~ FIRinG Line~~ CANADA on the WILLIAM F. BUCKLEY, JR. with

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2 MR. COXE: Hello from McMaster University, Hamilton, Ontario, Canada. This is the third in five Firing Line programs looking at various aspects of Canadian identity as Canada goes through a national crisis. FIRinG Line Today we are going to look at one aspect of the way in which Canadian political decision-making has evolved. Since the fall of the Berlin Wall, market-oriented political parties have been very successful everywhere from Sweden to Russia. But it's interesting that in Canada the great political success story of the last year has been the strength of the New Democratic Party, the only party in Canada which is avowedly socialist. What Mr. Buckley will be discussing today is what Canadian socialism is about, and he will be discussing it with an extremely successful Canadian New Democrat, Premier Bob Rae, premier of Ontario. And Ontario is a huge economy by itself. Ontario is a bigger buyer of U.S. goods than Japan. And therefore, what happens in Ontario is important to everybody in North America. Mr. Buckley. HOST: MODERATOR: WILLIAM F. BUCKLEY JR. DONALD COXE MR. BUCKLEY: Premier Rae, we're interested in America, as of course you are here, in the modalities of socialism. A generation or so ago the most prominent socialist in Canada, Mr. Lewis, was rather orthodox: Socialism ought to nationalize sources of production, distribution and wealth. There have been modifications. Could you tell us the extent to which the socialism that you represent is an evolutionized form of socialism over against the orthodox socialism that we grew up with? MR. RAE: Well, first of all, I think that what is common is a commitment to democracy. I mean, I think that the word connotes many different things to different people. The fact that it's been used by, you know, Stalinists of various kinds has meant that it is, I think in North American terms, not always the most popular term to use. But I think what's common in our tradition of social democracy, which is a tradition we share with very important aspects of American life as well as with social democratic parties all over the world, in Germany and France and England and Australia and Sweden, where people have been in and out of government. The evolution that has taken place in our party, as in others, has been a stronger commitment to markets, recognizing that they have a role to play in any modern economy, in any efficient economy; a commitment as well at the same time to social institutions which promote solidarity. I suppose in our case, perhaps the most important is the medicare system which we started in Saskatchewan and which has been taken up by the rest of the country. MR. BUCKLEY: You're going too fast for me. MR. RAE: Sorry. GUEST: SUBJECT: BOB RAE "PREMIER OF ONTARIO RAE, SOCIALIST, AGAINST WILLIAM F. BUCKLEY JR., CONSERVATIVE" FIRING LINE ISproducedand cllrrr tcd i >V WARREN STEIBEL This is a transcript of the Firing Line program taped at McMaster University i~ Hamilton, Ontario, Canada, on December 3, 1991, and telecast later on public television stations. MR. BUCKLEY: I want to ask you this. What is the theoretical linkage between socialism, which is primarily an economic predisposition, and democracy, which is a theory of government? MR. RAE: Well, I think that if, again, you look at it in a practical way, I think the reality is that in the history of social democracy I'm not sure that socialism has been primarily--and certainly in Canada or in England--l'm not sure it has been primarily an economic theory. I think it has a lot to do with moral solidarity, it has a lot to do with 1 Board of Trustees of the Lei nd Stanford Jr. University.

3 community values, it has a lot to do with social institutions. And if you will look at the history of it in our country or the history of it in Europe, the origins of labor and trade union parties across Europe, it has everything to do with democracy. The linkage is the extension of citizenship beyond simple, political forms into its social meaning. So that we talk about the rights of people as they work, the rights of people as they live, the rights of people as they take care of one another in sickness and in health. It seems to me that's the extension of social democracy and that's what it's come to mean today more than at other times. MR. BUCKLEY: It seems to me that's more Raeism than socialism. I welcome it. MR. RAE: Call it what you like. [laughter] MR. BUCKLEY: The overwhelming majority of the people who have lived in this century who call themselves socialists were not democrats. MR. RAE: Oh, sure. MR. BUCKLEY: The people who followed Hitler called themselves socialists; the people who followed Stalin called themselves socialists. And every now and then you get what you call the social democrats. But why do they feel it necessary to add the word "democrat" after the word "socialist"? Because they want to distinguish themselves from most socialists. This-- MR. RAE: But it's also-- Again, to be fair--which I think in this circumstance is important--the first victims of Naziism or of Hitler, among the first victims of Stalin, among the first victims of Lenin have been social democrats, precisely because of their commitment to democracy, of their commitment to a democratic way of life, because of their commitment to freedom of speech, because of their commitment to those basic social values. So I think again to be fair--and I think it's perhaps more widely accepted in Canada than in the United States, where people, I think, have a sense of the contribution, for example, of our own party, whether they vote for it or not, to democratic life and to extending democracy. I think those distinctions are perhaps more firmly entrenched. MR. BUCKLEY: Well, let me ask you a hypothetical question. Suppose that Canada were exercising its democratic prerogatives to vote in provincial governments and a federal government which was very libertarian-minded, didn't like collectivism at all. Now it would be democratic but it would not be socialistic. Which of the two would you say was the appendage that didn't fit? MR. RAE: Oh, I think libertarians can be democrats. Why not? I would argue very strongly that that's a perfectly--in our life today that's a perfectly natural phenomenon. MR. BUCKLEY: But what distinguishes the libertarian philosophy is that they say, "I don't care how many people in this room vote to tax 50 percent of my income, the hell with them. They don't have a right to do that. It's my income and to the extent that I have to contribute for necessary defense or police or for whatever, I will do that, but beyond that, I don't want to participate in those dreamy things that some of you people cook up." That would distinguish a libertarian, wouldn't it, from a socialist? MR. RAE: Well. it would distinguish a libertarian from a great many other people, not JUSt a socialist. [iaughter ; applause) MR. BUCKLEY: The libertarians would be very proud to hear you say. that,. [laughter; applause) because they consider themselves, alas, progress1vely un1que. Historically they were much more important 150 years ago when the general presumption was against the government getting into the act.. But let me 1n tha~ connection ask you a question that Americans would be very 1nteres~ed 1n heanng you talk about. There's a feeling in America that the socialist movement 1n Canada 1s anti American. I'd like to know, is it correct? If so, what are their principal compla1nts, and c) how do we reconcile them? MR. RAE: 1 don't think that Canadian social democracy or Canadian democratic socialism or whatever word you want to use, I don't think its origins are anti-american any more than they are-- MR. BUCKLEY: I didn't say origins. I said-- MR. RAE: No, no, but in its manifestations now or in its expression now, I don't think so. 1 think that obviously the party and the values that we espouse are values that are 1 think close to ones that are very close to Americans. I think that, if I may say so 'when 1 'hear somebody like Mario Cuomo give a speech or have a chance to listen to 'a great many people in the social democratic tradition in American politics, I think if you asked many Canadian New Democrats what they thought of sort o! a New Deal kind of expression of political rhetoric or reality, I th1nk that they would f1n.d themselves very close to it. 1 certainly do. So 1 don't think anti-americani.sm com.es 1nto 1t..1 th1nk that where, not just our party, but where a great many Canad1ans I t.h1nk fe~l qu1te strongly is that we have created here over the last number of centunes a d1ff~re~t political culture where 1 would argue that communitarian values, values of soh.danty, of caring for one another and how we express that in terms of some of our soc1al institutions are stronger than in the United States, which has a much stronger libertarian culture in terms of its orientation and where the gaps, for example, between rich and poor in Canada are less strong than they are in the United States. And there are, you know, there are people-- You can choose-- In a sense you ca~ se~ the, differences between our societies just by traveling around 1n them. I don t th1nk 1t s a question of being anti-american, 1 think it's just a question of bei~g different, t~at's all, just being Canadian. It's like-- 1 don't think it's a question of be1ng ant1-anyth1ng else or anti-anybody else. MR. BUCKLEY: If those gaps between rich and poor are less pronounced tha~ in America, is it that you make the poor less poor or that you make the rich less nch? [laughter I applause] MR. RAE: Well, we have our share of billionaires. I think it's probab!y t~e former rather than the latter in terms of how things are worked through. I th1nk 1f ~ou.'?ok, for example--! keep coming back to the example of medicare, because ' th1nk 1t ~ a very good example of the different public philosophies in our two countnes. I th1nk that that's a good way of looking at what's different about us and how we ha~e done things as opposed to how you have done things. It doesn't r:nake u.s that un~que. I mean, 1 would argue that the United States is one of the few 1ndustnal countnes 2 Board of Trustees of the Le and Stanford Jr. University. 3

4 around the world that doesn't have a stronger sense of public involvement in health insurance, as one example. MR. BUCKLEY: Well, we spend a larger percent of our GNP on health than you do. MR. RAE: Yes, but you also have a whole lot more people who don't have any health insurance. MR. BUCKLEY: Well, that's easier to say than it is to locate. People assume that because there are 35 million Americans who don't have health insurance that there are 35 million Americans who don't have health. That doesn't actually work out that way. I might say, for instance, in all of Canada there are two MRI machines and in America there are 3,000. So does that mean that you're not interested in health at that level? MR. RAE: Well, you would be wrong if you were to say such a thing. MR. BUCKLEY: Well, I got it from a Canadian yesterday. MR. RAE: Well, it happens to be incorrect So that, you know, one can, I think, look at the way in which we've provided health care across Canada and say that we, as a general rule, probably have wider access. We have greater longevity, we have lower infant mortality rates and we have generally speaking a higher standard of public health than is the case in your own country. MR. BUCKLEY: You may be just a healthier race. [laughter] MR. RAE: No, I don't think so. MR. BUCKLEY: You may do more gymnastics in the morning, for all I know. [laughter] MR. RAE: I don't think that will stand up. I doubt that MR. BUCKLEY: But I question the generality that says because you have "free health," you have a greater concern- MR. RAE: Oh, it's not free. MR. BUCKLEY: God knows it's not free. [laughter/applause] MR. RAE: No, it's not free. I know that We, as a government, we spend almost 35 percent of our budget as a provincial government is spent on health care, so it's not free. MR. BUCKLEY: Yes. MR. RAE: There's no illusion about that On the other hand, the cost to employers is less because it's widely shared throughout the community, and it guarantees a wider access to more people. MR. BUCKLEY: Well, it has its advantages and it has its disadvantages. MR. RAE: That's right MR. BUCKLEY: We have 1500 different insurance policies. The result is that the bureaucratic cost of our system is equal to the entire cost of your system. So we spend $113 billion just in filling out forms, which doesn't make a lot of sense to me at all. On the other hand, we are not justified in believing that the kind of satisfaction that our rather lavish health system gives would be met if we were to duplicate your own. The long, long lines of people who wait for elective surgery would be an example. MR. RAE: Again, I think you're working on a number of myths which have been unfortunately perpetrated by those who I think benefit from the perpetration of the myths. But that is another example-- MR. BUCKLEY: Who benefits from that? MR. RAE: Well, I mean the people in the United States, for example, who don't want to have a different kind of system say all kinds of things about our health care system which just aren't true. We have succeeded in our own case, for example, in dramatically reducing waiting periods and waiting times for operations, including ones that are not--you know--that are serious. So-called elective heart surgery, for example, those waiting lists have been reduced dramatically in our own province. The reason, I would argue that the reason that you might not have some lists in the United States is because you have tens of millions of people who aren't even on a list because they don't any health insurance at all. They don't have access to the most basic elements in the system. So sure you don't have a waiting list Nobody is capable of lining up. [applause] MR. BUCKLEY: It seems to me that if that were correct it would be a self-justifying situation, because all 35 million of those people would be dead. [laughter] If you don't get any health care, presumably, you die. MR. RAE: A lot of them would die earlier and would die younger, a lot of their kids would not live past early-early days. I think that evidence is overwhelming. How else do you explain differences in infant mortality rates and things of that kind? I mean, you do pay a price, a society does pay a price for the system that it chooses. We have chosen ours and you have chosen yours and I think that all it proves is that Canada is different, that we've chosen to do things in a different way and I think that this is one of the arguments that I try to use to say, "Well, how is Canada different from the United States?" I would argue that the way in which we care for one another is perhaps a principal example. MR. BUCKLEY: Well, 1 am a little bit skeptical about that It may be that just as you say, that there are propagandists who oppose socialized medicine, so are there propagandists who propound the virtues of socialized medicine. May I remind you one more time that to say that there are 35 million people without health insurance isn't to say there are 35 million without health care. You can get, for $150 a month--. which is well, well below the level of income of people in the poverty level--you can get a health policy in America for an entire family with, to be sure, a $500 deductible. So a lot of people who don't have health care insurance have a different set of priorities. There is nobody in America who doesn't have, for instance, a television set Nobody in America doesn't have a car, and yet we're talking about items that are capital 5

5 expenditures. So a lot of people are careless on the matter of health. Here it's very easy. Everybody has health insurance because they have to get it whether they like it or not. MR. RAE: Gee. I mean, it's interesting to hear you use those arguments because they are just so different than arguments that one would hear within the Canadian political framework. MR. BUCKLEY: I'm sure they are. MR. RAE: I mean, they really are. It's almost like-- With due respect, it's almost like visiting a museum. [laughter/applause) MR. BUCKLEY: The planted axiom of your analysis is that if every Canadian had to pay in exactly what he is in fact paying in for his health insurance, every Canadian would do so, in which event you raise the interesting question, why does it have to be compulsory? If all Canadians would do it anyway, why aren't they permitted to do it anyway? MR. RAE: No, I don't think I ever said that people would do it anyway. MR. BUCKLEY: Well, you say that it sounds strange to your ears that in America there should even be the liberty not to take out health insurance if you want to spend your money differently. MR. RAE: Well, we just-- I think again it's a decision that's been made and it's a decision that's emerged from our political culture, but what's interesting now is that it's a decision that's been made by our country that started with our party in one province and then was adopted by other parties that's now accepted by all the political parties in the political spectrum. Even the most conservative party that's now emerged in our country would-- MR. BUCKLEY: But I don't-- MR. RAE: --the Reform party, has stated its commitment to sort of some of those parts of the system, so I find it, as I say-- MR. BUCKLEY: I don't doubt it's popular. All I'm saying is that an awful lot of people are for it because they really think they are getting free health care. They are in fact, as you and I know, not getting free health care. They are paying for it and they are paying lavishly for it. There is a sense in which I think your system is better than our own because we're spending much more money on health than you are and yet-- MR. RAE: And getting less results. MR. BUCKLEY: --there are these lacunae... MR. RAE: But it's one of those things-- MR. BUCKLEY: I'm sick, by the way. MR. RAE: But I think it's something that Americans should know, that if you look at th1ngs like, ou know, just how long you live, if you look at things like infant mortality r~tes, Amenca doesn't do that well, not only in comparison with us, but in comparison w1th a great many other countries. MR. BUCKLEY: Well, you keep bringing up infant mortality, so let's deal with that. We have a huge minority popula_tion, which you don't have and that minority pop_ulatlon tends to be, many of them, informal in respect of following certain rules of hyg1ene. MR. RAE: Well, 1-- Let me just respond-- MR. BUCKLEY: And if you prescind that figure from the American infant mortality rate, you would find that ours is at least the equal of yours. MR. RAE: Well, again just to bring the argument back to where we're at here in Ca~ada, first of al! we have a multiracial society; second of all, we have a very large nat1ve populat1on 1n terms of-- So that there's a range of people's backgrounds, ways of lif~ that_ are here t_oo. And I think that I'll let Americans deal with your arguments in relat1?nsh1p to Amencan socie~. All I ~ould say is, is that the rights of citizenship in my v1ew and the nghts to public health 1n my view apply to all people, regardless of where they come from and what their racial background is. (applause) MR. BUCKLEY: You can't say anything wrong. Why don't you apostatize and see what happens? [laughter) There's a famous black comedian who said on my program a few months ago, he said, "You know, I love to tour Canada. 1 go up there one month every year and I say to them, 'You know, it's just wonderful to be in Canada. The way you treat your minorities is just terrific. There is no black-white friction here at all.' And he said, "I always get a tremendous cheer, at which point 1 say, 'All three of them."' Now obviously he is exaggerating, but he is at the same time making a serious point. MR. RAE: Well, but it's not a point about contemporary Canada. I mean, 1 would invite you to, you know, take a bus anywhere or get on public transportation in Canada. You'll see people from all walks of life, all backgrounds, all races. We have become--and this is another change which I don't think perhaps Americans are aware of--we have become a multiracial society, particularly here in Ontario. MR. BUCKLEY: Yes. MR. RAE: And I think remarkably successfully, not without its tensions, but successfully the last 25 years. ' MR. RAE: With a lesser result. With a lesser result. MR. BUCKLEY: Oh, I don't know. It may very well be that our healthiest people are healthier than your healthiest p~ople. 1 don't know. [laughter) MR. BUCKLEY: Okay, well let me ask you this. Does the modern face of socialism in Canada resent the multinational corporation, and if so, what aspects of it? 6 7

6 MR. RAE: I think again the performance of capital in the country is of increasing importance to social democrats in our country and indeed around the world and more important than the origin of that capital. I think the problem with the degree of dependence on foreign ownership in Canada is that we've lost out on some basic things like research and development, like the direction of the corporation, the direction of the technology coming from offshore. And so what we're trying to do now--for example, what we're trying to do as a province--is to negotiate more successfully with large foreign investors in making sure that more of that activity is in fact rooted in Canada. MR. BUCKLEY: What forms of hospitality are you showing them? MR. COXE: Mr. Buckley, could I just ask, just before the program ends--and socialists do love to direct the markets, as Mr. Rae's government has changed quite a bit the government's relation to the market. Perhaps before we close you could explore with him briefly the ways in which his government proposes to change the way the market economy functions, from the workplace on through investments. MR. BUCKLEY: Yes. Presumably you're not satisfied with the status quo ante, and therefore you want to do things differently. And I know you've begun by spending a lot more money. [laughter/applause) But this is in anticipation of a growth economy after the recession, right? But now, what market principles practiced by your predecessors do you find especially evil, or mischievous, if you prefer? MR. BUCKLEY: It's the only thing the audience doesn't like. MR. RAE: We're very strong on laws in relationship to employment and pay equity, wh1ch we are very strong advocates of, advocates of affirmative action as it relates to women and native people and visible minorities in the economy. MR. BUCKLEY: That's not a market function either, is it? MR. RAE: No, that's what I'm saying, this is why the marketplace itself hasn't done a very good job in providing better outcomes in terms of wages and access to good jobs in the workplace, so we've, again, we're working now to change the laws in that direction. MR. BUCKLEY: Mr. Premier, if I don't stop right now, we're going to have another client for your health system. [laughter) Thank you very much. MR. RAE: Thank you, sir. Thank you. MR. BUCKLEY: Thank you, ladies and gentlemen of McMaster; thank you, Mr. Coxe. MR. RAE: Well, I don't think it's a question. of evil. I think it's a question of looking, for example, as we have done, in the labor market, for example, improving training, improving the training culture, improving the obligations of companies to provide a stronger culture for training and for apprenticeship. We've done a lot-- MR. BUCKLEY: How is that a market decision? MR. RAE: But the fact is that if you leave it to the market, it just doesn't happen, and that's the question, I think, that was put to me, was how do we try to intervene in the marketplace? So that's a very good example of how we try to intervene in the marketplace. MR. BUCKLEY: Just tell them to make better doctors? MR. RAE: No, it's a matter of getting companies and others to invest more in training and apprenticeship, expand-- MR. BUCKLEY: How do you do that? MR. RAE: --expand apprenticeship programs. MR. BUCKLEY: Pass a law? Say spend more hours? But actually you've cut down on your subsidies to universities, haven't you? [applause) MR. RAE: Well, it's not a matter of cutting down, it's a matter of-- It's a matter of the growth not being as great as some perhaps in this audience would like, and that's only natural. [laughter) 8 9