Thank you for this opportunity to speak to you about the important matter of the budget, albeit from a rather philosophic perspective.
I come here--as I've indicated in my paper, which I hope you'll read for yourselves--as a concerned citizen, but one who is something of a lifelong student of public affairs.
I would like to elaborate briefly on some of the ideas put forth in my paper. The background of my life experience is that I've spent 39 years in teaching, managing to avoid the danger that people encounter of spending one year actually doing something and then 38 years repeating it. I practised in secondary and elementary schools, and in administration at the school and district level in Britain and in Manitoba. I was also active in professional organizations in what Tom Lehrer calls the “ed biz”. The only claim I make about my paid employment was that I endeavoured to be a thoughtful practitioner.
I mention this background because in so many ways the public schools are a microcosm of society. Both our schools and society suffer from severe problems, many of which are driven by statistics, statistics that purport to have some meaning, but about which no one wants to be the one who cries out that they're actually not clothing our nakedness.
Our society and our schools, it has been said, are characterized as highly competitive, knowledge-intensive, and based on global technology. We could equally well describe them as being characterized by extreme wealth and poverty and fragmented families and communities; obsessed with self-gratification; experiencing increasing homelessness, hunger and hurt; and battered by depersonalized, counterproductive programs and policies.
Schools claim to be preparing young people for the 21st century, but they are designed by experts of over a century ago. As Jean Piaget said in addressing an international conference on the teaching of science, it's not science that children have difficulty understanding, it's the science lessons.
With all due respect, I think our political leaders are in somewhat the same dark age as our leading educational authorities. I would like to suggest, by way of amplifying the arguments in my paper, some areas that I think merit greater attention, thought, and action. These are my four “C”s.
The first one is crime. Cracking down on gun and drug crime is one of the top priorities for Canada's new government, according to the website in March of this year. Leaving aside the question of cracking down, the quotation defines the limits to be addressed. It's no secret that crime constitutes one of the biggest spheres of global business activity, amounting, according to the International Monetary Fund, to some $1.5 trillion a year in 2007, presumably tax-free.
This brings me to the second area, currency. Our currency has value because we as a society guarantee it. It belongs to us as much as Alberta oil or B.C. lumber, although perhaps I shouldn't mention things like that. Currency exists as a tool for the exchange of goods and services among citizens, but it is out of control. It is treated like a commodity. Currency trading affects employment and business; decisions made by currency traders for their own benefit can mean success or failure for individual Canadians regardless of their own efforts. It's estimated that $3 trillion in currency is traded daily, but only some 5% to 15% of that is actually applied to international trade, which was the original purpose of currency exchanges.
Just as currency began its life as a simple, useful device, so did the third of my Cs, corporations. They exist, they're protected by legislation, but they have managed to obfuscate their activities to the extent that they now are more of a burden to society than a benefit. Corporations have in fact taken over the world.
Consumers are my final C, and I mean us. We are partly to blame, because we will go chasing after goods in order to gratify our own desires.
Parliaments began their evolution to full democracy by controlling the national budget, defeating divinely appointed kings and feudal forces. Can Parliament today take the initiative and lead us out of the corporate feudal system that prevails? I know it will require courage to stand up against dominant powers, but I urge you to have the courage of your democratic convictions, look realistically at the problems society faces, and be prepared to fashion a budget that will work to the public good.
Thank you.