Suchergebnisse

This paper presents the conclusions of observation, not research, and is therefore expressed as personal opinion. It seems to me that much that has been said about "social security" has been subject to two influences tending to hallucination. First, it is a matter in which young men have seen visions, and old men have dreamed dreams and nightmares. Secondly, the machinery of legislative and administrative procedures, and the very magnitudes of money involved, encourage preoccupation with apparatus. Between rhetoric and jargon there has been too little room for matter-of-fact appreciation of what these arrangements in our national housekeeping really amount to. I thought I might therefore take this opportunity of discussing these arrangements as I see them in plain functional terms.As to economic consequences, I have no discoveries to offer. There is indeed a very large field of research here, inviting work that will have to proceed by gradual and piecemeal results. Very little is yet known, for example, about the distribution of incomes below the income tax exemption limits, or about the families that depend on them, although such families comprise a large proportion of the population. On such questions as these one can only speculate. But speculation will perhaps be nearer the mark if it starts from a view of our present policies that is reasonably free from emotional or institutional obstructions.

The decennial redistribution of federal constituencies in Canada always reveals the House of Commons in an unusual light. Almost alone among major pieces of legislation, the Representation Bill that follows each census is not openly an embodiment of cabinet policy; for statements of policy are confined to declarations that redistribution is the business of the House, not of the government. Party discipline is thus relaxed to the extent that every member of Parliament must look out for himself, and in this self-seeking he can assume that his party colleagues, particularly those from his own province, will stand by him; and they do. A redistribution calls forth not party discipline but party cohesion, and commonly offers many illustrations of the decentralized nature of Canadian political organization. Since every member of Parliament is an expert on at least one clause in the bill and has a vested interest in one constituency, local and personal considerations enter largely into debate, so that the House of Commons during a redistribution presents a somewhat disconcerting picture of what the electorate could expect if cabinet leadership in important legislation were weak or relaxed all the time instead of once in ten years.