Earlier this month, The White House released a short video on its Facebook and Twitter pages in which President Barack Obama made a proposal to make community college free for two years of each students’ education. As long as students attend half of the required classes and maintain a 2.5 GPA, they would not have to pay for tuition. His proposal raises important questions regarding the role of the state versus the role of individuals in bearing the cost of education. But, more generally, the proposal would promote greater equality of opportunity in a society stratified along income lines.
The proposal states that the costs of two years in a community college should be shared between the state (25 per cent of the expenses) and the federal government (75 per cent of the expenses). More precisely, it would mean that each student would save up to $3,347, the average cost of two years at community college. Although this amount of money may seem rather small compared to the price of other universities, it would make a significant difference for middle-income and low-income students. Many students in the U.S. graduate with large amounts of debt. Moreover, some students cannot even afford a federal loan. These young people usually register for part-time education in order to be able to also have a job and pay for their education expenses. The proposal would eliminate the need for student loans for community colleges, and would also allow students to attend college full-time. But, more importantly, free education means equality of opportunity. A degree can lead to a better job, better life prospects and possible upward social mobility. Obama himself qualified community colleges as “essential pathways to middle-class,” notably thanks to their flexibility for people who want to improve their education and skills, but have neither the money nor the time to spend on a four-year program at university. Ultimately, making community college free would start to bridge the gap in the education provision and provide a remedy to the growing economic and racial stratification in higher education. Although some journalists, such as Michelle Weis of The Wall Street Journal, argue that this plan is a “dead-end” for improving the overall future prospects of students, this proposal will at least make a difference for middle-class students who will largely benefit from state funding.
Education reform seems to be on the agenda of many governments recently; Obama’s proposal is only one of several policies that we have heard of in the news. On one side of the spectrum, Germany made the huge decision in October 2014 to make education free for all, including international students. Although this shift may seem enormous by North American standards, it is important to remember that Germany was already on that path with a culture of affordable education, and is now part of larger group of European countries with free education. On the other hand, Quebec recently decided to raise tuition fees for French students who previously paid the same amount as Quebec students, displacing the burden of education to students instead of the government. More generally, all these policies fit into the debate about whether taxpayers as a whole, or the individuals themselves, should pay for education. Obama’s proposal is situated on the end of the spectrum, shyly following Germany’s giant steps, and trying to reach to taxpayers’ altruism civic responsibility. As one advocate for public university said, the private university system is “an incomprehensible repudiation of the whole philosophy of a successful democracy premised upon an educated citizenry.” When people do not have the same opportunities, they do not have the same potential to achieve the “American Dream.”

Charlie is the hero of the freedom of the press. Charlie has, rightfully, taken freedom of speech to its very limits, pushing past the boundaries of political correctness. Charlie is a martyr. This has been the prevailing narrative since the shooting at Charlie Hebdo.

But Charlie is not a supporter of freedom from discrimination or freedom of religion. Charlie wrongly equates freedom of expression with freedom from consequence.

On Jan. 7, two gunmen took 12 lives at the offices of Charlie Hebdo, a French satirical magazine. The suspects have been identified as Islamic extremists who sought revenge for the magazine’s many infamous portrayals of Muhammad and the Islamic tradition, such as the cartoon depicting the Prophet Muhammad naked, and a cover cartoon featuring Muhammad kissing a Charlie Hebdo staff member.

Since the shootings, people across the Western world, including many high-profile politicians and celebrities, have condemned the actions of the terrorists and proclaimed “#jesuisCharlie.”

Sending out a quick tweet proclaiming “#jesuisCharlie” is easy. It is harder to give some thought into why we are mourning. The inexcusable murders of the Charlie Hebdo staff members have been taken and shaped into the symbol of free speech and freedom of the press. #JesuisCharlie mourns not the individuals who were killed, but rather the idea they seemingly symbolize. Charlie Hebdo is the representation of a modern era Marianne–the embodiment of liberty and reason.

But is this an accurate portrayal of Charlie?

My argument is not that the editorial choices of Charlie Hebdo should have been subdued, but that there is a greater complexity that should not be filtered in black-and-white: Making a martyr out of Charlie Hebdo actually hurts liberty.

Charlie Hebdo is not a high-minded, highbrow publication with the purpose of fighting for freedom. Its staff members have claimed that the magazine’s intent is to satirize the follies of politicians, institutions, and religions, just about anybody or anything. As George Packer of the New Yorker so vehemently declared, “Charlie Hebdo had been nondenominational in its satire, sticking its finger into the sensitivities of Jews and Christians, too—but only Muslims responded with threats and acts of terrorism.”

But to use the fact that many religions were ridiculed as a defense of Charlie Hebdo’s content is to misunderstand the underlying situation in which the incident took place and to hide behind a thin veil of humour. The purpose behind satire is to raise unheard voices and to question the loudest voices through comedic means. But whose voice does Charlie Hebdo champion? Is it noble to scream, “Mock everything!” with no intention of addressing the fact that some groups are more privileged than others?

The French republican tradition is secular: A large part of the French Revolution was to separate the state from the church, which had ties to every aspect of public life. Secularism in France differs from secularism here in North America, as it insists on having no religion rather than accepting all religions. This is illustrated, for example, in the ban on burqas in France.

The end of French colonialism in the mid-20th century has also brought in many Muslim immigrants into France, and for the most part, they still face systematic discrimination. The reality is that Muslims in France are vulnerable to prejudice in a way that the majority isn’t.

To make a crude comparison, Charlie is the schoolyard bully making fun of the vulnerable, and then justifying it by saying, “I make fun of everyone–can’t you take a joke?”

Civil liberties like freedom from discrimination and freedom of religion are taken for granted by the in-group, and taken away from the minority–Muslims in France. Nothing can justify what the gunmen did, but making Charlie Hebdo a spokesperson for the cause of liberty is not completely accurate. Freedom of expression does not mean freedom from consequence. Charlie Hebdo’s publications served to exacerbate anti-Muslim and anti-Arab sentiments in an already hostile environment. Its words and drawings perpetuate a society and culture that enforces the status quo. You can condemn the actions of the terrorists and disagree with the content Charlie Hebdo puts out at the same time. To make Charlie a martyr is to ignore the wider context in which the events played out.

In the debate over health care reform in Canada, defenders of the status quo often resort to the tired claim that a greater role for competition, private financing, or private provision of health care services in Canada would mean the ‘Americanization’ of health care. Indeed, the claim is often made that proponents of private financing and delivery with the universal Medicare system are recommending the United States’ approach to health care policy in which only the rich can have access to top quality care, a highly deceptive and misleading argument.

Most people arguing for a greater role for private financing and delivery of health care in Canada are not recommending the adoption of a U.S. style health care system. All Canadians should agree that it is in the national interest to have a high- quality universal access health care system regardless of ability to pay.

The U.S. is a straw man comparison and is not a model for any country to reform its own nation’s health care system on. In addition to its high costs, the U.S. also fails to deliver coverage to millions of its citizens. However, while Canadian health care is better than the system (or lack thereof) that exists in the U.S., it actually performs relatively poorly compared to other developed nations that provide universal health care.

The question Canadians must ask is how to best organize health care policy in Canada to better deliver on the promise of high quality care provided in a timely fashion regardless of ability to pay at reasonable cost to the taxpayer. The facts show clearly that Canada’s government breaks that promise on a daily basis despite asking Canadians to pay for the developed world’s second most expensive universal access health care system.

Notably, in spite of those comparatively high expenditures, Canadians receive relatively poor access to physicians and medical technologies, and are cared for using far too many old and outdated pieces of medical equipment. Canadians also have to live through the agony of some of the longest waiting times in the developed world.

Austria, Belgium, France, Germany, Japan, Luxembourg, and Switzerland all deliver health care services without waiting lists that are excessively long, while still providing treatment regardless of ability to pay.

Australia, Japan, Sweden, Switzerland, and France all manage to outperform Canada in outcomes closely related to the performance of the health care system. According to the Fraser Institute, a Vancouver-based market-oriented think tank, Canada performs worse than these other nations on indicators that range from infant mortality to breast cancer survival rates.

Critically, every one of these nine nations employs competition in the delivery and financing of health care and requires patients to share in the cost of the care consumed to the benefit of both patients and the public treasury.

More specifically, each of these nations employs private providers in the delivery of publicly funded health care services, employs a private parallel health care sector that individuals can access easily, and requires cost sharing or user fees for universally accessible health care services.

According to organizations like the World Health Organization and the respected health policy think tank the Commonwealth Foundation, all the above-mentioned nations achieve better health care outcomes at a lower cost than Canada.

The claim that employing private financing and provision of health care in Canada would lead to the ‘Americanization’ of health care is not based on facts. The truth is that employing these policies would improve the state of health care in this country and make Canada’s universal health care system much more like those in Sweden, Switzerland, or Japan. Universal health care is rightly a Canadian value. Yet this does not mean the system is perfect. The failure of the Canadian model to deliver a quality of service on par to other developed nations means that we must move away from our obsession with comparing ourselves to the U.S. and learn from our global peers who seem better able to balance the twin goals of equity and efficiency in health care.