Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
The Pacific Rim and the Neo-Liberal Era
The state's active interventions in Chinatown, both during the urban
renewal and freeway conflicts of the 1960s and also through the
government-community partnerships of the 1970s, pointed to the rise of
public objectives that could not be reduced to economic indicators alone.
The 1970s reflected the high tide of the Canadian welfare state that had
been swelling through the post-1945 economic boom (Lemon 1993). The
number of social workers, for example, tripled in Canada during the 1960s
and almost tripled again in the 1970s. But oil shocks, economic slowdown
and a growing federal deficit brought that period to a close, and opened the
door to a neo-liberal ascendancy in the 1980s which if less precipitous in its
re-direction than that of the Reagan-Thatcher hegemony, led to a new
emphasis on markets, and in particular to finding new markets. So in the
1980s the Pacific Rim assumed a high profile, men with a mission travelled
there, and the
Globe and Mail
covered their hopes and exploits.
The confident decade of new beginnings from the late 1960s to the late
1970s had seen new political alignments at all three levels of government in
Vancouver. Federally, the Liberal Trudeau administrations maintained an
activist and generally progressive regime. In British Columbia, Social
Credit, the right wing governing party, was defeated in 1972 and for the
first time a social democratic opposition, the New Democratic Party (NDP)
was elected, while the same year at the municipal level a long-incumbent
right wing pro-business alliance in Vancouver was also toppled and replaced
by a new left-liberal party (Ley 1980). Government spending on social pro-
grammes rose significantly. But no sooner was the welfare state in full bloom
than its radiance began to fade. Recessions following the OPEC oil shocks
of the 1970s challenged revenue-expenditure balances. Substantial deficits
appeared in the annual budget; the net federal debt rose by 25 percent in
1977-78 and another 25 percent the following year (Government of Canada
2006). Existing social and fiscal policy was no longer sustainable. A neo-
conservative sentiment began to call for state cutbacks and taxation relief.
Surprisingly, the Conservative government in the 1980s under the leader-
ship of Prime Minister Brian Mulroney moved much slower than President
Reagan in initiating across the board cutbacks to the welfare state (Lightman
and Irving 1991). So the federal debt continued to rise to a peak of over
$600 billion in 1996-97, and it was left to the Liberal Chrétien administra-
tions to slash social programmes, a full decade after 'Reaganomics' had
undertaken the task in the United States. Growing social inequality in
market income was evident through the 1980s and only a progressive model
of taxation and wealth transfers kept the gap between rich and poor politi-
cally manageable (Yalnizyan 1998; Federation of Canadian Municipalities
