Substantive Reform

What, exactly, are some of the real social reforms we could be making to make a difference to our country for the long term?

The role of government is not simply to maintain the status quo and gently nudge the country back into its comfort zone. There are a lot of things that we could do to objectively improve the outcomes of nearly everyone in our country by improving equity and addressing some of the challenges we have.

There are, then, numerous reforms that we can and should be doing that make real rather than optical changes. In a country where wealth disparity is at pre-depression levels, these reforms need to be largely around tax policy.

It is high time to reform our tax system. The Income Tax Act is a heavy document, spanning over 3,400 pages. It takes significant expertise to understand the obligations and opportunities it provides. It only truly benefits those with the resources to decode it. One might ask why it couldn’t be reduced to only a few pages in length? Either income is taxable — and then it is simply a matter of applying the sliding scale we know as brackets — or it is not.

Nobody should be filing taxes from scratch unless they have to add things that the government wouldn't already know about. This is one of many places where we make it hardest for the poorest. Having to file our taxes has been obsolete for decades and many countries no longer insult their populations' intelligence by requiring it, instead sending their own assessment to the citizens and asking them simply to confirm the information is correct and send it back. Finland, for example, states on their tax website (in English!):

The tax return contains information on the income, taxes and deductions of the previous year. Check the tax return and correct any missing or incorrect information in the MyTax online service. If the information is correct, you do not need to do anything.

Would that be so hard for us to do? That simple change would make a world of difference for many working Canadians.

But to really make a difference, how about we end one of the greatest and longest running blights of the West: homelessness. How we as a society accept the existence of such a state of being in a country with our resources is completely beyond me, given that there are solutions that exist.

Guaranteed minimum income indexed to the poverty line would go a long way. So would treating homeless people as, you know, people. And having a minimum income program would replace a litany of other programs with high overhead and complicated application and qualification systems whose processes only hurt those who need it most, like welfare, employment insurance, and disability benefits, as well as similar programs like the Guaranteed Income Supplement and Old Age Security. Why shouldn’t every person in society be guaranteed the basics?

Failing that, we need to set the basic personal exemption to the poverty line, and index the federal minimum wage to a level that ensures a single income can provide the basic necessities to a family of four within your census division, and we need to drag the provinces, under whose jurisdiction minimum wage generally falls, kicking and screaming into lock step on those numbers. In what world do we believe that someone who is working full time should not be able to afford to live and feed their family?

How would we pay for it, you ask? Once upon a time, the top marginal tax rate in the US and Canada hit the 90% range. Far from society collapsing, that was the time that we built up the continent with huge infrastructure investments on which we continue to live like electrical grids and highway networks, and scientific endeavours like the space program. It was also the greatest period of rising quality of life and prosperity in recorded history. We need to raise the top marginal tax rate from 33% to at least 70%, and ensure that income is income, whether it is passive or active, removing the many vehicles behind which people shield it from paying their share, and curb the obscene excesses of the plutocracy. Raising income taxes on income conventionally only exposes the highest earners, not the highest hoarders, and it is that latter group that needs the most serious attention, with widening global support for a wealth tax on the obscenely rich.

That would be the beginning. There’s no decorating around the edges in such a plan. But tax policy is far from the only place where a government interested in actually advancing Canada for a long term future could explore.

Another is waste.

The plastic straw ban is a laughing stock to Canadians trying to drink their toxic sugar drinks out of disposable cups from companies whose executives commute by private jets. It insults our intelligence because it does not in any way actually address the environmental problem it is supposed to.

Waste costs being externalised is patently ridiculous but we continue to accept it as normal. Every product manufactured or sold in Canada must have a fully funded and explained end-of-life plan, declared from the time of sale or export. Right now, only drink cans and bottles have that, and at that only in some provinces. "Landfill" should be a thing of the past. It should be impossible to buy something that can't be taken back, in some form, by the manufacturer at the end of its life, with the only exception being things that are both non-toxic and biodegradable in a natural environment. You can have "garbage" be an option in that world, but the management and processing of it must be funded by those who make products destined for it, not by the end user or their municipal taxes.

Public transit infrastructure, too, needs to be nation-wide and integrated — and free, or at least very easy to pay for, to users. Requiring out-dated transit passes and tickets or exact fares is yet another way we make life more difficult for the poorest for no good reason other than to be collective jerks.

We used to ensure funding so that nearly every small town in the country had bus service linking them to each other. When I was a kid you could go between towns all across the country on Greyhound and their competing bus companies, which relied on government subsidies for remote routes. Now those services are all but dead, forcing us ever more into cars when we should be going the other way.

Cities like Ottawa and Gatineau are so insular that they don't even properly integrate their local transit systems to each other. The Prince of Wales bridge becoming a walking bridge now instead of an LRT bridge is one of the absolute stupidest things we have permitted in the past few years. Gatineau built a bus rapid transit system along the rail line cutting across their city barely a decade ago, and Ottawa has the O-train connecting the river to, soon, the airport. The only thing separating them is a rail bridge. So what do we do as Canada? We pave the rail bridge and put bicycles on it. Far from being proud of this downcycling of invaluable infrastructure, I am embarrassed for my country and the complete lack of vision this represents.

We have been talking about pharmacare for as long as I can remember, yet it is still not implemented. And that’s just the tip of the iceberg on the state of our once-lauded health care system. We need to be publicly beating the living crap out of provinces that are not complying with the Canada Health Act and ensuring every Canadian has a family doctor, making it easier for foreign trained doctors to come to and be qualified in Canada, ensuring portability of medical credentials across Canada — why on earth is a doctor licensed in one province not able to practice another? Are they less of a doctor when they cross an imaginary line? And increasing funding to medical schools nation-wide. Provinces have no problem criticising the federal government; this is a two way street and it’s time Canada stands up for all Canadians.

So are we up for real reform? Is the federal government ready to propose and implement real social change? Or are we going to keep making fools of ourselves by merely decorating around the very edges of public policy to the point that voters think elections are little more than a sports match with a favourite team?