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In an address
at a Liberal party fundraising dinner last week, Jean
Chretien avowed: "I deeply believe that government
has the responsibility to promote social justice and as
Prime Minister, I am committed to carry out that
responsibility."
Typically, Chretien
did not define what he means by "social justice,"
and none of the well-heeled corporate executives in the
audience cared to ask. They were there not to question
Chretien, but to curry his favour, by pledging a record
$1.2 million for the coffers of the Liberal Party. The
host for this gala event was Ivan Fecan, president of
CTV. He hailed Chretien as "the smartest, wiliest
politician ever," and congratulated him on his decisive
re-election victory. Fewer than 24 hours later, the CRTC
approved the purchase of CTV Inc. by BCE Inc. for $2.3
billion. Was this Fecan's reward for bowing and scraping
before Chretien at this fund-raising banquet?
Surely not.
Who would dare to suggest that our honest prime minister
would stoop so low as intervene with the head of a federal
regulatory agency on behalf of a corporate deal-maker
and major contributor to the Liberal Party of Canada?
While the corporate
elite lauds Chretien, the rest of us might well ask some
questions -- particularly about social justice. Chretien
has never defined what he means by this slippery concept.
And neither has any other Liberal. Former prime minister
Pierre Trudeau purported to favour a "just society,"
but, he, too, never defined the term. Although renowned
as an extraordinarily precise thinker, he never clearly
indicated what he meant by social justice.
In legal terms,
justice denotes the fair and equal application of the
law. When we speak of a "just individual," it
is generally understood that we are referring to someone
who acts fairly or uprightly. We cannot speak of a "just
society" in the same way, because societies are not
moral agents. Societies are not persons: Societies cannot
act justly or
fairly.
In his address
to the Liberal fund-raising banquet, Chretien noted that,
"There remains unfortunately serious social problems
in the land." He is surely right about that. He added:
"Too many children live in poverty. Too many aboriginal
Canadians live in Third World conditions." In his
next breath, he made his vow to promote social justice.
Here, then,
we have a clue to his meaning: A key aspect of social
justice is the elimination of poverty.
For more than
40 years now, successive Liberal governments have been
promising to eliminate poverty. That was the stated purpose
of the Canada Assistance Plan -- the national welfare
system that the federal Liberals imposed on the provinces
in the 1960s. Did it succeed? Not at all. The welfare
system has succeeded mainly in increasing the number
of low-income, single-parent families that are chronically
reliant on government handouts.
Yet Chretien
is promising essentially more of the same failed socialist
policies of the welfare state. In the name of social justice,
he is proposing to solve the "unfortunately serious
social problems in the land" through increased government
spending and redistribution of income. Referring to his
Liberal government, he said, "We have to keep spending
money on children so that they can get a good start in
life. It is extremely important."
Of course, it
is necessary to keep spending on children so they can
get a good start in life. We don't need Chretien to tell
us that. The question is: Who is best equipped to do the
spending -- government or the children's parents?
Liberals like
Chretien think first of Big Brother the State. They favour
ever more government spending. While Chretien has not
yet explained precisely what he has in mind, it seems
that he is planning to revive the Liberal proposal to
spend billions of dollars on a nation-wide system of Soviet-style,
child care centres.
Many parents
would prefer to spend their own money on caring for their
pre-schoolers at home and having them educated in a competitive
independent school instead of one of the publicly funded
monopolies. More often than not, though, parents can ill
afford these choices for their own children, because they
have to hand over so much of their hard-earned money in
taxes to pay for the extravagant spending of liberal governments.
Will there ever
be a revival of freedom in Canada? Not so long as the
country remains in the grip of politicians wedded to the
fatuous concept of socialist justice.
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