Assorted Links: January 28, 2007

Jim Flaherty: Populist

Oh, how the conservative have fallen!

Canada’s government has asked the big domestic banks to explain why they charge customers to use automated teller machines, Finance Minister Jim Flaherty said Thursday.
“I’ve raised it with the banks ... and I’ll look forward to their reply,” Flaherty told reporters.

“The practice by some banks in some other countries is not to charge and (I asked): Is there a justification, is there a rationale for that being particularly different in Canada than in other places?”

By an astonishing coincidence Jack Layton was also talking about ATM fees that very same day.

Separately, the left-leaning opposition New Democrats said they would put forward amendments to Canada’s Bank Act that would eliminate fees for using ATMs.

The New Democrats said Canadians used bank-owned ATMs to make more than 1.1 billion withdrawals and other transactions in 2005 and paid C$420 million ($355 million) in fees. It said U.S. and British banks do not charge for these services.

“Fees for basic services represent only 5 percent of revenues of the big six Canadian banks — hardly critical to the bottom line,” said New Democratic Party leader Jack Layton. ”It’s working families that are hurt most by these outrageous fees.”

Wonders never cease in politics.  A former Harris cabinet minister and the leader of the federal NDP in cahoots.  Over bank fees no less.  The recent floor crossing of Wajid Khan has made it possible for the NDP to keep the Conservatives in power.  Both parties have a vested interest in taking away support from their common enemy, the Liberals.  Voila! Instant de facto alliance.  Just like Bill Davis and Stephen Lewis back in the day.  Ok, not that bad. 

On a perhaps obvious sidenote, does it strike anyone else as absurd that people complain about these fees?  ATM machines don't exactly spring from the ground ready made and filled with multi-hued cash, ready to be dispensed.  Does it not seem at least a little reasonable that banks should not be subsidizing the financial activities of their competitors' clients?  Whether other banks in other countries charge similar fees in neither here nor there.  What else do those banks charge that our banks don't, or in different ways?  And if competition is the real issue then why not let foreign banks buy out our banks?  I belabour the point to make another one.  Our education system has sunk to such a level, and for so long, that a large enough segment of the population can get duped by so obvious a populist canard as this.

Still Autonomous After All These Years

I'd suspect that the typical blog life span is somewhere between a week and a month.  Bruce Gottfred is therefore one of the great survivors.  Our very best wishes.

Three years ago, I wrote the first memorable post on this blog: Test. From that simple beginning this blog has grown into one of the most important, well-read, and influential Canadian blogs that I have ever been a part of.

It's been an up and down ride. There have been periods of extreme activity, and there have been some nasty funk-induced ruts. One of those ruts almost metastasized into full-blown blog paralysis this winter, and it took a great deal of effort to build a bit of momentum and get it moving again. It's too early to declare victory, but so far the signs are promising.

Very promising indeed.  Happy Blogversary!

Socialized Health Care At Work

Sorry comrade, you've had your ration.

Everyone agrees that a retired Toronto schoolteacher would be dead today if not for the piece of his brother's liver transplanted into his body in London, England, nearly seven years ago.

But a court has ruled that the Ontario Health Insurance Plan does not have to cover the $450,000 cost of the life-saving operation -- even though the procedure wasn't available in the province at the time and doctors here ruled him out as a candidate for a full liver transplant from a deceased donor.

Adolfo Flora -- who was diagnosed with liver cancer in 1999 and given six months to live -- is now left holding the bag for the crushing cost of staying alive.

Well at least he doesn't live in the United States.  You know what happens there if you don't have insurance.

Meanwhile in India

Ah, our dear friends at the Red Star.  No matter how bloody our one-tier system gets be sure they'll find some way of making a two-tier system (a small increase in personal freedom) seem like a Dickensian nightmare.

For Canadians who wonder what a two-tier health system would look like, there is an interesting model here in India.

Over the past decade, for-profit hospital corporations have set up camp in India and built major new facilities with state-of-the-art equipment and hotel-like amenities. For anyone willing to pay cash up front, they offer a full range of medical procedures from hip replacements to heart surgery, from cancer treatment to organ transplants.

But, of course, the private facilities are available to wealthy Indians, too.

Meanwhile, the government-funded public hospitals in India are relatively decrepit. Guidebooks advise tourists in India to avoid them at all cost, even if it means flying themselves out of the country.

So government run hospitals in a poor country are worse than privately run hospitals anywhere.  This is news?

The medical staff also complained that AIIMS gets a lot of "self-referrals," patients with flu symptoms or colds who have nowhere else to turn. But of course, one hears the same complaint from medical staff in Canada.

"The bottom line," said Grinspun, "is that unless you are very, very rich, you can't afford private health care. But when you create two tiers, you are actually depleting resources in the public sector."

It's amazing the number of economists who moonlight as Toronto Star reporters.  The difference between a good economist and a bad one, Frederic Bastiat observed, is that a good one tells you about what isn't immediately obvious.  Yes, a private health care system does draw away resources from the public sector, in the same way more efficient businesses draw away clients and capital from less efficient enterprises.

At first this would, as the Red Star reporter fears, involve the "rich" bidding up prices for doctors and hospital beds.  Scarce resources going to those capable and willing to pay top dollar.  This is in the short-term.  In the long-term more resources are brought into the health care sector.  Higher prices mean higher profits, which in turn creates an opportunity for capital to be invested.  When health care costs began to spike in the mid-1980s one of the first things to be rationed was the doctors themselves.  Placements in Ontario medical schools, and elsewhere in Canada, were cut, contributing to the doctor shortage we are now suffering through.  Herein lies the difference between private and public provision of social services.  To governments doctors are an expense to be minimized.  To the private sector they are a capital investment.

"Quebecers Aren't Racists"

So says the current premier of what was once known, without irony, as La Belle Province.

Quebec is abuzz over a new poll that arrives at uncomfortable conclusions, and prompted denials from Premier Jean Charest that citizens of the province are bigots.

The Léger Marketing survey, splashed across the front of the tabloid Journal de Montréal – the headline screamed "59 per cent of Quebecers say they are racist" – shows 15 per cent of respondents describe themselves as either "moderately" racist, and 43 per cent say they are "faintly" so. Another 1 per cent admit to being "strongly" racist.

The conclusions, which were covered extensively on Quebec's all-news channels, provoked a strong reaction in a province that is acutely sensitive to criticism that the francophone majority is somehow less tolerant than the rest of Canada.

Ayn Rand once described racism as barnyard collectivism.  With that in mind, does it especially matter what sort of collectivism you practice?  Racism is a symptom of a deeper collectivist mindset that has slaughtered millions over the last century.  The Nazis, who murdered tens of millions in the name of race, were operating under the same principle as the communists, who killed hundreds of millions in the name of class.  Quebec separatism is collectivism on a much smaller and far less malevolent scale.  The electoral success of the Bloc and Parti Quebecois demonstrates very clearly that between a third and a half of the electorate of the province is sufficiently collectivistic to wish to dissolve the Canadian union because "they" are not like "us."  Whether it's language or race, it's still bigotry. 

Is Michael Coren A Bigot?

That's the real question about the below.

I may be asking those of you who believe in freedom of speech and conscience to give me some financial support before long because what I am about to say is apparently illegal and not to be tolerated in Canada.

I believe that homosexuality is not normal and not natural.

I also believe that homosexuals should be treated with respect and protected against discrimination in areas such as employment and housing. I believe they should be allowed to inherit money and property from their partners.

I believe that, just like anybody else, they can be loving and kind and wonderful.

I believe that they should enjoy complete freedom to live their lives as homosexuals without any interference from the state or other people and I would, and have, defended homosexual friends from bigots and thugs.

But I believe that homosexuality is not normal and not natural.

I use the words carefully and precisely because this is what John DiCicco, a city councillor in Kamloops, B.C., said and why he has been forced to pay $1,000 by the B.C. Human Rights Tribunal.

The Trudeaupian philosopher kings who still rule over us, do not like impure thoughts.  In that sense they are very much like the Victorians, except the Victorians were on the whole more sensible.  The nineteenth century's conventional opinion was repressive toward sex and alcohol, this stemmed, in part, from the then very significant problems of venereal disease, illegitimacy and alcoholism.  One can argue that the modern hang ups about race stem from similar attempts to combat a once all pervasive bigotry.  Yet the method of control in both cases is not only flawed but wicked.  How can you force people to be good, wise and decent?  The statists of all parties, and ideologies, seem unconvinced by that argument and so Mr. DiCicco has had $1,000 confiscated for the greater good.

Yet the real questions is this:  Is Micheal Coren a bigot for saying that homosexuality is not normal or natural? 

There is certainly nothing in this article that suggests Coren wishes to demonize homosexuals.  He seems to be preaching the Christian virtue of hating the sin but loving the sinner.  A subtlety one wishes many on the modern Left would adopt in their public discourses.  Coren, I suspect, regards homosexuality as a behaviour, not an identity.  Something volitionally chosen and contrary to nature or revelation or both.  Since homosexuality is volitional to criticize it is not to engage in bigotry.  Genuine bigotry, in the conventional sense, requires discrimination or criticism based on an attribute which is inherited or otherwise acquired without consent.  Coren, by his standards, is not a bigot. 

Square Pegs, Round Holes

Freedom and Serfdom with the burqini.

In a lycra revolution, a cover-all swimming costume is bringing Muslim women on to Australian beaches as lifeguards, unzipping racial tensions which divided parts of Sydney little over a year ago.

The two-piece "burqini", popular in the Middle East, is proving key to a reshaping surf lifesaving - once a bastion of white Australian culture and still a heartland of the country's sun-bronzed, heroic self-myth.

"I am Australian so I always have the Australian life style, but now with the burqini it just allowed me to participate in it more. We used to always go to the beach, but now that I have the burqini I can actually swim," said Mecca Laalaa, 22.

She wants her Australia and her Islamism too.  One, in the end, will destroy the other.  Which will destroy the other is still the open question.