Election: would a real leader please stand up?
The Greens are the only party that starts from the right premise: We messed up
Oh goody — an election! What a wonderful treat, to go through the giant national ego-stroke that is the campaign process in this country. This is when we get to listen to politicians refer to us over and over again as “hardworking families.” They tell us how we deserve lower taxes and better health care — especially those in the middle class. Yes, and we deserve to get ahead! They promise to do the things that “Canadian families want,” as if we actually know what’s best! HA!
Not all of us are hardworking, and not all of us are families. A lot of us are lazy and lonely, and we’re signing up for an increasing number of streaming services as a result. We don’t deserve better health care, either. Why pour more money into the system when 75 per cent of its costs are due to poor lifestyle choices? And do we really deserve to get ahead? We’re addicted to our tech devices; we’re addicted to cigarettes, vapes, and alcohol; we’re increasingly racist and misogynist; we feed our kids candy and soda and all manner of junk until they’re the fattest generation in history; we’re poisoning our own home to the point of destruction.
Yes, political leaders: you should definitely do exactly what we want.
What I wouldn’t give for a politician to stand up and say something along the lines of: “We are flawed. We often take the easy way out, and deny what we don’t want to see. We can be easily manipulated by all manner of things engineered to cause insatiable cravings and deep insecurity. We are afraid of not fitting in with a group, and yet we’re desperate to be recognized as individuals. Our corporations put the profit of a few above all else, especially quality of life for the many, and we reward them for it. We are, in short, crazy cakes. And so we need structures in place to make sure we all remember and respect the basic truth of humanity: we sink or swim together. A better life for the least fortunate makes us all richer.”
All the good things about our society — our health innovations, our education systems, our roads, our postal service, libraries, social safety net, etc. — have been brought about by collective action thanks to the funds provided by taxation. And yet many of us (conservatives in particular) stubbornly hold on to the notion that more taxes won’t create more benefits for us as a whole. How does this work, exactly? At what precise moment do taxes stop being a boon for modern democratic society and become a scourge instead?
Tax cuts are offered to voters like grand presents, but they yield little benefit, and their costs to our collective good is enormous. In one such “gift,” the GST was reduced by 1 per cent in 2006 and by another 1 per cent in 2008. So far, this has cost our collective coffers $8.5 billion for two years and $17 billion a year for 11 years …. I can’t even do that math. It seems like an awful lot. And what benefit have I gotten from that 2 per cent cut? Have I ever sighed with relief over paying 2 per cent less tax on goods and services? Has it freed up all kinds of capital for a down payment on a house or more RRSPs? No. In fact, I didn’t even notice the difference, and I watch our finances like a hawk.
Now: what might umpteen billion have done for our country as a whole?
The only party worth supporting, for my money, is the Green party, because it’s entirely predicated on the acceptance of the fact that we’ve messed up, big time. It looks us square in the face and says, “We’ve let ourselves run unchecked. We’ve been greedy and short-sighted. This happens sometimes, because we’re human and so very far from perfect. But if we accept this tragic imperfection, and ban together to make rules and regulations to really fix things based on the best evidence we’ve got, we can make things so much better. We’ll make sure we hold ourselves accountable. Changes are necessary, but we’ll get used to them.”
It may not be what all of us want to hear. But it’s what we — some of us hardworking, some of us lazy, and most of us in the middle … middle class or not … families or loners — need to hear. In fact, telling us the truth about ourselves and our situation is the greatest compliment a politician could pay us right now, because we don’t deserve tax cuts. We can be — we can do — so much better than that.
Latham Hunter is a writer and professor of cultural studies and communications; her work has appeared in journals, anthologies, magazines and print news for 25 years. She blogs at The Kids’ Book Curator and her novel, Pieces of Work, is available on Amazon.com.