I would like to continue with the theme of my last post yesterday about the need to accommodate everyone and encourage the development of their full human potential and why this will benefit society. Before I begin though I would like us to examine what is exactly wrong with our society as we know, love and anguish over it today. Canada is a democracy, more specifically a constitutional monarchy and a parliamentary democracy with social-democratic features and a capitalist economy. Still with me? We have in some of our major cities some of the world's most diverse human populations. We also have the most generous if not one of the most generous and open immigration systems in the world. This is likely to be one of the most likely ways that our country is going to survive in the future because we have a below replacement birth rate and a swelling elderly demographic. As well as being signatories to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and almost every other UN charter and document we are also members of several Free Trade and International Trade organizations. We are also, per capita, one of the world's wealthiest countries.
Canada, unlike many developed countries, does not recognize housing as a fundamental human right. By the next federal election next year, 2015, we will have lived and been suffocated under almost a decade of Conservative government. We have a prime minister who behaves like a fat little dictator, suspending or proroguing parliament whenever his party is in deep doo-doo with the Canadian people. This is a government laced with corruption and scandal that places economics before human needs, and a vindictive tough on crime philosophy before human rights. This is the government of the only developed country that does not have a comprehensive public housing strategy.
Since I was born almost fifty-eight years ago Canada has made tremendous advances domestically and on the world stage. In the year of my birth our own then future PM Lester B. Pearson proposed an international peace-keeping force in response to the Suez Canal Crisis and this won him the Nobel Peace Prize. In the sixties, thanks to the tireless lobbying and pressuring of the dreaded "socialist" NDP under Tommy Douglas the ruling Liberal Party ratified a public health care plan that remains intact to this day, and for all its flaws and the criticism, both valid and undeserved being hurled at it, has served well all the people and especially the poor of Canada, although we still don't have publicly subsidized dental care and it may yet be a few years before the Canadian Dental Association publicly admits that the teeth and gums are indeed part of the human body.
During this time and under succeeding Liberal governments under Pierre Trudeau a housing plan for poor and low-income Canadians was hatched and put together providing affordable housing to low income seniors, people on disabilities and the chronically low-incomed. In the early nineties under the same Liberal Party but different leadership this housing strategy was scrapped in order to save taxpayers money presumably, but really to make Canada more attractive to foreign investment and so began the race to the bottom.
In 2005 same sex marriage became legal throughout Canada. Soon after they were cracking down on and imprisoning or expelling or refusing health care to refugees and illegal migrants. You gain some, you lose some. Housing became so expensive and scarce to people on modest incomes that now we are in the middle of our first ever nation-wide homelessness crisis. We also have significant harm-reduction experiments notably here in Vancouver where I live and despite a paucity of decent funding we have been making significant gains in addressing mental illness and reducing stigma for sufferers and survivors of mental health issues. We are incredibly wealthy, but the gap between rich and poor is rapidly growing. We are one of the most inclusive societies on earth, but our immigration system has taken on a cruel and punitive mentality and not infrequently refugees are being returned to their countries and often thus sent to their graves. We have some of the world's top universities but they are increasingly being occupied by foreign students (who, or should I say their wealthy parents, have to pay a lot more than Canadian students), and whose tuition fees are rising way out of reach for eligible students. Meanwhile our ever changing job market has made it necessary that almost any job or profession that is going to pay a living wage or better can only be accessed through not just a BA but at least a Master's Degree or better. We have the busting and dismantling of unions to thank for this development.
This preoccupation with a market economy excludes a lot of people. Not everyone is competitive and if one is going to do well in a market economy then one is going to have to be competitive. This excludes the entire spectrum of the liberal arts and humanities, not to mention organized religion and the important community and charity work that non-profits and volunteers keep together. It is very difficult to get funding for the things that matter most: not increased profit margins, and not a greater selection and choice of consumer goods and services, but the very human, cultural and spiritual values without which we are all collectively dead in the water.
I work in health care: I am a mental health peer support worker. When asked what I do for a living I sometimes jokingly reply that I get paid to go out for coffee. When I am seen with a client in public it would often be very difficult to determine just what it is that I am doing that would merit my whopping twelve bucks an hour. I am a visual artist. I am considered very good at what I do though I am not well known and none of my paintings are hanging in any galleries and I haven't even sold a painting in over five years. Does this make my art inferior? In my opinion, no, not at all. Original art is hard to market and as a luxury item it is usually the last on people's to-buy list. And there is an unimaginable glut of good art on the market, most of which will likely never be bought or sold. If you do not have connections, or a style and technique that is highly marketable and popular, and if you are not competitive (to do art well and to be competitive are a huge contradiction in terms), you will likely never see a nickel for your work, and even after you die it is going to collect dust and molder in attics and basements everywhere but not see the light of day. I am a writer. I gave many public readings of my poetry during the nineties to rave responses, have written a novel, many short stories, essays and articles, but very little of my work has seen publication. I am told I am a good, even gifted writer, but my writing doesn't feed me and if you are not already connected and blessed with good luck and an even tougher skin because of all the rejections that are awaiting you, you will probably not get much further than blogging, as I do. I am a Christian mystic. I have an invisible friend named Jesus and a very strong and intense spiritual and prayer life which informs the rest of my life in only the best and highest ways. This also empowers me to help and care for others. And this is not a marketable skill.
If I were to try to make a buck or two off of what I am and what I am able to do and what I have to offer (and I certainly have tried) I would starve to death. These things that I do, that I have to offer, these things that I am, are not of value in a market economy. They have diddly-squat to do with competiveness, markets, money or profits and yet without these skills, these abilities my life would not just be empty and shallow. My life simply would not be. And this is true for many others like me, and we are legion.
Where are we? Well, I live in government subsidized housing because the only day job that I can do that really feeds my soul and spirit while I can nourish the well being of others pays significantly less than a living wage. There is no place for me, or for someone like me in a market economy, yet without the skills of care giving, nurturing and creating visual beauty and writing insightful things, I would have nothing to offer and others might be all the poorer for it. Others like me have not done so well. Some have died, often by their own hand, some are in mental health institutions and facilities--many have suffered so dreadfully from living in a society and being mistreated and abused by families that can neither understand or appreciate them--and their lives and minds have deteriorated to a point of no return. Some are lost to addiction and alcoholism. And some, like me, struggle on and we even in our way flourish.
We deserve better than this. Much better.
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