Wanted: Extraordinary Canadians

Penguin Canada recently released a biography of Tommy Douglas, one volume of their Extraordinary Canadians series.  I received it for Christmas, and finished reading it on December 27^th.  At only 221 pages it was a light and fun read, a brief outline of the career of the Greatest Canadian (as Douglas was voted in 2004) that gave a strong sense of his character and personality.  By the end of the book I had a great sense of loss: we need Tommy Douglas in Canada today, just as much as we needed him in his own time.

I was not yet two years old when Tommy Douglas died, so I have never known a Canada without his incredible contributions.  He’s known as the father of Medicare in Canada, which (in spite of its problems) is an institution that is treasured by most Canadians, but he and the Cooperative Commonwealth Federation (CCF, the fore-runner of the NDP) were the first to promote many ideas and institutions that I’ve always known to be a part of life in Canada.  The original CCF mission statement, The Regina Manifesto (1932), called for the protection of rights for ethnic and religious minorities; a Canadian constitution, charter of rights, and central bank; national workplace standards, EI, CPP, and public healthcare.  At the time, they were called Communists for suggesting such things; now, at least thirty years after we’ve adopted all of those ideas, we take them for granted.  Fairly impressive work, considering that Douglas, the CCF, and the NDP that followed it have never formed a federal government!  Their small voice in government and the Canadian public square, over time, have had great effect.

Throughout this biography I was struck by the ways in which our situation today reflects the situations that Douglas faced.  The rhetoric used against Douglas and the CCF in political campaigns, both in Saskatchewan and federally, compared them to Nazis and Communists in the same sentence, charged that they would confiscate farms and require all citizens to work for the government, and many other baseless claims; these make our attack ads today seem petty and tame by comparison.  And the reaction against their proposed universal health care included the charge that “bureaucrats would commit women with menopausal symptoms to insane asylums”, which sounds just as bizarre as the reaction to the so-called Obamacare that continues to rage in the US.

Today, all of the angry rhetoric and baseless claims are against the suggestion that we need a system that is environmentally and economically sustainable.  Sustainability, like universal health care, is a sensible solution to problems caused by our society.  It's not partisan ideology.  Like healthcare, a government policy on sustainability is simply Canadians doing together what we already do individually: take care of each other.  In the midst of all of the debates about climate and oil, it's easy to lose sight of that.  We need new Tommy Douglases to rise above the rhetoric and insist on what is right.

Jeff Wheeldon