Last year, my Christmas wish list for Canada included the removal of interprovincial barriers, a more competitive currency, a national securities regulator and stable financial markets. Let's see whether Santa got my message.
Ontario and Quebec initiated the removal of cross border barriers following the lead of Alberta and British Columbia, and recently, promising discussions occurred involving all provinces. Manufacturers have been helped by the plummeting Loonie and holdout provinces seem to be coming around to the concept of a national securities regulator. But stable financial markets? ... Obviously, Santa's elves couldn't find a way to grant that wish.
Here are my three Christmas wishes for Canada in the coming year.
Workers' freedom of choice
In the Detroit Three bailout saga, we are seeing the real-time death throes of once thriving companies burdened by a long history of poor management and increasingly excessive strike-backed union settlements. Now, even as taxpayers are being coerced into pouring in cash, union leaders stubbornly refuse to face the reality that the Detroit Three cannot survive without major labour cost reductions.
This sad story has been repeated time and again. A news photo of workers still picketing the crumbling remains years after a strike-bound Ontario plant had closed serves as a metaphor for how unrealistic union demands have so often destroyed both the employer and the jobs of workers The favourite word of union leaders is "fight," but sustainable success in any business requires just the opposite - co-operation. Workers who understand this often find themselves drafted into a union they don't want, with no way out. Canada's outdated labour laws allow union certification following extended campaigns where individual workers are pressured to sign union cards.
My wish is labour laws be amended to require a supervised secret ballot both for union certification and decertification.
Better health care
The oft-repeated allegation that our health care system ranks among the world's best is a sad myth. Emergency rooms resemble Third World triage centres. Primary care physicians, the system's gatekeepers, are in such short supply that many Canadians have no family doctor. Waits of several months are often required to see a specialist. If the doctor calls for tests, shortages of such diagnostic technology as MRIs and CT scanners mean more delays. Finally, if surgery is required, all but the most critically ill patients are placed in a long queue for a hospital bed.
The Fraser Institute's recently published report, How Good is Canadian Health Care, examined the 28 OECD countries that provide universal health insurance. (The United States did not qualify.) The data show that, while Canada's per capita expenditures are near the top, our health care outcomes rank in the bottom half. The study also found that Canada is the only OECD country that outlaws privately funded purchases of core health care services and that every top-performing health care system, including that of Australia, Japan, Sweden, Switzerland and France, has some form of user pay, private provision option.
For years now, our dysfunctional health care system was teetering on the edge of becoming unaffordable. Now, collapsing provincial and federal tax revenues, combined with the runaway bandwagon of bailouts and stimulus spending, will make 2009 the year our government monopoly health care system became impossible to fund.
My wish is that the Canada Health Act be amended so that Canadians have the same freedom to provide and to choose public or private health care options that are enjoyed in every other developed country.
Cleaning up real pollutants
There are those who think plants have some form of life awareness. If that is true, I'm sure the plants of our world find it puzzling that carbon dioxide, the substance they need to breathe in order to perform the miracle of photosynthesis, is vilified as a dangerous pollutant.
Regardless of whether one believes that CO{-2} is a cause of climate change, there are myriad more ways in which humans are destroying our planet's ecosystems. Enormous quantities of real pollutants, such as nitrogen and sulphur oxides, combined with toxic particulates are spewing into our shared atmosphere from power plants in China and India. Liquid discharges from factories in these and other emerging economies, all operating far below Western developed country environmental standards, are destroying whole regions and watersheds.
Deforestation and habitat destruction, some caused by a mad rush to grow biofuels, continues at a frightening pace. Ocean life remains under attack from overfishing, often using habitat-destroying methods such as bottom dragging. Massive deaths of seabirds from discarded plastic escalate.
My wish for 2009 is that these issues will be raised to at least the same level of urgency as lowering our so-called "carbon footprint."
This season has a special magic that fosters camaraderie and caring. For the young who believe, it's a time of wonder, filled waiting to see what Santa Claus will leave under the tree. And for the not so young, it's a time to recall that childlike wonderment that once filled our hearts.
Merry Christmas.