Yak you post more on politcs then on EotA.
Don't fight. Keep the thread all nice and happy! That way it's easy to sift through the information, and not have to pop over like 1 billion flame posts (which is potentially what could come up).
Yak you post more on politcs then on EotA.
Don't fight. Keep the thread all nice and happy! That way it's easy to sift through the information, and not have to pop over like 1 billion flame posts (which is potentially what could come up).
People often cite most of Europe and Canada as succesful socialist countries...which is highly debatable.
I won't speak for Europe, but I'll speak for Canada. We are not, unfortunately, a socialist country. I agree with Yak that this is a highly debatable topic. Socialism is such a broad ideology and there are a gajillion definitions for it (for example China claims to enact socialist policies, and Libya claims their form of government, Jamahiriya, is also socialism, and they run two completely different systems of it).
Quick overview: there are three main parties in Canada, and one centralized only to Quebec but is very influencial in federal and provincial politics. The three parties are the Liberal Party of Canada, the Conservative Party of Canada and the New Democratic Party of Canada. The Bloc Quebecois (Quebec Party) runs only in Quebec, and they're a little complex. The current make-up of the Canadian House of Commons (our equivalent to your House of Representatives, although argueably they wield almost as much power as your Senators as well). These four parties make up the basis for federal politics in Canada.
I hate using the terms "Conservative" or "Liberal" or "Socialist", as well as "right-wing" or "left-wing" so I'm going to tell you straight up what they all do, and why Canada is not "socialist" by the American defintion.
This is the wiki definition of Socialism:
"A system where property and the distribution of wealth are subject to control by the community. As an economic system, socialism is often characterized by state, worker, or community ownership of the means of production. This control may be either direct—exercised through popular collectives such as workers' councils—or indirect—exercised on behalf of the people by the state." Cut and pasted from Wiki.
Probably not what you're thinking of. You're probably thinking more along the lines of a system where direct government-intervention into the economy (planned or direct economy), public ownership and the nationalization of industries, as well as things like community-payed or provincially-payed or federally-payed things such as medicare or transit.
Now, Canada is not really like this at all. We do have free-medicare, and that was founded by a self-proclaimed socialist. It is true that no party
in federal politics seeks to actually undermine this system. However, you can't call Canada a socialist country because the two main political parties are anything but asking for the above definition of socialism.
The Liberal Party of Canada is essentially the "do-nothing" party. The enact policies that are usually not generated from themselves but are watered down versions of policies thrown out by other parties. They ask for things like tougher gun laws and tax cuts for the lower tax brackets, which are "socialist" under the defintion above while conversly they also wish to increase military spending (usually not attributed to "socialism" but you could if you defined socialism by China and Libyan standards), fund alot more research and lax some taxes on buisnesses to pull investment from Americans and others abroad. They are "progressive" by religious standards, since they legalized same-sex marriage and medical marijuana (and were to legalize marijuana before American intervention). However, conversly they're also very tough with regards to crime, and aren't very open to things like community-based projects or intervention into the economy. Infact, they usually like to leave it as it is.
The Conservative Party of Canada is what they say. They're "conservative" on issues such as abortion and not legalizing same-sex marriage, and have historically enacted policies very similar to American things like Reaganomics. While they accept medicare, they are in their platform "open to new ideas", basically meaning if they could they'd privatize. However, the population really likes free medicare, so you can't really do that for votes. By American standards the Conservatives may be a little "lite" when it comes to their name but really, their pro-buisness policies and laissez-faire sort of attitude towards the economics of Canada make them quite unsocialist. They currently hold a minority government. As a thing of interest, they recently cut GST taxes (General Service Tax) to 5% and under them we have a very strong dollar (can't give all the credit to them). They leave alot alone and do very little with social programs, far from what Americans consider "socialist Canada" they've actually cut back on a lot of things, which you can go read at wikipedia if you're interested.
The last two parties are more to the Socialist end. The New Democratic Party advocates for basically everything I said up there about the American definition of socialism. The only thing they don't advocate is government spending. They don't have that many seats and aren't very influencial in politics, and really just hold the power to knock down the Liberals and Conservatives on bills they don't like. The Bloc Quebecois are a mix of your traditional concepts of "right" and "left" wing. They want to intervene in the economy but only enough to get Quebec rolling. They believe in a lot of "progressive" policies but advocate military spending, iscolationism from international affairs and Quebec soverignty. Conversly, they also advocate the nationalization of major industries, but only to "protect" them from Canadian enroachment. Basically, they're socialist, without being completely socialist. It's weird, go read if you're interested.
Anyway, systematically compared to the United States yes we are more "progressive" socially (a bad term; to religious people, "progressive" would mean degenerative, and then it gets all confusing) in terms of things like abortion and other matters. We do have free-medicare, and our tax-system is infact a little more harsh on the upper-class then in America. We haven't any real tax-havens, and our country has quite a few nationalized industries. However, at the same time, our banks run about the same as America. We haven't any major nationalized companies any more, we let them get bought out by Americans (even our railway, the CPR). The government is cutting taxes on buisness and the upper-class and is enacting policies that resemble more closely the Bush-Senior administration in America (go look it up I'm too lazy to put details in here). Our major play in NATO in Afganistan also puts us in a weird position.
Now, personally you couldn't define my political views by any words because they'd all only get a piece of what I believe in, but I don't think calling Canada a socialist country is fair. America-lite? Maybe? Not culturally but with regards to social issues and stuff, we aren't so heavy on alot of the things Americans are having major debates on right now. With a medicare system that's free and alot of other sort of "socialist-tendancies" yeah sure we're leaning a bit on the "socialist" side of things but we have by no means stepped over the line and had our government intervene in every aspect of our economy. And like Yak said, teh extent to which this policies has helped or hindered Canada is debatable.
I just don't think it's just to use Canada as an example as a socialist country, cause we're not.
/rantover
I made that!
