The Lindsay Advocate

All eyes are on Chrystia Freeland now as Canada’s finance minister gets set to table the nation’s first budget in two years. Here are a few things we hope to see.

Basic income: The Liberals’ own grassroots and many MPs are interested in this forward-thinking policy, as are the NDP and Green Party. This policy would be the linchpin in a plan to eliminate poverty. Time to put faith in an upstream policy – getting to the source of social policy ills, which is often income -- that will prevent poverty and poor health.

Pharmacare: Universal pharmacare is the missing piece of Tommy Douglas’s Medicare legacy. We want everyone to have access to a common list of drugs and free from co-pays.

Roderick Benns

Pandemics force us to take stock of our values in society; they clarify our sense of mortality and reveal how strong or weak our social fabric is.

More sensitized to our common humanity now, we must organize our economy to care for one another better.

What has been exposed in 2020 is that our current economy does not serve the needs of the majority in our society.

The social fabric has been torn; too many people are being left behind in poverty, including right here in Kawartha Lakes.