When Mike Harris came along and cut welfare payments by about 20 percent, within a year the welfare rolls in Ontario dropped by more than 200,000 people. Almost all got jobs, something most logical people would think was a wonderful thing. Logic, unfortunately, is pretty much a stranger to large numbers of Canadians, which explains their response. Many screamed bloody murder! Terrible, discrimination, cruel, the cuts are killing people, it’s outrageous was the mantra of many of my callers with echoes across the country. Some of the NDP’s leading lights went so far as to predict widespread rioting. “People will be dying in the streets,” I even had callers proclaiming.
Think of it. Mike Harris in his first four years as Premier saw an increase of some 700,000 jobs in Ontario. The welfare rolls were cut in half, thousands of people who had never worked a day in their lives before went out and got a job, but to this day the majority of Ontarians will tell you this was a very bad thing!
All of this after just one generation of socialism. Imagine what it will be like when our grandchildren begin running things! Unless, of course, we straighten them out.
FOUR
It’s Not My Fault!
At Kingston is a penitentiary that at one time housed both Karla and Paul. Paul, as you know, is still there. Karla—well that’s another story thanks to the “Buffalo Bob” Rae Government that signed off on her sweetheart deal. Or, as some would say, the deal with the devil! At the rear of that penitentiary are a number of sheds—almost truck-like in appearance. The prisoners, as you can imagine, call them something not exactly politically correct. Last word, trucks. First word rhymes with truck. You get the picture! Officially they are known as conjugal visitation modules. Not a bad idea actually. Behave yourself in jail and you’ll get a couple of hours’ privacy with your wife, or whomever.
But here again the kinder, gentler people, the granola-crunching thug huggers can’t get it right. The trucks may have to be discontinued. Why? Because misguided souls in charge won’t allow body searches of the visitors. It would contravene their privacy rights. As a result, this has become the main conduit of smuggled drugs into the prison. Even those inmates who want no part of smuggling have no choice. Either sneak the stuff into the cells or get a lead pipe in a place that can cause major damage! In our effort not to contravene human rights we totally abandon logic and, as often happens, trample on human rights.
That’s the great problem with the socialist approach. In their efforts to create this great egalitarian, utopian society where everyone takes public transit, where we all recycle everything and the government takes care of us from birth to death, they fail to take into account a basic fact of life: We are not all equal, never have been, and never will be. It just isn’t human nature. And, oh yes, something else very important. We are not all nice people!
Yes, we should do everything in our power to provide equal opportunity for everyone, but that doesn’t mean we will all end up equal.
Our society should act as a launching pad. Do everything we can to make sure we have an equal amount of rocket fuel for the launch, but after that it’s up to the individual. By no means is everyone going to make it to the moon. Heck, some won’t even make it much past the tops of the trees!
Those who truly cannot help themselves require our assistance, of course. One problem is we’re so busy with handouts to people who should be looking after themselves there’s almost nothing left over for those truly in need.
Look around, please. See who is getting the government’s money. What you will find, for the most part, is that the money goes to special-interest groups, those who can scream, threaten (the unions), and beg the loudest, or have the best lobbyists in Ottawa. And, of course, a fair chunk of our money goes to a few favoured businesses. The Canadian Taxpayers Federation says that while some three billion dollars has been loaned out to a few major corporations such as Honeywell and Bombardier in the last ten years, less than five percent of our money has been returned to us!
One of the last House of Commons speeches delivered by Charles Penson, Conservative member from Peace River, Alberta, before his retirement from Parliament in 2005 blasted the government for “handing out billions of dollars in so-called loans to various profitable companies.” Declared Penson, “Those aren’t loans. Those are outright grants. At least call them what they really are. Tell the truth.” [Source: Hansard, the official verbatim report of the debates in the House.]
Think you could get a deal like that from your bank? Ha!
Now look around and see who really needs our help, and how much they get. In Ontario, disabled people are expected to live on a pension of $940 a month. Many seniors who have worked all their lives to help build this country are in desperate straits. The last time I checked, the allotment of baths in government nursing homes had been reduced to two a week. There’s just no money left for people who honestly need and deserve our help!
On the other hand we are telling those who could and should be looking out for themselves, especially our young people, that they have no means of self-determination. That they are virtually powerless against the terrible forces of capitalism.
Perhaps unwittingly, our new Governor General fell into the trap of downplaying individual responsibility when she addressed the Ontario Legislature on February 20, 2006:
While our society must fight crime, it must also get at the roots of crime.Too many Canadians, here in Toronto, in Northern Ontario and across the country are relegated to the margins and left to fend for themselves.”
She then continued:
As I stated in my installation address, nothing in today’s society is more disgraceful than the marginalization of some young people who are driven to isolation and despair. We must not tolerate such disparities.
She talks about Canada having the financial resources to address these problems, but unfortunately ignored any suggestion that young people, or old, have a responsibility to make every attempt to rise above circumstance. Also lacking, in my opinion, was a reminder to all that, no matter what marginalization may or may not have occurred, there is never any excuse for committing criminal acts.
Her message, it seems to me, is one we hear only too frequently in this country—that the young people shooting each other in Toronto, the ones mugging, stealing, swarming, and raping aren’t really responsible for their own actions. It’s society’s fault, a message that is pounded into our heads from birth these days in this country.
Many members of our society, and not just the youth in Toronto, are of the firm belief that they are entitled to the good life, and if they do not obtain it, it’s everyone else’s fault. Furthermore, it’s their “right” to go out and get their piece of the pie even if it belongs to someone else. If you listened closely to the testimony at the Gomery inquiry, you heard variations of that theme repeatedly. And what was it that David Dingwall had to say about being “entitled to his entitlements?”
Small wonder, I suppose, that there are some who honestly believe that if someone happens to have a jacket they want or looks at them the wrong way, they deserve to get shot. Besides which, the shooters were driven to it. Haven’t you been listening to all those smart people out there claiming that young people are getting the shaft these days, not being treated fairly? You can almost hear the thugs saying, “Right on. The man’s got it right. It ain’t our fault we shooting people. We marginalized! We despairin’! That’s why we shootin’!”
The thugs are by no means alone in holding society responsible for their failed aspirations. With some notable exceptions, most Canadians still believe the government should create highly paid, secure-for-life jobs and then find them for us. Even more serious than that, it has created a huge subculture that believes it has no responsibility for itself.
Not only no responsibility for ourselves, for goodness’ sake. How about no responsibility to raise our own children? Right across Ontario, and for all I know in other provinces as well, we are feeding thousands of children breakfast in our schools. In some