lets say of the Alberta election that’s coming up next week. The whole coverage of that has been what a brilliant fiscal manager Ralph Kline is. Do you realize that Ralph Kline has 10 billion dollars in oil and gas revenues to play with? There isn’t a Premier in this country who couldn’t look like a fiscal genius with 10 billion dollars. That economy is so easy Stockwell Day looked good managing it!

The sort of broader point I’m making is that the general buzz one gets in the media is that Ralph Kline is really being effective with all those right-wing policies like privatization, tax cuts, deregulation and that Ontario is soon going to follow suit, etc. etc. If you examine it there’s nothing to that case at all. It just falls apart before your eyes. But the general thrust in the media is all in that direction. So, I think the simply answer is that it is the corporate owned media that is a huge, huge, part of the problem.

Now, as to the solutions, well you’re right, the Internet I think is an effective force. But I think it would be too much to assume that the Internet is going to be the only answer. I don’t think we should put all our eggs in one basket. The Internet is very effective in getting information around quickly but I think it’s also true the Internet is increasingly being dominated by large corporate players. I don’t know that that’s going to change the whole public perception. Let me just quickly say I think the answer is, you know its not the Internet. The answer is the same answer that’s always been there and that is, organization. Struggle. Resistance. It’s never been easy. People get so exasperated and they say "Ah, I can’t, it’s not worth it. It’s hopeless." Do we think it was easier a hundred years ago when there wasn’t even a proper democracy? Women didn’t even have the right to vote. Do we really think it was easier back then. And yet they made tremendous inroads back then. They basically got us to where we are today. We should be going further. I’m just saying it’s the same old stuff. You got have to resist. You have to organize. And you have to expect that the forces against you are formidable. If they weren’t formidable they wouldn’t be in charge. We’d be in charge. But that’s not to say that they are unassailable. There’s a very big difference. If you look at something like the Keynesian period -- still a source of inspiration even though it didn’t go nearly far enough -- that was basically people organizing and fighting for those things all through the 30's. It paid off in the post-war years. The point is all these things require struggle. You don’t get social programs and good redistribution handed to you. You have to fight for those things. And so, I think its that same old story.

AUDIENCE: I think you provide us with a really excellent opportunity to look at defiance when its an us versus them mentality -- when its us over here and them over there -- and in theory so that the government can’t afford to ignore us. But there are hundreds of thousands of students in this country. Unfortunately, I wouldn’t say that its an "us versus them" problem so much as an "us versus us," in that many people in this room can partially be blamed for the situation that we’re in now. Where we’ve seen 150% tuition increase in the last ten years in this province. We’ve seen the deregulation of tuition. We’ve seen targeted funding. Key performance indicators introduced. Obviously we students are being ignored. We might not vote in the levels that people in this room, but certainly most of the people in this room are the reality -- they voted just to sacrifice our future for what looked like immediate payoff. And the 905 area code in this province decided that Billy’s tax cut, or that Billy’s education, was less important to them than their tax cut. So, how do we deal with combating this as opposed to Conrad Black?

LINDA MCQUAIG: Good question, very good question. And I think the simple answer is that you immediately occupy the university administrative offices. That was the answer I was supposed to give, wasn’t it?

In all seriousness, I mean you are 100% right and in fact Robert and I were talking about this at dinner. That its unbelievable what’s happened to university tuition. And its unbelievable it hasn’t become a political issue. And I quite agree with you. I quite understand why you would feel angry about that. Let me just personally point out quickly that I’ve never voted for any party that has done that so you know, I’m off the hook personally.

But, let me just say I do think the whole university education system just goes to the heart of what our democracy is all about. Obviously what we are seeing increasingly is the marketization of our universities. The corporatization of our universities on so many levels. Increasingly, the funding is going to the business schools as if that’s the only kind of education that matters, as if that’s going to round us out as human beings or something.

So you know, we’re cutting back funding so that universities rely so desperately on funding from corporations. Of course corporations are going to demand effectively in different ways, control over the agenda, etc. etc. And the point about the run up in tuition fees, nothing could be more basic to the ideal of democracy than the idea of having accessible post-secondary education -- real accessibility and having real opportunities for everyone in society. One of the real achievements of the post-war period was that university education became accessible to people like me, who, probably a generation earlier wouldn’t have gone to university. It was so easy. I remember I worked my way through university working my summers at The Globe and Mail. You couldn’t do that now. You couldn’t possibly make enough money doing that, unless you were Leah McLaren, or something,. I guess.

So my point is I think you’re absolutely right. I think it goes to the heart of what kind of society we want to be about. I honestly don’t know how to make it more of an issue. The problem is of course the transiencey of the student movement, because you’re just at that stage of your life. I think its got to be a question of linking up with other broadly based movements and trying to make that [attacks on democracy] a central concern because its absolutely going to transform the nature of our society if we don’t do something about that. We’ve always had post-secondary but if you go back a hundred, hundred and fifty years, it was a real preserve of the elite. In fact if you go back before the post-war period it was a preserve of the elite. And there’s a deliberate move, I think, to push us back in that direction. That’s the whole emphasis on excellence that they keep talking about. Excellence is really just a code word for elitism, you know. And so I think it is something to be really strongly resisted and I think you’re right to be angry at us.

AUDIENCE: I think that the other key word is debt. And I think a lot of people here are probably trying to assure their houses are paid off before they get old. They don’t want to use their charge card for a secret Santa gift to students, or a number of students, for the next ten, fifteen years. So maybe the reality is they’re tired of paying interest on a debt rather than a deficit. One waste of money in this country is going towards paying some other person in another country, rather that doing things in this country. Its gotten way out of hand. …to being a snowball coming down the mountain. How do we stop it? And we just can't say well it doesn’t exist any more or the people here will think of using their credit limit as a secret Santa because maybe they’ll make their charge cards …but if we have a snowball effect over our heads, we’re all getting older now. And we don’t want to have debt so that when the time comes that we need hospitalization they’ll be completely wiped out in like a couple of years because of lack of control.

LINDA MCQUAIG: Have you ever looked at corporate balance sheets? Have you ever looked at corporate annual reports? Have you ever seen the kind of debts that corporations run? There is an attempt to sell the notion that debt is some kind of evil. In fact if you look at the way corporations operate, they understand there’s a difference between deficit and debt. They go into debt in order to invest. In order to have things for the future.

AUDIENCE: It’s the generation of the people in this room. This country was not in debt at all.

LINDA MCQUAIG: No, that’s actually not true. This country has been in debt since the late nineteenth century. Let me tell you that when we came out of the Second World War, we had more debt per person, or per capita which is the only meaningful way to measure it. We had a bigger debt per person, something like a 110% of GDP. Much bigger than we have today. So you would think that that must have been crippling. Right? But, it wasn’t crippling at all because they didn’t think of it that way.

… Are you talking about student debt?

AUDIENCE: What I’m saying is, on the debt part, I think your saying that per person it was a lot higher but we had a lot more resources then too.

What do your mean, like more natural resources?

AUDIENCE: Per capita, yes.

LINDA MCQUAIG: Well, but that’s just because we’ve just stupidly frittered them away. But that does not have to do with debt. I don’t want to get into this too deeply, but the point is simply, you have to go into debt in order to invest for the future. If you’re building a bridge, or a cross-country railroad or anything, any serious piece infrastructure, a hospital, whatever. You don’t do that in one year. And you certainly don’t write off the whole cost in one year. So, in fact, debt is, you know, the process of building a society. Now, in fact, there’s a wonderful thing on the historian, McCauley, who cites examples of people worrying about how Britain was going to hell in a hand-basket. These were stories of Britain just on the edge of its huge industrial age and they were all upset because Britain was going into debt. Well it was going into debt to build the canals and the railways, and everything that led to future success.

But having said that, there’s obviously good debt and there’s bad debt. I’m not in favour, you know, of wasteful spending. I wouldn’t argue that we should be building mansions for our political leaders. It’s got to be debt that’s proper investment for the future. First of all I would say that a lot of our debt is for things that are absolutely necessary, we had to do it and it was the right thing. I would also just say that a lot of the debt we built up in this country, the huge build-up of debt, in late 70's, early 80's and then again in the late 80's, early 90's wasn’t to do with any new social spending. We didn’t have any growth in social spending in those periods. What we had was a very ridiculous monetary policy, where in order to kill inflation that was almost non-existant, in the late 80's at least, we drove up our interest rates dramatically high and that was what really drove the build-up of the national debt. I go into a lot of detail about that in my book, Shooting the Hippo. I won’t go into it all now but the point is, to some extent we’re stuck with a debt that was a product, a lot of it, a very foolish, but I would add, a very right-wing policy. It wasn’t like it was debt for some kind of social spending. The important thing to know about the debt is that in fact our debt to GDP ratio, which is the only thing that in fact actually matters, is actually on the decline. In fact, The Globe and Mail, a very conservative newspaper, has even written editorials basically arguing that we shouldn’t all be focused on the debt. What they want us to focus on is tax cuts. But I would say we should focus on social spending.

I’ll just very quickly give you this example to put it in perspective. Let’s say you buy a car. You take out a loan. You’re in debt because of that car. You could take out a ten thousand dollar loan. What really matters with that debt is: Is that too big a debt? Who knows? It totally depends on how big your income is. Right? A ten thousand dollar loan is huge to somebody earning twelve thousand dollars a year. And it’s nothing to you know, John Cleghorn. So the point is what your income is and how affordable is the debt given your income.

The reason I used the example of the early post-war years and the huge debt that we came out of the second world war with was that that debt was huge but it rapidly shrunk as a proportion of GDP. In other words, the loan on the car became more affordable not because we paid off the debt. We didn’t, we didn’t pay practically a penny of it off. What happened is instead the economy grew. So, like the ten thousand dollar debt on the car, the debt stayed the same but instead of earning twelve thousand, we started earning, you know, eventually a hundred and twenty thousand. So the debt just became pipsqueak and insignificant. So in fact we are in a situation now where our debt is on the downward slope and as long as it’s on the downward slope, and its affordable, which it is, there shouldn’t be any huge obsession about paying it off.

AUDIENCE. I’d first like to say thank you very much for your fine talk. My question is concerning whether or not there is a fallacy in the notion of going into debt for our future. As a young Canadian I was just curious whether there’s fallacy and whether or not there will be enough money in the Canada Pension Plan to fund the pension program.

LINDA MCQUAIG: Just a second, let me rephrase what I said. There is a threat but its not that the system is not sustainable. In fact those numbers [with respect to the CPP] have been grossly exaggerated. In fact the system is a pay-as-you-go system. The thing that would prevent it from being sustainable, frankly, is if we have too high levels of unemployment. Because then you don’t have enough people paying into the system to support the people that are retired. But, in fact the system is sustainable at its current rates as long as we maintain reasonable levels of employment. What is a danger, however, though, is the huge hype about it. The hype is the attempt to scare people like you into saying it [the CPP] won’t be there for you so you, therefore, had better load up on RRSP’s and all kinds of private things in order to protect yourself.

RRSP’s are great if you have high income. The problem is that they are an enormously expensive public welfare system in that they’re so heavily subsidized. The tax advantages that the rich get from RRSP’s are, (I don’t have the numbers right with me but I’ve seen them) just dramatic. They get a huge subsidy but the benefits of RRSP’s goes so extremely to the people at the upper end. It’s similar to cutting the tax on capital gains. The benefits are all in the top one or two percent. So, in fact by encouraging people to believe that there won’t be strong public systems there for them, they encourage us to panic and think we’ve got to all get into these RRSP systems.

I saw an analysis the other day by Richard Shillington, a statistician in Ottawa, making the point that in fact that for ordinary people RRSP’s are not really a very good system -- they’re not actually advantageous. That we end up undermining the tax system and our ability to pay for public programs. The numbers are quite dramatic. If you look at it, the public programs are so very effective at, basically, propping the whole elderly population. Propping them up, keeping them out of poverty. The improvement in the poverty rate among elderly people in the last thirty years is just dramatic. So the real answer is to keep strong public systems and the systems are sustainable. What possibly puts it at risk comes from the kind of fear-mongering that is going on. And let us just point out the obvious. The fear-mongering is coming from all those commentators on Bay Street that want nothing more than to handle your money privately.

AUDIENCE: A query about the relationship between greed, materialism, religion, God, rationality as science and changing the basis of modern life..

LINDA MCQUAIG: Well, that’s an interesting question. I’m not sure I fully understand it. But are you saying that like in the past, lets say with a more religion based type of system that people had values that, maybe, were more of humanistic sort than today. And you’re saying that with the rise of science that has to be equated with materialism.

That is an interesting interpretation of science. I would argue that in having a society based around religion rather than science, there’s a lot of differences. But I’m not sure what that really actually comes down to. I’m not sure that in a society that’s scientific or interested in science that there’s any necessary reason that you would have to elevate greed and materialism. I don’t think there’s anything rational about that as a way to live. In other words, if science introduces a kind of rational approach to life, which I think it arguably does. I don’t think it follows that it’s only rational that we would want to organize ourselves in a way that sort of pits one person against an other and elevates greed.

I mentioned earlier the NAFTA metal-clad case. Let me just quickly talk about that to illustrate what I’m talking about. The NAFTA metal-clad case is in Mexico. A toxic waste company from the US wanted to set up operations in a town in Mexico. The town refused to grant it a permit -- I’m cutting the story down to its essence -- because they didn’t want all this pollution in town. So that was fine but the company then went to the NAFTA Tribunal that hears protests. The company demanded payment in compensation on the grounds they were denied their rights to exercise their rights to, essentially, pollute this country by operating a business that they wanted to operate. And the NAFTA tribunal awarded them 17 million dollars in compensation.

AUDIENCE: I’m Herb Wiseman from Peterborough. We had eight students recently occupy the offices. … My question has to do as a follow-up to the earlier question about debt. The debt of our country, as I understand Economics 101, is a large part of our money supply. What will happen to the money supply if we pay the debt down? A second part is, that as I understand our debt, there are two major components to it. One is the Canada Savings Bonds, the other are treasury bills. Those are very stable instruments compared to the other kinds of investments that are held in our registered retirement plans, and our Canada pension plans and our other ones. I just wanted you to comment about those two things if you would.

LINDA MCQUAIG: Well, I think you’re trying to get into the whole question about the Bank of Canada and that the BofC should buy up more of the debt. There’s a lot of debate about whether or not that’s a good idea. Frankly I’m not totally convinced that it is. But let me just say in essence, I think that the crucial question, rather than getting too focused on how much of the overall debt the Bank of Canada should buy up. Is that the Bank of Canada should be obliged to operate in a manner that is in the public interests of the people of Canada. And you know, for far too long there’s been a massive obsession about keeping inflation under control. We haven’t had an inflation problem in this country since the early 80's but in the late 80's the Bank of Canada went on a rampage against inflation. In the process of trying to bring inflation from 4% to 1%, they drove the interest rates so high that at one point they were 5 percentage points higher than the American rates. It drove us into the biggest recession we’ve had in this country since the 1930's. Now there’s a lot of changes at the Bank of Canada. We have a new governor, David Dodge. And we’re coming into a period where we might get into some of these issues again. As we head into a recession we saw a good move the other day, with the drop in interest rates but will they continue to do that or will they stop those interest rate cuts if Bay Street gets too upset about the value of the dollar dropping.

So I think we’re headed into a potentially interesting and difficult period again. I think the important thing is that we have a monetary policy that’s focused on encouraging growth and employment. Not encouraging inflation in order to protect the financial assets of rich Canadians.

Audience: I’m a local student activist and I notice the conspicuous absence of what was on the cover of the National Post today. The anti-globilization movement's protests. I was wondering why there was no mention.

LINDA MCQUAIG: Oh, well I mean I did talk about NAFTA and the WTO, The anti-globilization movement's protests could be another example I guess of resistance. I was talking about that sort of thing with the MAI, the resistance to the MAI. But you’re quite right. I could have gone on and certainly it was very effective in Seattle in slowing things down. And I think the anti-globilization movement has been extremely effective in getting these issues onto the agenda. In getting them discussed for the first time in a long time. I think its been absolutely crucial and has brought out an enormous kind of resistance on the part of forces that feel very threatened by this. There’s an attempt to vilify the demonstrators that I think is completely inappropriate because what they’re saying is extremely intelligent, generally speaking, and very accurate about what these treaties are about. So, I consider myself very much in support of the kinds of things they’re talking about.

AUDIENCE: It’s amazing the difference between what the public hears and what we hear inside the government. I work in the federal government. We heard under the Liberals that universality was dead. Which means that the common good is dead. In 1995 when Martin cut the transfer to the provinces for health, education, welfare, he said it was because of the debt. We were told that Martin was crazy. … That we were in the third year of economic expansion. We were expecting a surplus of five million dollars that year. So there was no need, from a debt point of view, for doing this. Likewise, the idea of the common good has to do with public services. And public service managers are found inside each area … you see, employment insurance and training. We were offered a bonus of up to one hundred dollars for every person we cut off benefits. Which puts us in a direct conflict with the citizens and their needs. I thought people would lose their houses because they cut their benefits. We denied benefits in a lot of different cases. In training we turned everything up-side-down. Until 1995 we were designating people on the computer. Visible minorities, new Canadians, women returned to work force, etc. and the different ethnic groups. And then we were told that under the business model, that our office, our manager would get a bonus of five to twelve thousand dollars a year based on denying service to these people because they can’t qualify. We were told … these people were worth less, worthless, OK. That, in my point, is immoral and unethical. It is also a violation to the common good. I would appreciate your comments on it.

LINDA MCQUAIG: I think you’ve articulated that very nicely and I would say its all part of this attitude to denigrate government. To denigrate everything about government. And of course part of that is the idea that civil servants are just in it for themselves and we’ve got to structure things in a way that puts them in the position of doing things such as you are suggesting that are absolutely counter to the public good. Its so interesting. If you go back into the period in the 1930's, 1940's, 1950's, in Canada, what you see is a sense of respect for the public service. It was the idea that members of the public service were like public servants. They were actually serving the public, that was the whole concept. And let me just say this, this hostility to the government, which is so, so basic, to the neo-conservatism we see today, so basic to what we’re talking about, to this idea that there can be no common good. Because how can there be a common good if there’s not a government to fight for it. This whole denigration of government is a very deliberate thing.

If you go into the economic literature and look at what’s call the public choice movement, there’s a whole vein of argument which is, and you see this very much in the 60's, 70's, and really flowering in the 80's and 90's, this just vicious hostility to government. The basic argument comes back to this homo-economicus idea. They’ve extended the idea that human beings are nothing but self-interested, interested in material acquisitiveness, therefore there can be no genuine public good. And the whole idea of government is just fundamentally flawed for that reason. Their argument is civil servants are just out for their own self-interest. And anybody dealing with government is just pushing their self-interests. Civil servants are always trying to expand their own empires. So the whole thing is to suggest that government is unworkable as a concept. And that way is to paralyze government and therefore protect the sort of private interests of the powerful people in the economic sphere.

A big part of public choice theory is the argument that governments shouldn’t have the right to, for instance, impose progressive taxation systems, because that’s unfair to the rich. And, you know, you can’t trust government therefore government should be extremely limited in what it has the right to do. That’s the idea behind all these balanced budget amendments that are the rage these days. What they want to do is tie the hands of governments so that governments can’t pump more money into social problems. No matter how much the public wants it, their hands will be tied. So, you have hit on something very important and that is that that whole hostility to government is absolutely crucial to the move against the idea of the public good and that we have to, as bad as government is, and it is bad. I mean, look at what we have here in Ontario. We have to fight to preserve and respect the institution of government and make it responsive to people.

AUDIENCE: To tie into that it seems political parties have moved to the right again. The Liberals are the middle of the road and yet somehow the road has shifted to the right. So, what would be your advice then, to the New Democratic Party? This seems to be the only alternative in Ontario and in Canada more generally, right? And the second point is when are you going to throw you hat into the ring?

LINDA MCQUAIG: Well, I tell you if I do, I’ll announce it first in Waterloo. But in fact, I am actually quite happy as a writer. But let me just say that in terms of what the NDP should be doing, I mean first of all I’m a journalist. I’m not a party member or anything like that. But obviously I’ve observed a few things about the way the NDP operates and my feeling has always been that the NDP should do what Tommy Douglas and Stanley Knowles showed us how to do. And that is, present a vision that is genuinely different and that people will respond to. I mean, I fully believe, and I think even the polls back me up, that Canadians do respond to notions of equality and to social justice and to inclusiveness. These actually matter to people. Yes they can be scared into, because of deficits or brain-drains or whatever, to vote in ways that are contrary to their own interests. But, deep down they actually care about those things. And what is desperately lacking in this country is really effective articulation of that Tommy Douglas, Stanley Knowles' vision. And I think the NDP should stop worrying about what Tony Blair is doing and how sexy things are over in the Euro market and start focusing on that vision. Because that vision is strong. It’s powerful. It lives on in people’s hearts and its part of that thing that made that guy say "How sad, how Canadian."

So let us bring it to life again.

Thank you very much.

Good evening. The first opportunity I had to become more closely acquainted with Linda McQuaig’s work was in 1995, when I encouraged my elder daughter, who was at that time in a grade 12 politics class, to choose Shooting the Hippo for her book review assignment. As she worked her way through the book, we had a number of stimulating conversations about government deficit reductions and their impact on our social institutions and our social welfare programs. And I must say, Linda, this was a pleasant relief from some of the more contentious conversations we had about problematic boyfriends.

I firmly believe that my encounter with Ms. McQuaig’s work had an impact on my daughter's decision to go to Carleton to pursue a degree in journalism. After a year in journalism, however, she switched her major to political science only to decide a year later that what she really needed to understand the world, was a degree in criminology. Now, I hesitate to draw any firm conclusions about the pattern of her academic and intellectual formation. But looking back over Linda McQuaig’s body of work and the titles of her books, perhaps one could come justifiably to the conclusion that any good Canadian investigative journalist must become intimately acquainted with politics, psychology, sociology and the law, especially the criminal law. Tonight we have been reminded of how privileged we truly are to be part of an academic community where we can have distinguished Canadians such as Linda McQuaig, join us each year in the Kerr-Saltsman lectures. It is a special treat to have her here on International Women’s Day.

Linda, in your address tonight, you have persuasively argued the importance of the concept of the common good to our Canadian identity. More importantly, you have put to all of us, with passion and conviction, the challenge of working pro-actively to restore this concept to a central place in our policy formation and in the construction of our social agendas. We need to remember and to celebrate the fact that this sense of community, of caring for each other, has been a fundamental value of our aboriginal peoples and more laterally of both French Canadian and English Canadian society.

In your address tonight, and in your writings, you have left us with an important message. We do, in fact, have choices to make, and that there are successful models both elsewhere and here in Canada, other ways of approaching our issues and problems, other than those that are predicated on neo-conservative agendas.

If the animated question and answer period is any indication, the insights you have shared with us will continue to provoke further reflection and debate. And that debate, will continue not only tonight, in the reception, or tomorrow during your other sessions, but indeed long after you have left this campus. On behalf of the members of the audience, I would like to thank you most sincerely for your engaging and thought-provoking presentation.

And I would also like to thank St. Paul’s College and the Canadian Studies Program, for once again providing our community with such an enriching intellectual experience.

Thank you very much.