Last Updated:Friday - 09/24/2010

Canada's quest for millionaires

The history of the white settlement of the Prairie West is an inspiring tale of people who worked hard and long to create a new society and a new economy in sometimes unforgiving circumstances. People came from other parts of Canada and from Europe and built a new country.

Given that history, it is especially disturbing to witness the treatment accorded Leticia Cables, the nanny being sent back to the Philippines this week for working too hard.

In the early 20th century, Canadian immigration policy welcomed newcomers - at least those from Europe - with open arms. It even granted homesteads to those willing to take a chance on this new land. The result was a society created more by peasants than by entrepreneurs and aristocrats.

Sadly, our immigration policy now focuses on attracting business people and specialists, skimming off the potential leaders of Third World economies. One of the few ways the poor can now enter Canada is through the Live-In Caregiver Program - a program geared more to providing the Canadian upper-middle class with low-paid nannies than with giving an opportunity to ordinary people from other lands.

Cables' announcement that she will return to the Philippines after finding sanctuary for several months in St. Anthony's Catholic Church came the day before the Alberta government restated its intention to push ahead with a flat-rate income tax.

The flat tax is driven by the same motive as Canada's immigration policy - the belief that society needs more millionaires. It is the rich who make the land strong - more wealthy entrepreneurs will mean more wealth for everybody.

The trickle-down theory of economics has never reflected reality - it just kept the rich comfortable. It has always created larger disparities between the rich and poor and has eroded support for the social safety net that keeps the poor from falling into destitution.

Canada's growing affection for millionaires denies the historic truth of the Prairie West - that it is ordinary people, both Canadian and foreign-born, working hard, both on their own and in cooperative voluntary programs, who have made this land strong.

This truth is essential to the greatness of Canada. A society's strength stems not from how it treats its most powerful people - those most capable of looking after themselves - but from how it treats its poorest and most vulnerable members.

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