How to put our loss in words?

What a full week it's been. I'm off to the big funeral for Jack Layton tomorrow in Toronto. More on that when I get back. Before I do, I'll stop on Newmarket's Main Street where the merchants have arranged to wear orange tomorrow out of respect. I am amazed, and want to thank them for this touching tribute.

Who gets to comment on our health care system?

The local paper noted the recent Canadian Medical Association report on medicare ("Voices into Action") quoted our local Conservative MPP in reaction, and mentioned that the paper had contacted a Liberal candidate but been advised she wasn't able to comment by press time. Period. No mention of the NDP or any other party. So I issued this press release earlier today, hoping to add to the discussion about a crucial Canadian institution. The doctors' report apparently opens the door for more privatization, and it suits the Conservatives to play up a "crisis" in medicare, trying to persuade people that it's unsustainable in its current form when trusted experts say it very much is sustainable.

I have also written to the editor of the paper insisting on fair treatment of all parties.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:
Newmarket- Aurora NDP Provincial Constituency Association
Robin Wardlaw – NDP Candidate for Newmarket- Aurora
August 11, 2011

Newmarket: The ‘Voices into Action’ report, in my opinion provides important and timely insights into why we must protect our not for profit, universally funded health care system. Now is the time to make a strong commitment to the Canada Health Accord," according to Robin Wardlaw, NDP candidate for Newmarket-Aurora who has not yet read the full report.
"We must act now to ensure that children, elderly and the Newmarket-Aurora community continue to have access to not-for-profit health care services. Now is the time to strengthen and to continue investing in an affordable health care system for all and to stand up to supporting a single-tiered health care system. In our community we must invest in equitable services that serve all," Wardlaw added. "Now is not the time to talk about health care alternatives especially as we recover from same party who put the system into crisis with their cuts to nursing positions in the 90s, their handing over of key functions to the private sector, and their tax cuts."
Wardlaw’s question to Conservatives is how they would address concerns about medicare while continuing their policy of lowering government’s ability to respond. "The Liberals seem to have caught the bug of reducing corporate taxes from the Conservatives," Wardlaw said, "leaving their hands tied."
Publicly funded dental hygiene for all Ontarians, for example, would quickly pay for itself with reduced heart disease and other ailments. "This would be a long term investment with a high rate of return," according to Wardlaw. At the same time, he acknowledges that not all of the solution is simply spending more. "We need to be more clever with our money, too." "And a public system can certainly put people first, reducing gaps and delays when a person goes from one provider to another."
The New Democratic platform contains some important and timely ideas to improve service, and increase efficiency in the health care Ontarians have come to value so highly, such as adding one million hours of home care, cutting ER wait times and giving everyone access to a family doctor.
"I’m worried that the Conservatives will sound like champions of public health care during an election, then find ways to privatize and chop it if they form government. They will target unionized workers and seek to cut wages, benefits and pensions, driving morale for health care workers lower. This is not what people want, as the CMA report clearly shows," he said.

P.S.

I'm away for the next week. Watch for new posts after the 20th. Hair-raising stories of sailboarding, heartwarming stories of political philosophy discussions, tension-filled stories of intergenerational volleyball all to come. Stay tuned!

Big dreams, many small details

It's the usual, I expect. Keeping focused on the big picture while attending to myriad little decisions. Office, phones, shirts, signs--all the accoutrements of a political campaign. All important in their way, but all taking valuable time and energy. Meanwhile we are getting ready to shape our direction as a province for the next four years, and those issues are much important, with an entirely different time scale. Choose orange shirts or white: in two months, what will it really matter? Choose this party or that on October 6, and shape life for families in Ontario for a generation or more. Forward to a greener, fairer society, or backward into a bigger and bigger gap between people's hopes and their actual chances for themselves and their children.
The campaign team is great. I'm just back from the most recent meeting, and the energy was exciting and humbling. As people find out about our campaign, the reactions have been enthusiastic. More and more people are offering their help, and the appetite for change is very strong, both in party circles and on the door step.
The littler decisions are getting made one by one (although you still have to wait to find out about those shirts, and what to wear to coordinate with them), and they pave the way for the team to get the New Democratic message of a society that includes everyone and looks out for everyone out there for people to see and hear.  

Reaching out to young people

What makes younger voters tick? I listened last evening to a sitting MPP suggest that the important criteria for young people when voting is "who will leave the most money in your pocket." I guess that might work, but it doesn't sound like the younger adults I know. They are altruistic and hopeful. They want to make the world better even if it doesn't make them rich (or even well off). 
Why would a leader in society encourage anyone, especially young Ontarians to be greedy? Voters keep telling me at the door they don't care about their own taxes. They care about vulnerable people and the risk of crucial services being cut by a new Ontario government. It makes my heart soar to hear them. They don't buy the "look out for number 1" message, and I don't think younger people do either.
I heard the story today about a bunch of young, single adults hosting a party and bake sale as a fund raiser for a buddy who is under big financial pressure right now. A collective response to an individual's distress. Kind of like medicare. Or public schools. We all cooperate to assist those who might have needs. 
Are my glasses too rose-coloured? Maybe. Or maybe the people trying to cultivate selfishness as a political philosophy are misreading the electorate. 
Your thoughts?
 

Progress?

I just finished reading Island beneath the Sea by Isabel Allende, the Chilean writer transplanted to the States. She delves into the slave/plantation history of Haiti, Cuba, a little bit, and New Orleans in the late 1700s and very early 1800s. Her research feels thorough.
While fiction, it is a wonderful exploration of the experiences of African, European and mixed-race people to their condition and fate. People who oppose slavery in this time are considered flaky, subversive or both. Dominant culture people who consider Africans people, with rights, are few and far between, traitors to their race, allegedly.
Yet plantation owners take African concubines and father mix race children, whom they love and seek to protect and support. The mind bending/denial needed to manage opposing thinking is spelled out in understated ways. Beautiful writing, and a powerful depiction of the role of women in resisting horrendous abuse.
But all this ended a century and a half ago, right? The modern reader can't help compare then with now, and I suspect that was part of Allende's purpose. A letter writer in this week's Toronto Star, commenting on a David Olive column about CEOs rationalizing their greed and incompetence, quotes John Kenneth Galbraith: "The modern conservative is engaged in one of man's oldest exercises in moral philosophy; that is, the search for a superior moral justification for selfishness." Wealthy plantation owners exploiting shackled and terrorized Africans two centuries ago, today's powerful corporate leaders exploiting a vulnerable and insecure labour force in the 21st century--obviously there are crucial differences, but there are some disturbing similarities, too. 
Haiti remains as evidence of profound race and class hatred, a damaged society that defied revolutionary, imperial France and paid a staggering price because the liberators were black, not white. A de-industrialized Ontario, and north-east North America is evidence of big capital released from any kind of responsibility to the workers who make (or made) the wealth. We are prepared to put up billions to keep big auto from jumping ship, and watch with sinking hearts as offshore buyers shut down steel plants and grind miners into the dirt to strip their contracts.
Time for everyday Ontarians to band together to rebuild the social contract. Time for a new normal. Time for the NDP.