OK almost Joel-talk. I usually call our healthcare system a “North Korean-style healthcare system”. But they’re at least in my camp.
And I do believe we know what kind of political party ruled over the Soviet Union. But I better not actually say it lest I pique the tender sensibilities of freaked-out insecure conservatives hoping to appease Ontario liberals sometime within the next 128 years. Let’s call those Soviets “arrogant socialists”. They were, after all, called the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, officially.
The National Post’s editorial today is about Scott Reid’s revelation into the Liberals’ mindset—and what I see as their now partially unhidden agenda.
[…] The two major parties’ differing philosophies on child care have laid bare a larger philosophical divide. By providing parents with $1,200 per child per year to spend as they see fit, the Conservatives have shown they trust Canadian parents to make their own decisions about how to care for children and manage a family budget. But not the Liberals. Rather than leaving it up to parents to decide among daycare, nannies, stay-at-home parenting or care by relatives, Paul Martin insists only one option should be favoured: a top-down network of state-approved daycare centres. According to this view, bureaucrats know better than parents what is best for children. Just think, Mr. Reid, told viewers: If child-care money were under the control of parents themselves, they would simply “blow [it] on beer and popcorn.”
[…] Sadly, this condescending theory of government extends well beyond child care. On health care, the Liberals refuse to permit personal choice—insisting that Canadians either sign on to their Soviet-style health monopoly or flee the country to get more timely care in the United States. Rather than trusting most Canadians to be self-sufficient, they continue to create a culture of dependency through regional subsidies. In a purported effort to protect us from ourselves, the Liberals established a $2-billion gun registry that served little purpose other than to harass and humiliate law-abiding firearms owners. And in general, they continue to tax us at a far higher level than is needed to provide the basic services expected of government—because in their view, a dollar in the hands of government will be better spent than a dollar in the hands of the average Canadian. […]
Post columnist and bright light Andrew Coyne has a similar view (and because you need a subscription to view it and I don’t wish to violate copyright, I bastardize Mr. Coyne’s fine writing with my clunky edits and apologize):
Liberal policy, disguised as a gaffe
[…] But it wasn’t a gaffe: It’s Liberal policy. This wasn’t some no-name MP wandering off-message. This was the Prime Minister’s chief spokesman. It wasn’t an inadvertent slip of the tongue, or an unguarded moment. It was a considered, deliberate soundbite, delivered on national television. And in case there were any doubt of its purpose, the comment was repeated, defended and elaborated upon later in the day by another of the Prime Minister’s sound-biters, John Duffy. The apologies came only after they had measured the media reaction.
Still, if the Reid Doctrine does not meet the precise definition of a gaffe—in Michael Kinsley’s classic formulation, when a politician tells the truth—it was revealing enough in its own way: if not as a mirror of objective reality, then as a window into the Liberal mind.
[…] On the other hand, it is true that Liberals think that. It may be a silly way of putting it, but it reflects a sincere belief that parents are not the best people to look after their children—that others, more expert, are.
Is that not the implicit, if not the explicit message of the Liberals’ own daycare policy? To hear the Grits talk, you’d think they were dividing up the loaves and fishes: for whereas the Tories would fob off parents with a measly “$25 a week” for each child under six, the Liberals would spend “billions” creating “spaces.” As always, they’re hoping nobody does the math: When you add up all those measly individual payments, the Tory plan would pump twice as much money into daycare each year as the Liberals’, money which, when presented to daycare providers, has a way of opening up “spaces.” It’s just that these spaces would not necessarily be where the government prefers, but rather where parents preferred.
And that’s the difference between the two plans. The implications are inescapable. The Liberals don’t trust parents to choose the right daycare provider, for the same reason they don’t trust them to decide whether to put their kids in daycare at all: because, fundamentally, they don’t trust parents. They don’t think they’re up to it. […]
PTBC was founded by Mr. Johannesen in 2000.
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