UPDATE (June 29): Important presentation by Naomi Klein. PLEASE SHARE!
ORIGINAL BLOG POST
In the aftermath of the G20 Summit here in Toronto, the lion's share of attention continues to focus on the confrontation between summit protestors, a small band of violent hooligans, and police authorities. Thankfully, the tides appear to slowly be turning toward a more balanced, reasoned and fair consideration of these events and their impact on the city and its residents. And, calls for Canadian governments at all levels to account for many of the weekend's misdeeds have been growing quickly, including a call for a formal inquiry into the G20 Summit.
At the same time, I can't help but agree with a smaller handful of commentators, such as Naomi Klein, that while all of this commotion has taken centre stage, a far greater crime has been committed and its perpetrators are stealing off into the night, largely unscathed.
In the name of "fiscal consolidation", G20 leaders have presented to the world a rather tidy agreement that countries should exercize national spending constraint in an effort to reign in their respective deficits. OK, nothing wrong with that is there - we all need to get our financial houses in order, don't we? Well, yes, we do. But rather than introduce a balanced basket of measures by which to accomplish this -- including a unified G20 agreement that those institutions that were largely responsible for the world's global financial crisis, that benefited enormously from the personal debt fallout of this crisis, and who continue to reep massive profits, should participate in this house-cleaning process -- G20 leaders have chosen to give financial institutions a "day pass" from cleaning duty. Not even a brush, a mop or a bit of elbow grease will they contribute, lest, of course, individual governments decide to shirk the peer pressure of their G20 peers, and call on these institutions to report for cleaning duty.
In terms of national and global health and health care, all of this bodes ominously. In Canada, we have already experienced and continue to experience the impact of massive social cuts, the likes of which our Conservative federal government is now peddling on the global stage. While the previous federal Liberal government itself often touts its successive balanced budgets, these were mounted on the shoulders of those who could least afford them, causing many of Canada's indicators of health, social, and community well-being to go into a tailspin over the past two decades. This slash and cut legacy of the 1990s -- one doubled in impact in the province of Ontario -- is something which the Canadian government rests content to preserve, having recently added to it another series of "fat trimming" cuts for groups such as Canada's women's equity organizations; groups that actually work to mitigate the impact of social inequity across the country.
Canada's Conservative federal government is now bracing us for more spending cuts, more 'trimming of the fat', as it were, and is locking arms with a select number of other countries to peddle this diet globally. "Fat" like investment in health care, and housing. Fat like employment benefits, and child care. Fat, like the wages of public employees, such as those individuals whom they asked to gear up in riot suits and 'protect' the city of Toronto this past weekend.
What else will be slashed in the offing, while we excuse our banks, and other centres-of-profit from cleaning duty? Is Canada's 10th place ranking among the world's 30 OECD countries in levels of childhood poverty not good enough? Is our 5th place ranking in public spending tight-beltedness still too little? Has our federal government stepped up its "Own the Podium" campaign, now prioritizing the 100-metre dash to poverty, and the pole vault to homelessness? Just to be fair, Canada isn't one to shirk competition. Through this past weekend's G20 agreements it has agreed upon a set of training tactics with UK, American and other G20 counterparts just to make sure that competition for medals at this Olympics of Social Decay, Illness and Community Disintegraton is stiff. Canadians should keep an eye on those Brits. They're eyeing these prizes again with rare focus.
We have seen the impact of this fiscal constraint agenda before, and its outcomes are predictable, if not frightening. Canada is not alone in this regard. Rather than insist that corporations share in the process of fiscal house-cleaning and society-building, G20 leaders have agreed to continue letting them amass excess profit, free from responsibility.
Let's be clear here. We're not shunning the idea of profit, nor suggesting that we musn't allow businesses to be competitive. We're critiquing grotesque, insatiable profit and its detachment from responsibility for corporate-social citizenship. We're questioning the 'wisdom', the democratic sensibility and the actual financial accumen of leaders who would ask a family to go without appropriate housing, a community to go without social services, or a small business to go without stimulus while permitting and promoting a status quo in which major banks lament billions of dollars in quarterly profit as "below expectations".
So, in the stead of such corporate participation in a shared social and national agenda, the remainder of us get to foot the bills for "fiscal consolidation". Coming to a neighbourhood near you: under-employment; housing line ups; child care cuts; health care freezes; and so on. Those working in health care will not long from now see the clear impacts on health, in the way of increased emergency room visits, hospitalization, chronic illness and scores of other health-related impacts of social inequity.
The saddest thing of all, perhaps, is that all of this -- not least, the failure to call upon our corporations to lift a finger -- is based on false presumption that investment in social goods and groups, including non-profits agencies (the third sector) is a debit on our nationl accounts. As I and many others have argued elsewhere, with evidence to boot, the community-serving agencies in Canada, the UK, France, Germany, Japan and elsewhere who will now find themselves at the end of these "fiscal consolidation" cuts, are actually large contributors to, and positive inputs into our national economies. This comes by way of jobs, sparks to local community economic and business development, and volunteer capacty coordination, all of which then catalyzes growth and economic development in other parts of the economy.
Unless the forthcoming fiscal constraint measures promised by our G20 leaders are resisted, nationally and globally, they are certain to strike a tripple whammy: a massive decline in personal and community wellbeing; a decrease in actual funding for agencies that provide social support and community-building services; and a decreased ability of these groups to meet growing demand for their services. All of this will not only tear at our social fabric but, ultimately, at the national and global economies that we seek to boost.
The coming months will be telling. Which among the G20 countries will be willing to stray from the implicit and real pressure of other G20 peers? Which country will heed not only the morally but fiscally prudent path in refusing to undermine the health and wellbeing of its citizens? Which country, and which leaders will show the resolve and dexterity required to bring corporate interests into the nation-building, and society-building fold rather than excusing them from responsibility? Perhaps none among the G20, although we should not give up hope.
In the interim period, a number of other nations are making efforts to at least raise the stakes, and to call on the G20 to demonstrate its legitimacy as a bastion of democratic principles. Norway's foreign minister, for instance, has recently challenged the G20's claim to legitimacy, noting that, among other things, it risks undermining other global mechanisms such as the United Nations, that we should instead be bolstering as means to improve global security, integration and harmony. Others have questioned the Canadian government's choice of Toronto as venue, suggesting that this was an all-too-clever strategic move to distract socially-conscious observers from the actual substance of the G20 Summit.
Should G20 countries ultimately choose to pursue the diet of fiscal constraint now being peddled by Canada and several other G20 leaders -- one that excuses the wealthiest from responsibility while burdening the vast majority (and particularly those who can least afford it), with all of the responsibility -- I dare say that the G20's claim to legitimacy will have been disproven by its own doing.
I am a health and social policy advisor with One World Partners, based in Toronto and Midland, Canada. My work focuses on community-based primary health care, health equity and social advocacy, both in Canada and internationally.
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