WhatFinger


Taxing the rich, taxing polluters, giving homeless mortgages

Canadians to Americans: Don’t call us socialists!



We as Canadians are used to being called socialists, commies or worse by our neighbours to the south. Even those of us in Canada who are on the right of the political spectrum, as few as there may be, use those appellations to describe the country in which the highest form of treason is a medical doctor who would want to charge a patient for the most minor of medical procedures. But that was then; and this is now.

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Canada is a left leaning country while the United States, at least until last night was regarded as leaning to the right. We even have a legitimate real socialist party; a true third party that consistently wins seats in Parliament while obtaining percentage votes in the mid to high teens.  Although the New Democratic Party (NDP) has been successful in gaining power in some provinces, the party has never come close to governing the country. Despite the image that is portrayed of Canada, we have never been governed by a real socialist in the mold of President-elect Barack Hussein Obama. While Canada is now governed by the Conservative Party of Canada that has won two minority governments and has been in power since January 2006, the country is usually governed by the Liberal Party of Canada, aka the Natural Governing Party. Even when the Liberals are headed by someone from the left of that party, where current leader Stéphane Dion emerged from, we have never been led by someone who is as far to the left as Barack Obama. The Liberals and the NDP are big government tax and spend parties. During the past few federal elections, the Liberal Party has vowed to make poverty history by (fill in the date). Their way to end poverty is to give money to those who are below the poverty line and the only way to get this money is through taxes. Since the poor don’t have any money to confiscate, these taxes are aimed at those whom these parties refer to as the “rich” including corporations. Notwithstanding this, Commie Canada has never had a leader or a party that was in power speak in terms of spreading the wealth around because somehow those damn rich people just have too much money. Nor have we ever had a reporter quote Karl Marx to a major candidate and ask how Marx differs from their policies. It was never necessary. During last month’s election, the Liberals lost in large part because of leader Dion’s “Green Shift” plan that would see polluters (ie successful industries) heavily taxed while promising tax refunds to ordinary Canadians. What the populace saw through was that as good as it sounds, polluters never really pay. They fork over more money to the government and then pass this additional cost over to the end consumer. The Green Shift still would have had a devastating effect on those industries that would be subject to these higher taxes if for no other reason than it would make these companies less competitive. Had the Liberals won, some companies in certain industries may have gone bankrupt but that would have simply been an unintended consequence that often results when small “l” liberals enact their policies. Canada has never had a leader who flippantly remarked that companies and industries would go bankrupt as a stated result of their intended policies like the President-elect told the editorial board of the San Francisco Chronicle would happen to the coal industry under an Obama presidency. While Canadian governments have taxed heavily in order to spend on their pet projects, they have never taken money away from corporations and the rich just because they think it is wrong for them to have it. That is true socialism and if it exists anywhere in North America it is in the United States of America. As an aside, no homeless or low income person in Canada has ever been granted a mortgage just because they wanted one without having to demonstrate the ability to pay it back.  Like most true socialist countries, there will be a lot of unhappy campers if this money isn’t fully redistributed a few days after President Obama is sworn in as president. While candidates of all major parties that are out of power campaign on some notion of change, we have never had a leader (except for the Quebec separatist party whose possibility of power is mathematically impossible) who have campaigned on the notion of “fundamental” change, ie that the country is so bad that it must be completely changed. The fundamental change that Obama has spoken about can only be tearing down the capitalistic structure of the United States and becoming a socialist paradise like all the similar paradises that exist around the world. So if Americans insist on still referring to Canada as a socialist country, well, we’ll just have a good chuckle.


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Arthur Weinreb -- Bio and Archives

Arthur Weinreb is an author, columnist and Associate Editor of Canada Free Press. Arthur’s latest book, Ford Nation: Why hundreds of thousands of Torontonians supported their conservative crack-smoking mayor is available at Amazon. Racism and the Death of Trayvon Martin is also available at Smashwords. His work has appeared on Newsmax.com,  Drudge Report, Foxnews.com.

Older articles (2007) by Arthur Weinreb


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