Tommy Douglas: 'All my life, I've wished that it were possible that I could attend my own funeral', Resignation as NDP Leader - 1971

24 April 1971, Ottawa, Canada

All my life, I've wished that it were possible that I could attend my own funeral and listen to the eulogies that would be made on my behalf, but I knew that this would be extremely difficult as I'd have to be dead.

Laurier LaPierre and his committee have made it possible maybe for me to listen to the eulogies without the disadvantage of having passed on to another world, but never in my wildest dreams did I expect to have eulogies delivered by such talented and eloquent spokesmen, and I would like to thank Pierre Berton, this noted author and outstanding radio personality, and to say that I know of no one in Canada from whom I would appreciate this tribute more than from this man.

I want to assure you that my wife, Irma, and myself are deeply touched by these tributes that we are profoundly grateful for this occasion. I am glad that you included Irma because, as someone has said, "Behind every successful man, there's a surprised mother-in-law," and I have been fortunate that in all my political career I've had someone who has helped me and encouraged me, and tonight I'm glad that you are paying tribute to her.

I want to say to Grant Notley that I am not saying goodbye either. I propose to stay in the House of Commons until the next election. Our supporters in the Nanaimo-Cowichan Islands have done me the great honour of nominating me to contest the next federal election and, if God gives me strength and the electorate give votes, I'll be here fighting at the same old stand for the things in which you and I believe.

But, tonight, my wife, Irma, and I did not come here so much to receive your thanks, although we are deeply grateful for it. We have come tonight to thank you, to thank the hundreds of thousands of people you represent who have made anything we have done possible.

I think of the men and women who 35 years ago and more dreamed the impossible dream, men and women who lived beyond the lean horizon of their years, who believed devoutly that it was possible to have a more humane and a more just society, and who gave up their time and their money and their energy to begin building it.

Tthe men and women who travelled in all kinds of weather and in all kinds of vehicles, who went from schoolhouse to schoolhouse organising, raising money, who canvassed from door to door, who passed out literature, who manned the polls, who drove cars on election day, you who are here and thousands whom you represent. These are the men and women to whom we should be profoundly grateful.

I feel tonight a great flow of gratitude to them, and I'm filled with wonder that I, raised in a working class home on the wrong side of tracks in the city of Winnipeg should have been given the opportunity by the working people of this country to make a contribution to the public life of Canada, which I hope will long endure.

If I were asked to sum up for the people of Canada and for the New Democratic Party what I have learned from more than a third of a century in public life, I would sum it up by saying to them that it is possible in this country of ours to build a society in which there will be full employment, in which there will be a higher standard of living, in which there will be an improved quality of life while at the same time maintaining a reasonable stability in the cost of living.

We don't have to have three quarters of a million unemployed. We don't have to choose between unemployment and inflation.

My message to you is that we don't have to do this. My message to you is that we have in Canada the resources, the technical know-how and the industrious people who could make this a great land if we were prepared to bring these various factors together in building a planned economy dedicated to meeting human needs and responding to human wants.

Mr. Coldwell and I have seen it happen. In 1937, when the CCF proposed in the House of Commons a $500-million program to put single unemployed to work, the minister of finance said, "Where will we get the money?"

Mr. [inaudible 00:08:21] asked the same question today. My reply at that time was that if we were to go to war, the minister would find the money, and it turned out to be true.

In 1939, when we declared war against Nazi Germany, for the first time, we used the Bank of Canada to make financially possible what was physically possible. We took a million men and women and put them in uniform. We fed and clothed and armed them. The rest of the people of Canada went to work. The government organised over a hundred ground corporations. We manufactured things that had never been manufactured before. We gave our farmers and fishermen guaranteed prices, and they produced more food than we'd ever produced in peacetime. We built the third largest merchant navy in the world and we manned it. In order to prevent profiteering and inflation, we fixed prices, and we did it all without borrowing a single dollar from outside of Canada.

My message to the people of Canada is this, that if we could mobilise the financial and the material and the human resources of this country to fight a successful war against Nazi tyranny, we can if we want to mobilise the same resources to fight a continual war against poverty, unemployment and social injustice.

Fifty years ago, the founder of our movement, J.S. Woodsworth, wrote a pledge. That pledge has been the beacon star of my life, and I pass it on to those of you who must continue the building of this movement, and I hope you'll make it your pledge.

J.S. Woodsworth wrote, "We pledge ourselves to united efforts in establishing on the earth an era of justice, truth and love. May our faces be to the future. May we be the children of that brighter and better day which even now is beginning to dawn. May we not impede, but rather cooperate with those spiritual forces which we believe are impelling the world upward and onward, for our supreme task is to make our dreams come true, to transform our city into the holy city and to make this land in reality God's own country."

Thank you.

Tommy Douglas: 'Don't ever let them tell you we can't afford healthcare', 50th Anniversary NDP Convention - 1983

1 July 1983, Regina, Saskatchewan, Canada

Douglas is the most famous liberal reformer in Canadian political history. He retired from parliament in 1979. He returned to the 1983 NDP convention to give this inspiring speech .

The second is, again, it's been mentioned, to save Medicare from subtle strangulation. When you go back to your constituency and you run into somebody who says, "It's a good idea for you soft package humanitarians, but we can't afford it," let me give you a simple statistic which you can put down on a piece of paper and carry in your head.

That is that our friends in United States are spending 9% of their gross national product. They got a higher per capita gross national product than we do. They spend 9% of their gross national product on healthcare, and 34 million of their people have no healthcare coverage.

In Canada, we spend 7% of our gross national product, and every man, woman, and child in Canada is covered under Medicare.

I want to warn you as one who started out even before I was in politics, dedicated to the idea of comprehensive health insurance. Fought for it through all my political life.

I want to say to you that Medicare and hospital insurance are already marked for destruction, unless you stop the per capita taxes and the extra billing, which most of the governments of Canada are now permitting.

Someone said, "But what I'm going to do, what I'm going to do." A per capita tax which is levied without any basis of ability to pay. A woman in Ontario with two children, having to pay over $50 a month, $600 a year, can she afford that? That's levied on a per capita basis, not on the basis of ability to pay.

I know you need money to run Medicare. I can tell you something about the cost of that. But if we need money for Medicare or for any other humane service, let it be financed on the basis of ability to pay, and not on so much per head.

We must fight as we have never fought before.

To say per capita tax for healthcare, out the window. To say there must be no extra billing or extra charges.

You say, "Why? What harm does it do?" I'll tell you what harm it does.

It means that increasingly the people who can afford to pay the per capita tax is going up, just gone up in Alberta. People who are going to afford to pay per capita tax, and the people who are going to afford to pay extra billing will pay it.

They will get the best care, they will get the most experienced surgeons and physicians, they will get into the best hospitals.

The people who can't pay, they'll take what's left. If you want a two-tiered health program, then just continue the way we're going.

I remind you that in this movement, we pledged ourselves 50 years ago, that we would provide healthcare for every man, woman, and child, irrespective of their colour, their race, or their financial status.

By God, we're going to do it.

Tommy Douglas: 'My friends, watch out for the little fellow with an idea' The Story of Mouseland', political allegory - 1944

First broadcast by CBC, 1944, Canada

Story was written by Clarence Gillis, one of Douglas' close friends. Douglas made it famous.

This is the story of a place called Mouseland. Mouseland was a place where all the little mice lived and played. Were born and died. And they lived much as you and I do. They even had a parliament. And every four years they had an election. They used to walk to the polls and cast their ballot. Some of them even got a ride to the polls. They got a ride for the next four years afterward too. Just like you and me. And every time on election day, all the little mice used to go to the ballot box and they used to elect a government. A government made up of big black fat cats.

Now if you think it’s strange that mice should elect a government made up of cats. You just look at the history of Canada for the last ninety years and maybe you’ll see they weren’t any stupider than we are.

Now I am not saying anything against the cats. They were nice fellows; they conducted the government with dignity. They passed good laws. That is, laws that were good for cats.

But the laws that were good for cats weren’t very good for mice. One of the laws said that mouse holes had to be big enough so a cat could get his paw in. Another law said that mice could only travel at certain speeds so that a cat could get his breakfast without too much physical effort.

All the laws were good laws for cats. But oh, they were hard on the mice. And life was getting harder and harder. And when the mice couldn’t put up with it anymore they decided something had to be done about it. So they went en masse the polls.

They voted the black cats out. They put in the white cats. The white cats had put up a terrific campaign. They said all that Mouseland needs is more vision.  They said the trouble with Mouseland is those round mouse holes we’ve got. If you put us in we’ll establish square mouse holes. And they did. And the square mouse holes were twice as big as the round mouse holes. And now the cat could get both his paws in. And life was tougher than ever.

And when they couldn’t take that anymore they voted the white cats out and put the black ones in again. And then they went back to the white cats, and then to the black, they even tried half black cats and half white cats. And they called that coalition. They even got one government made up with up cats with spots on them. They were cats that tried to make a noise like a mouse but they ate like a cat.

You see my friends the trouble wasn’t with the colour of the cats. The trouble was that they were cats. And because they were cats they naturally look after cats instead of mice.

Presently there came along one little mouse who had an idea. My friends watch out for the little fellow with an idea. He said to the other mice. “Look fellows why do we keep electing a government made up of cats, why don’t we elect a government made up of mice?” Oh, they said, he’s a Bolshevik. So they put him in jail. But I want to remind you that you can lock up a mouse or a man but you can’t lock up an idea.