Rick on the Issues

Rick believes that the federal government has an important role to play in conserving our environment and also in helping the less fortunate members of society to lead productive and satisfying lives. We are a caring and prosperous country and can and should do more to help those who need it, and to ensure that future generations of Canadians inherit both a healthy environment and a healthy society. However, all government programs need to be carefully designed so as to provide the best incentives to individuals, minimize undesirable side effects, and support continued economic prosperity. All programs need also to be carefully evaluated in practise to ensure that goals are being achieved as efficiently as possible.

• We need to ensure that every Canadian child has the food, clothing, shelter, and schooling that will allow them to become productive members of society. We should accept nothing less. And our goal should be that every Canadian adult likewise has access to the supports that will enable them to become productive members of society. We need in particular to remove the present tax-based disincentives to getting a job.
• Governments should run budget surpluses during good times so that they can finance spending during economic downturns. As well, our fiscal ability to cope with problems such as environmental challenges has been limited by the budgetary policies of the present government: surpluses have shrunk during a period of growth.
• Canada's medicare system works. We spend a much smaller proportion of our GDP on health care than does the United States, and provide a similar level of care but much more equitably. But there is always room for improvement. We must insist that medical tests and procedures are always provided in a timely manner, and we should emphasize prevention more than we do at present. Our federal system provides an opportunity for the federal government to insist that provincial spending is targeted appropriately and managed efficiently.
• Canada should target its foreign aid to poor countries with good governance, and emphasize health care, clean water, education, transport, and agricultural research. We can reduce the costs of administering these programs while engaging the public in setting priorities. We need to carefully evaluate aid programs to ensure that they do in fact provide people with the opportunity to escape poverty. Foreign aid cannot solve all of the world's woes but it can propel millions out of poverty. Agricultural support expenditures have been cut in recent years with dire consequences.
• Canada should celebrate multicultural diversity and those values that we share such as democracy, human rights, and personal and social responsibility.
• Governments should strive whenever possible to make infrastructure investments or other sorts of one-time expenditures during business cycle downturns. And we should not delay necessary maintenance because government revenues have fallen in a recession: this exacerbates business cycles while worsening the long-term cost of maintenance.
• Governments should increase support for research, and ensure the continued independence of university research.
• Deterrence is more likely if our police and courts focus even more on the crimes of violence and vandalism that are of greatest societal concern. The key to deterrence is increasing the proportion of criminals apprehended, not their average sentences. In the case of sexual assault and sexual abuse, only a minority of offenders is tried; they are thus likely to re-offend. We as a society need to encourage victims to report these crimes. We should also be tough on the causes of crime: fighting poverty, ensuring that all groups feel valued in Canadian society, facing up to the scourge of foetal alcohol syndrome, finding other outlets for the energies of troubled youth, and ensuring that employment is a viable option for those who otherwise engage in crime.
• There is no magic bullet for generating economic growth, but a variety of carefully designed policies can help, in areas such as encouraging innovation, keeping interest rates low, facilitating trade, ensuring competition, using stimulative policies during recessions, facilitating the movement of labour and capital from declining to growing sectors, moving the unemployed into jobs, removing barriers to social mobility of disadvantaged populations, and enhancing our educational and health care systems.