Focus on Economics and the Canadian Bishops

The Canadian Conference of Catholic Bishops (Episcopal Commission for Social Affairs) is to be congratulated for its recent report, Ethical Reflections on the Economic Crisis.

If there were any doubt about it before, there can be none now: our double digit unemployment rate is evidence not only of an economic crisis, but, as the bishops say, of a "basic moral disorder." When 1.5 million people out of a labour force of slightly less than 12 million cannot find a job, in large part because of the economic policies pursued by government, this is not only an economic problem, but a moral problem as well.

It took the moral authority of the Canadian Bishops to point this out in a way that cannot be overlooked, and to focus our concern on the plight of the downtrodden. Their statement is dramatic, compassionate and deeply ethical in its concern for our economy and its people.

The purpose of this Focus paper is to delve more deeply into the structural anomalies which are responsible for the difficulties to which the bishops have drawn our attention.