I started this blog post last week so I suppose it should named last week's thoughts. Nevertheless, I've been having a lot of thoughts regarding the protests that have been happening over in Thailand the past while, and with the most recent events in the Ukraine. The fight for true democracy through people power is upon us! Whilst conversing with a co-worker, the subject of minimum wage came up. Now, in both the UK and Canada reports suggest that the living wage is currently lower than the minimum wage. Therefore, if you are only receiving minimum wage, how are you able to afford the higher cost of living. Higher the minimum wage you say. Whilst that should be done, it also can have a negative effect, with increased inflation occurring. However, inflation will occur regardless so the staircase like increases have to happen so that at some point the living wage matches the minimum wage. Obviously in an ideal world, a social utopia some may say, everyone would be earning above the living wage.
This conversation brought me onto thinking about ways Canada could move towards a more equal, fairer society. Now Canada does already have a good welfare system which should be commended, and not criticised as I do sometimes find in my every day living of Canadian life. The issue with Canada, like with most Western societies is that citizens seem to blame people for having to be on welfare, or condemn them for it. In most cases (obviously there are always expectations) people on welfare would rather NOT be on welfare, in fact I'm sure would rather have a job they would like to succeed in. A step Canada could take would be to nationalise their oil and gas. Of course, besides oil and gas companies along with their resources moving into
public hands, Canada would need to cut back its current exports to the
U.S. At the moment, over half of Canada’s production is going south, and
the proportion is rising. Conserving production for mostly domestic use would also provide a longer lead time to bring about wiser alternatives,
offering Canada some breathing room before the energy situation reaches
crisis proportions which in turn will affect the whole world. Naturally, in order to cut back drastically on U.S.-bound exports,
let alone nationalise the industry, it will in turn be necessary to
abrogate NAFTA. That is another story that would have to be written altogether but for Canada's best interest it is definitely do-able and would stop Canada being seen as the USA's northern puppet. Maybe I am being radical, but isn't radical defined as advocating political or social reform; then that I am guilty of. Although I have the many luxaries that living in the Western World brings, I can't help but think I could rather in living Venezula for example. It is possible to have the best of both worlds, look at countries like Sweden and Norway. I am not expecting you to agree with what I have said but just to think outside of the Western World right-wing media influenced box we find ourselves in.
