I’ll be the first to admit that this is a crude characterization. But I’m guessing that Oliver Stone’s Platoon was accurate: those who were sent to die in Southeast Asia, were, for the most part, those who benefitted least from the system.
The decision to go to war is the most profound one that any country faces, but it’s a particularly significant one for States that consider themselves democracies. The ultimate sacrifice that anyone can make for his or her country is to die for it. There are some people who willingly put themselves in harm’s way. I would characterize them as extraordinarily brave, but I suppose there are other ways to describe them. However, there aren’t enough people like that. So there has to be some kind of system to fill the ranks. The consensus in America at the time of the Vietnam War was that the fairest method was a lottery system, which was what the draft represented. But during Vietnam, the elite turned their backs on fairness, and gamed the system with deferments or draft-dodging or desertion … and, most importantly, they got away with it.
QUESTION 19
How would you describe the soldiers who served in Vietnam?
☐ Noble.
☐ Complete suckers.
It was clear how the American elite of the late 1960s and early 1970s would have answered that question. In fact, the poster-child of that group, Vassar-educated Jane Fonda, travelled to Hanoi in 1972, sat on anti-aircraft guns, and posed for pictures. She called POWs who spoke of torture “hypocrites and liars” and was cheered by many Americans.13
An important line had been crossed.
Every society has its elites. The important questions are:
Who are they?
Where does their self-interest lie?
In pursuing that self-interest, at whose expense will it be?
The New Elite that was emerging in North America was university-educated, concentrated in urban centres, disproportionately made up of those trained as lawyers, and tended to work in the public rather than the private sector. And it understood that its economic interests were tied far more closely to the political process and the redistribution of income than to wealth generation.
I’ve spent a great deal of time speaking about the United States when this book is supposed to be about Canada. There’s a reason: we tend to mimic the United States.
Canada has a complicated love-hate relationship with its southern neighbour. I think of it like this: the United States is the cool, older teenaged brother (let’s call him Lance): captain of the football team; dates the head cheerleader; drives a souped-up Camaro; C-student, true, but with a larger-than-life persona — you get the idea. Meanwhile, Canada is the nerdy younger brother (given name, Les): not very athletic; wears braces; straight A student, but who cares about that except Mom and Dad? We envy and resent the success of Lance, and even while we’d like to be him, we know we can’t, because after all, we are Les. There’s more than a little bit of an inferiority complex at work here.
Meanwhile, Lance doesn’t think too deeply about the relationship. But then again, Lance doesn’t think deeply about very much! He just goes on his merry way, gets away with what he wants because he is captain of the football team … and often leaves a mess in his wake that other people have to clean up.
So, what was happening in Canada during this decade? Along with the increases in efficiency in agriculture and the further development of the industrial sector, cemented by the Auto Pact, there were two State-sponsored initiatives in the 1960s that contributed to Canada’s strong economic performance. “Socialized” medicine was brought to Saskatchewan in 196214 (by 1966 it had spread across the land) and the Canada Pension Plan (CPP) was established in 1965.15
There is a solid economic rationale for why the State should operate the health care system. There are certain industries where “natural” monopolies exist. It wouldn’t make sense to have several different private companies provide water to a city, for example — it would mean multiple sets of pipes. That’s wasteful. A similar argument can be made for health care. The single-payer system has administrative efficiencies. The single-payer system results in greater buying power and the ability to negotiate lower prices with suppliers. And the proof is that in 2012 total per-capita spending on health care was half as much in Canada as it was in the United States.16
The logic underlying the CPP is impeccable. Everyone needs to save for retirement, yet most people don’t have the expertise or the sophistication to do it for themselves — not to mention that many don’t have the discipline either. The CPP is designed so that citizens benefit to the extent that they contribute to it. Its size (particularly as it stands today, with assets well in excess of $125 billion) means that there are economies of scale. It costs about 0.3 percent of assets under management to operate,17 which means that if it returns 7 percent before fees, 6.7 percent of that goes to the Canadian people. Most actively managed mutual funds charge around 2 percent, which means that if the assets return 7 percent, the investor sees only 5 percent. And from the beginning the CPP was a defined-benefit plan, eliminating longevity risk — the possibility that your money will run out before you die.
When they were introduced, both State-run medicine and the Canada Pension Plan were almost perfect. However, each has failed to adequately change over the years. In 1962, no one could have foreseen how expensive medicine would become. The Canada Pension Plan was established when life expectancy was much lower. In 1965, the fact was that many people who paid into the CPP over the years would never live to receive anything from it.
While the State-run medical insurance and pension plans set up in Canada in the 1960s created great benefits for all Canadians, the same cannot be said for many of the changes made to the education system.
In 1967, the Province of Ontario eliminated Grade 13 departmental examinations. Up to then, every student who graduated from an Ontario high school wrote the exact same examination, and the result was critical in determining who would proceed to post-secondary education.
Those tests hold special significance for the Hlinka family. My grandfather was a man who never set foot in a school, except to ensure that his children received the education he never had. But he was damn sure that his son would go to university. He didn’t believe that there was the same need for his daughters. Fortunately, his children were as stubborn as he was and one of my aunts did an end-run around her old man: she wrote the departmentals, achieved the best mark in the province, and received a full scholarship to the University of Toronto. If there was one thing my grandfather hated more than anything else, it was turning down something free. His youngest daughter received the university education she so desperately wanted.
This scholarship wasn’t means-based. The daughter of a landscape gardener and the son of the moneyed classes were equally eligible. It was decided on sheer merit. This spoke to the values of the time.
In 1968 I was watching the U.S. Track and Field Championships. The winners would compete in that year’s Olympic Games. I remember a discussion that the commentators had after a favourite was upset, which meant he would not be going to Mexico City. One questioned the wisdom of the U.S. system. The Soviet Union did it very differently, he said. A committee got together behind closed doors and decided which athletes would wear their country’s colours. He argued that this method made a lot of sense. It probably meant more medals, and that was the point of the Games, wasn’t it?
His colleague was mortified. No, the Olympics was about providing everyone a fair opportunity to compete. And if that meant fewer medals, so be it.
QUESTION 20
How should Canada’s Olympic team be decided?
☐ Via open and transparent