Aurora Online with William Rees
November 30, 2000
Bill Rees “is a nice fellow with a strong message – if the world cannot safely expand its way to sustainability we will have to discover other ways of relieving the material impoverishment of half of humanity.”
Ken Nichol
National Post
November 27, 2000
Linda McQuaig’s observations are amusing. What’s her problem with men under 66? Is she threatened by macho men? The Libero Four Stooges: Big Bad Jean, The Rock, Jane and Anne certainly aren’t gunslingers, more like mudslingers. I bet they’d look good in a wetsuit.
Politics is a game. It’s about getting and keeping power. Anything for a vote, tell them what they want to hear.
Health care is a sham issue. It’s a dinosaur and socialized medicine is an anachronism. We have one-tier medicine now with private doctors/medical clinics paid by the state insurance company. The problem is the bloated, procedural bureaucracy and we expect to throw more money at it to fix it. Reform it. Get the government out of trying to own and manage anything. Sell the hospitals to private enterprise, get rid of waiting lines, buy new technology and become efficient and effective customer service oriented.
Lawrence Solomon of the Urban Renaissance Institute advocates health care allowances according to demographics and health status (Close Health Care Gap with Allowances, Nov. 21). Good idea. More power to the people to be responsible for their own health and to operate on a budget. Demagoguery, he says, will prevent any reasoned discussion, exploration or constructive reform to our entrenched system: not politically correct.
What a shame we may be stuck with demagogues for another four years because of the extreme Canadian need for safety, security, egalitarianism and herd instinct.
Ken Nichol, St. Albert, Alta.
Lawrence Solomon
National Post
November 21, 2000
Empowerment seen as the best medicine in proposed system
Doctors, lawyers and other professionals aren’t as healthy, and don’t live as long, as those who occupy even higher rungs on the socio-economic ladder. Neither do the children of doctors, lawyers and other professionals.
White and blue collar workers aren’t as healthy, and don’t live as long, as doctors, lawyers and other professionals. Neither do their children.
The poor fare even worse, and the very poor worst of all, even after adjusting for lifestyle factors such as eating and smoking.
While Canada’s political parties have been indignantly accusing each other of permitting an inequitable two-tier health system, and while the public has awakened to how many Canadians have been tapping into a second tier, all have ignored the actual relationship between social rank and well- being, which exists among rich and super rich, neither of whom want for special treatment, and among poor and very poor, neither of whom use the second tier. A study of Winnipeg’s population found the most affluent 20% of men outlived the poorest 20% by 11.3 years; the most affluent women outlived the poorest by 7.7 years.
Those fixated on the inequities of a two-tier system also ignore the first tier’s own extraordinary inequities. As various studies show, socialized medicine treats the poor as second class citizens. In Manitoba, medicare spends more on better educated patients for primary care. In the U.K., the subject of the most extensive analysis, physicians spend 50% more time, and 40% more money, on the ailments of rich people than on those of the poor.
Yet at its root, the gap among health outcomes may have more to do with empowerment, which the well off tend to have more of, than they do with money, access to the medical system or education. A landmark study of 31,000 London bus drivers and bus conductors –the ones who collect tickets and assist passengers — found drivers had much poorer health than conductors, including twice the conductors’ death rate from cardiac disease, although they worked on the same buses, breathed the same air, earned the same pay and occupied the same social status.
Yet in one fundamental respect, the bus drivers and the bus conductors did differ. Bus drivers must keep to strict schedules, with their performance judged on their ability to arrive at the next stop on time, yet they are captive to traffic. In contrast, bus conductors much more tend to be their own masters, having some control over stressful relations with passengers and being less subject to the soul-destroying feeling of helplessness that undermines human happiness, human resourcefulness, human empowerment, and, in all likelihood, the human immune system.
Medical care influences our well being in two ways: Quality care saves lives and the knowledge that it’s available is empowering. Through waiting lines and other impediments to prompt care, the current medicare system thus doubly damages the public’s health — it not only denies us service when we’re most vulnerable, it dispirits and debilitates us in the process. Ironically, expanding the public one-tier system to provide everyone with most of the medical services that only the affluent can now afford, if done through a system becoming widespread in the private sector, would save money.
Under this expanded one-tier system — known as health care allowances or medical savings accounts — each year the government would give all Canadians individual allowances greater than the amount they’re likely to need, based on their age, sex and medical history. Put another way, the old would receive more than the young, the sick more than the healthy and the poor, because they are likelier to need medical care, more than the rich. Each of us, using doctors and other health care experts for advice, would then manage our own health care budget. If we had a bad year, and exceeded our allowance, medicare would provide free additional support, just as it currently does. But most years would produce small savings, if our lifestyles stayed the same, and larger savings if we changed our diets or otherwise looked after ourselves better. We would then split the savings — $12-billion, according to one of the world’s leading health actuarial firms — with the government.
With a meaningful budget with which to take charge of our own health, health care allowances would be empowering. The savings might then be higher still as one important factor driving the appalling gap in lifespans between the empowered rich and the disempowered poor diminishes.
Health allowances recently helped cause a furor on news that a Canadian Alliance discussion paper had contemplated them among other reforms. Although the other parties jumped on the Alliance with bitter accusations of betraying medicare, in fact governments of all political stripes — the NDP and the Liberals among them — have expressed interest in health care allowances. But one factor and one factor alone discouraged governments coast to coast from attempting a pilot project or otherwise experimenting with them — the certainty that any concrete steps they took toward possibly implementing them would unleash unremitting demagoguery against them of the kind we’ve just seen in our federal election campaign, demagoguery that prevents any reasoned discussion or exploration, and any constructive reform to our deteriorating medicare system.
Lawrence Solomon is executive director of Urban Renaissance Institute. The actuarial study he describes (http://www.c-p-i.org/cpi/report/report.html) was undertaken for Consumer Policy Institute, a sister organization.
Allan Dawson
Manitoba Co-operator
November 14, 2000
Lawrence Solomon knows the way to make farming environmentally, socially and economically sustainable: eliminate all farm supports, including crop insurance, NISA, AIDA and supply management.
“No one should need encouragement to farm or do anything else,” Solomon, executive director of the Toronto-based Urban Renaissance Institute, an environmental organization, told the ‘Recapturing Wealth on the Canadian prairies’ conference here recently.
“There is a bright future for farming, but it doesn’t include government. You’ll wilt on the vine with government. But throw government off your back, get close to your customers – in other words, back to your roots and you will thrive.”
Farmers are appreciated by the public right now, said Solomon who regularly criticizes agriculture in his column in the National Post. Farmers are thought to be environmentally benign. But environmentalists know better, Solomon said.
“We don’t like the energy intensity of a lot of agricultural practices,” he said. “We don’t like the pesticide and fertilizer use. We don’t like the fish kills in P.E.I. We don’t like the soil degradation. We don’t like the water pollution. Right now farmers are too popular for environmentalists to go public with their concerns. That’s for now. And that can change very quickly. I think we’re beginning to see the changes now.”
The contamination of Walkerton’s water with the deadly E.coli bacteria is the start, he said. The public is fickle and farmers are already losing support from their non-farmer neighbours, unhappy with right-to-farm legislation.
“You’re setting up for a big backlash,” he said.
Farmers are mistaken if they think their industry is special because of its contribution to the economy. Agriculture accounts for just 1.6 per cent of Canada’s GDP.
“Agriculture is not an economic powerhouse. It is a niche in the Canadian economy.”
When Nortel recently lost a quarter of its share value, that represented nine per cent of Canada’s GDP, or six times the agriculture sector’s contribution, according to Solomon.
“Some people argue people have to eat, as if that makes farmers more important than other producers who provide housing materials or fuel or the clothes we need or the cars we need or the services we need,” he said.
“We do need to eat but we also need other goods and services.”
“Farmers don’t take precedence over other sectors. Politicians know where their bread is buttered.”
If farm subsidies were eliminated, some farmers might go out of business and some communities might decline or disappear, but those that survive would be stronger and do less damage to the environment. That’s what happened in New Zealand when subsidies were eliminated overnight in the mid-1980s, according to Solomon. For every dollar earned by a Canadian farmer, there’s $3 in subsidies, according to Solomon. The ratio is $1 to $6 for Ontario agriculture, he added. In an interview later, Solomon said western Canadian grain farmers are much less subsidized than farmers in Ontario and Quebec where supply management dominates. (Supply management, while not a subsidy in the strictest sense, is considered a form of support because it exists by government fiat.)
“I think if we removed the subsidies, western grain farmers wouldn’t be all that much affected,” he said.
Solomon said if it was up to him he’d phase out all farm subsidies over 10 years. Support would continue for older farmers, while new entrants wouldn’t get a cent. Under his plan the government would also guarantee the value of farmers’ assets during the transition.
“I think it’s a blessing there are so few new young farmers in the system. It means that the transition can be easy.”
Toronto is one of the most successful farming regions in Canada, says Solomon. There’s not much land, but the Greater Toronto Area (GTA) produces 50 per cent more farm output than Nova Scotia, 67 per cent more than P.E.I., and 80 per cent more than New Brunswick, according to Solomon.
“The GTA you know it is an industrial powerhouse, well it’s an agricultural powerhouse,” he said. “And that’s because it services a large urban population. That has given it the most diversified agricultural economy in Canada. GTA farmers are close to their customers. And those customers don’t want commodities. They want organic produce. They want herbs for the health food stores. They want exotic grains for the restaurants.”
In an interview, Solomon said most of the farmers serving urban areas are family farms and they make money.
View other Mr. Solomon’s other media appearances from the Manitoba conference.
Ian Bell Brandon
The Western Producer
November 9, 2000
Lawrence Solomon thinks the best way to help Canadian farmers is to let them help themselves. He advocates slashing farm subsidies. Such a move likely would mean fewer farmers, but Solomon suggests those who remained would be more efficient, diversified and attuned to what consumers want.
“You will wither on the vine with government,” he told farmers gathered in Brandon, Oct. 26-27 for a conference on recapturing wealth.
“Get close to your customers, get close to your roots and you will thrive.”
Solomon, a Canadian environmentalist living in Toronto, pointed to the New Zealand experience to back his position. He said drastic cuts were made to farm subsidies there in the mid 1980s. It was expected 8,000 farmers would fail without the government payments. But instead, only 800 farmers were forced to exit the industry, Solomon said. Without subsidies, marginal land was taken out of production, water quality improved and farmers looked more closely at their costs, resulting in less fertilizer use. Land use diversified, new products were developed and farmers established closer ties with consumers.
“The most dramatic change in New Zealand is that organic growth is up. It’s up dramatically.”
The adjustment was not easy, conceded Solomon. However, there also had been problems while farmers collected subsidies. Soil erosion was rampant and the quality of farm produce deteriorated, he said.
“They (farmers) used to be heavily dependent on government. That heavy dependence hurt the economy, it hurt the government and it hurt the farmers.”
Solomon was one of several speakers invited to the Brandon conference to stir discussion about ways to improve farm and rural economies. He told producers there is an enormous wellspring of appreciation in Toronto toward farmers. But he cautioned that public attitude is fickle. Consumers are looking for quality, choice and an assurance the food they eat is safe. They also are paying more attention to how farming affects the environment. Scrutiny follows events such as the E. coli outbreak in Walkerton, Ont., water.
“Soon there’s going to be a lot more concern about farm practices. When that happens, public attitudes will change very quickly.”
Globalization has shifted power out of the hands of government, said Solomon, and into the hands of consumers. That consumer clout will influence policies that affect producers. Government now is focusing more on technology and the opportunities there. Cities, not rural communities, are considered the engines of the economy, he said.
“Agriculture is not an economic powerhouse. It is a niche in the Canadian economy.”
Don Dewar, president of Keystone Agricultural Producers, said Solomon failed to mention that government support continues for New Zealand farmers. There is still heavy support, Dewar said, but the money is spent on advertising and promoting the country’s farm produce.
“We only heard half the story.”
Bill Morningstar, a producer from Goodlands, Man., took exception to Solomon’s suggestion that farmers should think twice before jangling the pot for government support.
“To me he’s as phony as a $3 bill. He’s just a phony.”
Morningstar said environmental groups also are a draw on the public purse since contributions to those groups are often tax deductible. The resulting tax writeoffs and tax shelters probably cost the government as much money as support payments to farmers. Morningstar challenged Solomon’s perception of agriculture’s importance to the economy.
“What he was saying was we don’t need farmers in Western Canada. What would we have if we didn’t have agriculture in Western Canada?”
The farmer believes New Zealand’s producers received tax concessions to compensate for the loss of subsidies.
