The quotation jumped off the page and into my face when I came to it: “When you subsidize poverty and failure, you get more of both.”
The source of the quotation was identified as one James Dale Davidson.
The statement appeared in a recent newsletter of an agricultural organization, whose leader was calling for lower taxes, repaying of the national debt, and, perhaps, more provincialism.Ê As Meatloaf would say: “Two out of three ain’t bad.”
But who sets out to subsidize failure? Who sets out to subsidize poverty?
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When it comes to failures, a couple of things come to mind. One is the free trade agreement between Canada and the United States and the other is the larger free trade agreement involving Canada, the U.S. and Mexico.
Why are they failures? Free trade agreements, by their nature, are created to help people move goods and services back and forth between two or more countries. But the Canada-U.S. Free Trade Agreement and the North American Free Trade Agreement have resulted in a sharp increase in American trade actions against Canada. These actions are intended to block the flow of goods and services between our nations.
To put it simply, it appears that when other people succeed, the Americans get angry – angry enough to invent trade irregularities being done to them by their trading partners. On a number of occasions, the World Trade Organization has told the Americans that their trade complaints are not reasonable. But that does not stop them from launching these attacks over and over and over again. The unending attacks on the Canadian Wheat Board show us the Americans won’t quit their unreasonable attacks.
Clearly, there have been huge failures with these trade agreements. So the question comes: is a government commitment to these trade agreements actually subsidizing failure?
I’m not sure what it means to “subsidize poverty.” Helping the disadvantaged I can understand, but that is not subsidizing poverty.
Businesses and governments in Canada have agreed that free market capitalism is our country’s primary economic model. That’s basically a game of winners and losers; indeed, there cannot be winners unless there are losers. What should be done with the losers? Should they be forced to starve and freeze in the cold and dark? Some Canadians do, in fact, die that way. Is that a good thing? Some people may think so. I certainly do not.
Canada has a patchwork of social programs, including health care, education, employment insurance and social assistance. Usually they work well, sometimes people who need help don’t get it. Yet the existence of these programs is part of what makes Canada the best – or one of the best – countries in which to live. In a world where countries are judged by the way they treat their weakest and most vulnerable members, Canada does very well.
“When you subsidize poverty and failure, you get more of both.” Perhaps. But the definitions of poverty and failure are not as clear as one might think.
Rob Brown is a United Church minister now engaged in graduate studies on ethics. The opinions expressed in this column are not necessarily those of the Western Producer.
