More of the same. (Comments).

The recent Speech from the Throne is supposed to signal Prime Minister Jean Chretien's renewed interest in social issues. It also marks the approaching end of his career as a federal politician.

The speech is a broad statement of the government's intentions. We are told to wait for the specific legislation to be tabled in the House of Commons. However, The Prime Minister must explain some of the wording in that document before we drift unwittingly into some very dubious programs.

The speech contains vague references to "intellectual property framework." In the past 12 years, amendments to intellectual property laws provided modest protection for artists and writers, but they handed major benefits to the the pharmaceutical industry. Each change has lengthened and strengthened their patents, giving the drug companies a large draw on private and public health expenditure. Because of these laws, the cost of prescription drags are the fastest rising expenditure in our health care system. Changes in medical care and shorter hospital stays are shifting a large part of the drug expenditures from the public health care system onto individuals and families.

The speech also refers to "targeted" income programs. In the past, this term has too often produced restrictive rules that eliminate needy people from the very social programs that should assist them. We should pay close attention to the targeting that the federal government will be negotiating with the provinces as social programs change.

We find the Prime Minister's use of the expression "welfare trap" deeply troubling. This term has been used by people advocating the most restrictive to and punitive approaches, who want to "liberate" welfare recipients by regulating and defining them out of the system. The increase in homelessness is in part, related to this liberation program. The federal and provincial governments have been caught in a "vision trap" which prevents them finding more creative approaches to people dependent upon social assistance.

No reference was made to the "homelessness trap". The government is continuing to fund shelters but is taking no serious or imaginative initiative in dealing with the long-term housing needs of low income people. We view with cynicism the shelters-only policy: it is a cheap, short-term approach to a long-term, festering problem. If enough shelters are built, it will doubtless enable local authorities to force the homeless off the streets and out of tent cities without violating their rights under the Charter Rights and Freedoms, but it will not address the fundamental problem of affordable housing.

The short-term thinking will place these people out of sight and out of mind, and no further need to worry. No one need pay attention to the fact that homelessness is the extreme end of a continuum resulting from reductions in social programs, including income security, job training, mental health, addiction, youth, unemployment insurance, and finally, the failure of every level of government to assure an adequate supply of affordable housing.

We are told that Prime Minister Jean Chretien wants this sitting of Parliament to be the culmination of his 40 years in the House, his "legacy." References to Chretien's service in Ottawa remind us that he arrived on the federal scene when a rich variety of new health and social programs were developing and expanding under the Prime Ministership of both Lester Pearson and Pierre Trudeau. However, in the last years of the Trudeau government, Ottawa began to retreat from its initial vision. Chretien was there through all of it as a cabinet minister.

Following on the path opened up by his immediate predecessor, Brian Mulroney, Jean Chretien rapidly expanded the cuts in federal participation in health and social programs. Programs in housing and income maintenance were cut sharply. Funding for health services were reduced so drastically, that the federal government is close to losing its authority to enforce the Canada Health Act on the provinces.

In some respects, we are heading back to the beginning of Chretien's political career. As then, many provinces are balking at the conditions of the Act, and looking to return to the mix of private and public health care that existed back in the 1960s that left large numbers of Canadians unprotected or with inadequate health insurance. Some progress!

If Chretien wants to leave a legacy that he can take some pride in, he should be ready to consider programs that have a broader impact than those now being proposed, and he should be prepared to allocate the kind of funding that will assure a strong role for Ottawa as a partner with the provinces in developing and implementing the kinds of social policy and programs that are necessary to bring Canada forward into the 21st century. That will be a legacy worth talking about.--L.K.