How much should government do?
Much of Social 9 is one question asked about different things: health care, liquor stores, electricity, language, land. Once you can see it, you can place almost any source on a line and predict what its speaker would say next.
Why one question runs through the whole course
Every society decides what it leaves to individuals and what it does together, and no answer is simply correct. Leaving more to markets tends to bring more choice and more reward for effort; doing more together tends to bring more security and more equal outcomes. Each gives up something the other protects.
Canadians answer differently for different things. Alberta sold its government liquor stores in 1993 but still owns a bank, ATB Financial. Every province pays for doctor visits, but none runs the grocery stores. That is not a contradiction: each is a separate decision about the same question.
Seeing the question turns much of Social 9 into one skill: placing a view on a line, then predicting what its speaker would support.
Where it turns up
- Your power bill — Alberta sells electricity through a competitive market; Saskatchewan, Manitoba and Québec rely mostly on Crown corporations — SaskPower, Manitoba Hydro and Hydro-Québec
- A visit to the doctor — in Canada the province pays for medically necessary care; in the United States most working-age people are insured privately, usually through an employer
- A stamp — Canada Post, a federal Crown corporation, charges the same to mail a letter across the street or across the country
- Every election — a platform is largely a list of answers to this question: which taxes to raise or cut, which programs to start, grow or end
- 1. The words, first
- 2. A line, not two boxes
- 3. The tools, from light to heavy
- 4. The values underneath
- 5. Placing a source on the line
- 6. What costs marks
The words, first
The idea: Two pairs to keep apart: market and mixed, and collectivism and collective rights.
| Word | What it means |
|---|---|
| Government intervention | Any government action that changes what buyers and sellers would do if left alone. |
| Market economy | Buyers and sellers decide what is made and what it costs. |
| Command economy | The government decides what is made, how, and for whom. |
| Mixed economy | Markets plus government intervention. Every real economy, including Canada's and the United States'. |
| Regulation | A rule businesses must follow, such as a safety standard. |
| Crown corporation | A business owned by a government. |
| Privatization | Selling a government business or service to private owners. |
| Individualism | The value that puts each person's freedom, choices and responsibility first. |
| Collectivism | The value that puts the group's well-being first, and shares responsibility for it. |
| Collective rights | Not the same thing: rights the Constitution gives to particular groups because of their history, such as official-language minorities and First Nations, Métis and Inuit. |
| Left and right | Shorthand for positions on the line: the left favours more government action, the right less. |
A line, not two boxes
The idea: No country is purely market or purely command. The question is how far along the line — and the answer changes from issue to issue.
Place Alberta three times.
- Groceries: near the market end. Stores compete on price; government sets safety and labelling rules.
- Alcohol: in the middle. Since 1993 private stores sell it, but only under provincial licences and rules.
- Doctor and hospital care: toward the government end. The province pays through public insurance, though most doctors run their own practices and bill the province.
Same province, three points. “Is Canada capitalist or socialist?” is the wrong question; “how much government, on this issue, and why?” is the right one.
The tools, from light to heavy
The idea: Government does not simply act or not act. It has a range of tools, and arguing over which one to use is most of what politics is.
Suppose an invented province decides that too few families can find child care. Its choices run from light to heavy:
- Inform. Publish a list of centres and what they charge.
- Regulate. License centres and set staffing and safety rules.
- Tax or subsidize. Give parents a tax credit, or pay centres to lower fees.
- Provide a program. Offer child care to every family at a set low price, paid for by taxes.
- Own it. Build and run the centres itself.
Someone near the market end would likely stop at step one or two: let parents choose and centres compete. Someone near the government end would go to four or five: child care as a public service, like schools. A source that argues for one step has placed its speaker on the line for you.
The values underneath
The idea: The line is really a disagreement about values: how much weight to give the individual, and how much the group. Most people hold both, and weigh them differently from issue to issue.
Individualism says people are the best judges of their own lives, that effort should be rewarded, and that the more government does, the less each person decides. Collectivism says some risks — illness, losing a job, old age — are better shared, and that a society should be judged by how it treats the people with least.
The same pull in rights. Québec's Bill 101 requires most children of immigrants to attend French-language schools: a collective goal, keeping French strong, limits an individual choice. But keep the words apart. Collectivism is a value about how much a society should share. Collective rights are rights the Constitution gives to particular groups because of their history. Someone who wants small government can fully support treaty rights: a treaty is an agreement between nations, and keeping it is not a left or right position.
Neither end is correct. The course asks you to recognize and assess positions, not adopt one.
Placing a source on the line
The idea: Find the words that show how much the speaker wants government to do, place them, then predict.
Source. Three invented speakers on electricity. Speaker I: “Competition keeps prices honest. Let power companies compete and let families shop around.” Speaker II: “Keep the market, but cap what companies can charge in a cold snap.” Speaker III: “Electricity is as basic as water. It should be run by a public utility, not for profit.”
Placing them. Speaker I is near the market end: competition, shop around. Speaker III is near the government end: public utility, not for profit — a Crown corporation, in other words. Speaker II is in the middle: keep the market, add a regulation.
Predicting. Who would most likely support selling a government-owned power company? Speaker I. Creating one? Speaker III. Whose view is most clearly a mixed-economy position? Speaker II. Many students pick Speaker III for that last one, because Crown corporations are part of Canada's mixed economy — but Speaker III wants electricity out of the market altogether. Speaker II is the one combining the two, which is what “mixed” means.
What costs marks
The idea: Four, and the first is behind most of the others.
- Thinking in two boxes. Canada is not socialist and the United States is not a pure market. Place each issue on the line.
- Treating one end as the right answer. The PAT asks you to identify and assess positions.
- Confusing collective rights with collectivism. One is in the Constitution; the other is a value.
- Forgetting that the United States has social programs. Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid are all government action.