How Canada-U.S. integration is leading to the privatization of the Canadian health care system
This article is adapted from Maude Barlow’s new book Too Close for Comfort: Canada’s Future within Fortress North America.
Too Close for Comfort
Canada’s universal social programs were forged in the twin furnaces of the Great Depression and the Second World War. The men and women who survived those terrible ordeals vowed they would not go back into bread lines and work camps, and set out to build a social nation worthy of the fallen comrades they had left behind on the battlefields of Europe.
Living next to the biggest superpower on earth, Canadians knew that they had to create ribbons of interdependence across the country, if they were to survive as a separate nation-state on the northern half of the North American continent. Canadians rejected the American narrative of “survival of the fittest” and chose instead a vision of “sharing for survival.” As a fundamental right of citizenship, they decided that all Canadians, regardless of socio-economic background, ethnicity, or geographical location, had a right to good education, health care, and assistance for the elderly, the young, the poor, the unemployed and the disabled.
Canada’s social programs are not directly named by the Task Force on the Future of North America or the Canadian Council of Chief Executives (CCCE) in their campaign to create a North American common market. But there is no question that deeper economic, security and foreign policy integration with the United States would put tremendous pressure on Canada to harmonize its social security system with the American model and open it up to competition from big American service corporations.
This is a death sentence for me and many other Canadians. If we don,t fight for these social programs many will suffer privation, ignorance and premature death all to stuff corporate vaults with blood money.
This article is adapted from Maude Barlow’s new book Too Close for Comfort: Canada’s Future within Fortress North America.
Too Close for Comfort
Canada’s universal social programs were forged in the twin furnaces of the Great Depression and the Second World War. The men and women who survived those terrible ordeals vowed they would not go back into bread lines and work camps, and set out to build a social nation worthy of the fallen comrades they had left behind on the battlefields of Europe.
Living next to the biggest superpower on earth, Canadians knew that they had to create ribbons of interdependence across the country, if they were to survive as a separate nation-state on the northern half of the North American continent. Canadians rejected the American narrative of “survival of the fittest” and chose instead a vision of “sharing for survival.” As a fundamental right of citizenship, they decided that all Canadians, regardless of socio-economic background, ethnicity, or geographical location, had a right to good education, health care, and assistance for the elderly, the young, the poor, the unemployed and the disabled.
Canada’s social programs are not directly named by the Task Force on the Future of North America or the Canadian Council of Chief Executives (CCCE) in their campaign to create a North American common market. But there is no question that deeper economic, security and foreign policy integration with the United States would put tremendous pressure on Canada to harmonize its social security system with the American model and open it up to competition from big American service corporations.
This is a death sentence for me and many other Canadians. If we don,t fight for these social programs many will suffer privation, ignorance and premature death all to stuff corporate vaults with blood money.