Winnipeg Free Press

Winnipeg Free Press (Newspaper) - March 30, 2024, Winnipeg, Manitoba THINK TANK COMMENT EDITOR: RUSSELL WANGERSKY 204-697-7269 ● RUSSELL.WANGERSKY@WINNIPEGFREEPRESS.COM A9 SATURDAY MARCH 30, 2024 Ideas, Issues, Insights Kindness, these days, is in short supply ‘H E (King Charles) will say how Jesus set an ‘example of how we should serve and care for each other’ and how as a nation ‘we need and benefit greatly from those who extend the hand of friendship to us, especially in a time of need.’” — Manchester Evening News, March 27. On this Easter weekend, King Charles is advo- cating kindness. Cynics who receive the message may think he is picking a fight with media organizations that generated headlines recently, trafficking in conspiracies about the King’s daughter-in-law, the Princess of Wales, who most people still refer to as Kate Middleton. I am not here to rehash the misinformation, generated by the public absence of the princess. Responsible journalists knew she had abdominal surgery last year and intuited that her lack of public activities meant something very serious was going on privately. We now know the reasonable presumption was correct. The princess has cancer. She is receiving chemotherapy. Kind and decent people wish her well and I will take the liberty in one of Canada’s most venerable newspapers to wish the princess a full recovery on behalf of this columnist and the kind and gen- erous Manitobans and other Canadians reading this. I hope the Princess of Wales and her family have a Happy Easter. I hope that the kindness the King is calling for extends beyond the holiday. But I am a news analyst, not a pastor. So I have to say the evidence suggests that while there might be a ceasefire in the misinformation feeding the tabloid and social media, it will expire soon. One of the best movies ever made — starring one of history’s greatest British-Irish actors, Dan- iel Day Lewis — is based on the Upton Sinclair novel There will be blood. In the spirit of Sinclair, the Pulitzer Prize-win- ning journalist, author and social activist, I’m here to tell you there will be rumours, scurrilous stories without any factual foundation about the Princess of Wales, her cancer fight and her marriage to the eldest son of a former Princess of Wales who a former British prime minister referred to as “the people’s Princess.” If resurrections were available to people not named Jesus Christ, I would root for the resur- rection of Diana, the late Princess of Wales, killed nearly 27 years ago in a Paris crash precipitated by some of the most aggressive hounds who assist the misanthropes of misinformation, the paparaz- zi. Kindness may be a Christlike virtue and a high- ly appropriate subject for the King to be offering during the holiest week of the Christian calendar. But kindness is not what any objective observer would call a dominant feature of today’s politics and media. Earlier this week, I posted a comment on my X (formerly known as Twitter) account about a Ca- nadian politician who attracts a great deal of my attention and respect, former mayor of Calgary Naheed Nenshi. He is running for the leadership of the Alberta NDP. I messaged some thoughts about why he would be the perfect opponent to Premier Dan- ielle Smith. I posted a picture of a packed house for the can- didate in Edmonton. One of the messages that was publicly posted by a tweeter called Kathy, asked if it was me in the front row of Nenshi rally in Edmonton. “Charles is that you sitting in the front row with the oxygen tank?” I sometimes respond to that kind of snark, if I think it might make a constructive contribution to Canadian democratic dialogue. And so this was my reply: “The person you are mocking isn’t drunk tweeting. They’re showing up — participat- ing in democracy, despite their medical condition. What’s your condition, Kathy? Is cruelty just a side on your conservative menu, or the main course?” I will never be able to write like Upton Sinclair, but I think the message works. Cruelty isn’t just a bug. It’s a feature of today’s conservative populism. Whether it’s Donald Trump in the United States or the various Cana- dian wannabes who worship at his blood-soaked altar, cruelty is on offer every day in the misin- formation ecosystem that threatens democracy everywhere. To my Christian readers, I hope your heart is filled with the peace of Christ. May you and your family rejoice in the Easter miracle. May all of us, in His name practice love, charity, and kindness. Charles Adler is a longtime political commenter and podcaster. charles@charlesadler.com Hate minority governments? Blame the Bloc WE are in a moment in Canadian political history where we see more minority governments than was the case in the past. Justin Trudeau first won a majority government following his landslide victory in the 2015 federal election, but has only been able to form minority governments in the two most recent elections. Minority government have some benefits. Be- cause governments can’t just whip their members into supporting whatever idea that pops into the prime minister’s head, there is a need to reach across the aisle for support. That means minority governments tend to be more moderate and they must compromise with opposition parties to pass legislation. The Liberal government’s current supply and confidence agreement with the NDP is an exam- ple. But majority governments also have some advantages. Since governments can simply whip their members to pass legislation, they are afford- ed the freedom to be both decisive and daring. Almost all the major controversial projects of Canadian history were undertaken by majority governments which didn’t have to worry about compromise. Our electoral system, single-member plurality, is designed to produce majority governments. This is because the system tends to give the win- ning party a boost in seats. In the 2021 election, for example, Trudeau won 33 per cent of the vote but received a huge seat bonus, taking 47 per cent of the seats in the House of Commons. Single-member plurality has done its job for most of Canadian history. About two-thirds of all Canadian elections have led to single-party majority governments. While minority governments have popped up from time to time, they have become a prominent feature of contemporary politics. Of the eight Canadian elections held since the turn of the cen- tury, five have resulted in minority governments and only three in majority governments. The 21 st century appears to be reversing the old pattern of majority and minority governments in Canada. Why is that? A big answer is the Bloc Quebe- cois. The sovereigntist Bloc burst onto the nation- al stage in the 1993 election in part due to the collapse of the defunct Progressive Conservative Party. Shockingly, the separatist party came in second in seats and so formed the Official Oppo- sition. The party’s leader, Lucien Bouchard, played a major role in the 1995 Quebec referendum cam- paign, in which federalists won by the narrowest of margins. After that defeat, the Bloc, while still avowedly separatist, became a small nationalist party that existed almost solely to advocate for Quebec’s interests in the House of Commons. While the charismatic Bouchard was well-known across Canada, I’ll bet you can’t name the current leader of the party (I can but only because it’s my job). But the Bloc still plays a crucial role as spoiler by making it hard for the major parties to form majority governments. Every seat that a peren- nial opposition party like the Bloc wins and takes out of play makes it that much more challenging for the major parties to find the 170 seats neces- sary to form a majority government. Single-member plurality also smiles upon parties like the Bloc: small parties with regionally concentrated vote shares. So the resilience of the Bloc, with its small number of votes from a single province, has made the prospect of majority gov- ernments that much more unlikely. Recent history seems to bear this out. In the 2004, 2006, and 2008 elections, the Bloc received from 38 to 48 per cent of the vote in Quebec and scored about 50 seats in each election as a result. In each of these elections, the Liberals and then Tories were held to minority governments. Then, in 2011 and 2015, the Bloc vote shrunk precipitously and the party’s seat share collapsed. First Stephen Harper and then Trudeau formed majority governments. But the Bloc would rise from the ashes. In the 2019 election, the party scored a respectable 32 per cent of the vote in Quebec and took 32 seats. The pattern held in the 2021 election. And, in both elections, Trudeau fell to a minority government. The Bloc has staying power. Current 388Canada polling projection is that, if an election were held today, the Bloc would increase its seat share to 38. The reality is that Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre is so high in the polls right now that he may ultimately trounce the Liberals and NDP so thoroughly that the stubborn Bloc may make no different in whether he forms a majority or minority government. But the Bloc may continue to be a spoiler in elections. That means we are less likely to see majority governments in our future. It means that Canadian politics will continue to be char- acterized by a small regional party that exists exclusively to advocate for the interests of a single province over the entirety of the rest of the country. Royce Koop is a professor of political studies at the University of Mani- toba and academic director of the Centre for Social Science Research and Policy. Health and health care HEALTH is more than health care. Think about it. Is going to the doctor what makes you healthy? Or is living in a comfortable and safe home? Being valued in a job you like? Enjoying food with family and friends? Having fun being active? Of course, we need access to health care services when we are sick or hurt. But it takes more than illness-care to maximize individual health and well-being. Now expand that thinking to a commu- nity or ‘population’ level, and you meet the concept of “determinants of health.” That’s how public health folks describe the social conditions that influence how healthy groups of people are likely to be. Social determi- nants of health are things like how much money you have, your education, whether you have a job and how safe it is, where you live, if you have enough food, your early childhood experiences, if you feel like you belong and if there’s peace around you. And access to health-care services too. The basic building blocks for opportunity and health that everyone has a right to. It makes sense that being as healthy as possible is pretty impossible when living without a safe, appro- priate home, enough money or food, or with oppression and discrimination. It not only makes sense, but it’s also measurable. When looking at health relative to socio- economic status, income is often used as an overall measure of determinants of health given how influential it is over other deter- minants such as food, housing, and educa- tion. For pretty much every health statistic imaginable, people living with lower income experience higher rates of illness and injury. As per Manitoba Centre for Health Poli- cy’s most recent RHA Indicator Atlas, peo- ple in the lowest income group are twice as likely to die prematurely (before age 75) as compared to those in the highest. Sadly, the same thing goes for infant and child mor- tality — twice as high in the lowest income group. There was also a strong connection found between income and many conditions like diabetes, hypertension, arthritis and heart attacks. Hospital days for acute care among adults in the lowest income level is double the hospital days among those in the highest, with a gradient noted across all income levels. Roughly calculated, over a quarter of all hospital days could be avoided if all people in Manitoba experienced the same conditions and access to determinants of health as people with the highest incomes. Having huge gaps in health across popula- tion groups is unjust and unacceptable. It is also expensive. And it’s fixable — if we have the social and political will. Allowing pover- ty to continue is a policy decision. Allowing poverty and the socioeconomic gradient to undermine the health of Manitobans is a policy decision. People matter and we can do better. So, when we talk about fixing health care, let’s not forget about fixing health. If we close inequitable gaps in health, we not only improve lives across our whole province, but we also slow the flow of people into emer- gency departments and into hospital beds. Besides investing in needed health care workers and health services, we also need to invest in the determinants of health. How can we close the gaps? What would that take? All government departments would need to understand and factor in how health is affected by their decision-mak- ing. We would all need to acknowledge that investing in social and affordable housing is investing in health; investing in early learn- ing and child care is investing in health; in- vesting in guaranteed livable basic income, education and job training, public transit, decolonization and so on… is investing in health. Seeing policy decisions this way is called a “health in all policy” approach which prioritizes co-ordinated action on the social determinants of health to actually improve health and close gaps. We know what you are probably thinking — how can we afford this when we need to invest in fixing a broken health-care system? Let’s be real: not fixing health is expensive. We are paying big time for the impacts of poverty in healthcare right now. And not only health care — add up the im- pacts of poverty on the justice system, child welfare system, education system and more. Rather than continuing to pay for poverty downstream, let’s invest upstream — lifting people in Manitoba out of poverty, improv- ing the economy and reducing demands on the health-care system at the same time. So how do we want to see taxpayer’s mon- ey spent in the upcoming budget? Fixing a broken health-care system? Yes. But impor- tantly, also investing in the social determi- nants of health to fix health. Because health is more than health care. Sande Harlos is president and Nicole Herpai secretary of the Manitoba Public Health Association. SANDE HARLOS AND NICOLE HERPAI CHARLES ADLER ROYCE KOOP ALBERTO PEZZALI / ASSOCIATED PRESS FILES King Charles, with Queen Camilla, made kindness central to his Easter message. ;