Our lunch with Stéphane, part 2 - social issues

Abdul-Rahim said...
F**k the tax cuts, let's tackle some of these social issues he talks to care about!

My response to Abdul-Rahim's comment was so long, I decided to make it a separate post.

Dion did talk quite a bit about tackling social programs, and I may not have addressed that very well in my summary. Thanks for giving me this opportunity to fix that, Abdul-Rahim.

Dion talked about addressing child poverty, early childhood education, seniors' poverty, the working poor, accessibility of postsecondary education. (Sorry I don't have all the details, but there'll be more info in the full text of the speech / discours.)

It was instructive that, even though this was a business crowd, the biggest round of applause came when he said, "A plan to fight poverty is urgent. It will be at the heart of a Liberal agenda."

In response to a question from the floor, Dion talked about reinstating the Kelowna Accord which the Harper govt trashed after years of ultimately successful negotiations between the federal (Liberal) govt, the provinces, the territories, First Nations, Métis and Inuit representatives.

He wants to top up Kelowna with "education, education, education" - enabling aboriginal youth to access postsecondary education (universities or trade colleges) immediately after graduating from high school. He said this is the best way to help them end the cycle of poverty.

A lot of the point of the tax cuts he's advocating is that they would help the lowest income people directly (the Tories actually raised the income tax rate for the lowest income group). And corporate tax cuts would be designed to increase job opportunities and innovation.

I expect that the emphasis was on the economy partly because of today's fall economic forecast coming from the govt. He has done some major speeches on social justice - here's one http://www.liberal.ca/story_12308_e.aspx (EN) and http://www.liberal.ca/story_12308_f.aspx (FR).

Also on the liberal.ca video page http://www.liberal.ca/video_e.aspx, scroll down to Halifax Town Hall (Aug 21), there are videos on a few related topics. I know he's said on other occasions that he would use the $5.5 billion that Harper is wasting on a GST cut to address child poverty instead - see this video http://www.liberal.ca/players/player_e.aspx?id=101 from March 2, 2007.

I wasn't able to get down all his responses to questions from the public and the media (I was taking pictures too), so I may still be missing some stuff. But the overall impression was of a very good integration of economic and social policy (and environmental policy of course) - the "liberal virtuous circle."

The next stop on his London tour was UWO where he was touring the biotron which "will allow scientists to study the effects of climate change and pollution on core samples of actual soil taken from various environments."

More on social issues . . . http://femmeverte.blogspot.com/2007/10/our-lunch-with-stphane-part-2-social.html