organized crime, environmental damage // "Social and Health Care Cost Deficit"

What are the root causes of poverty, illiteracy, crime?

Its like asking what are the root causes of disease.  Until we address the causes of poverty, illness, illiteracy and crime, we are fighting a net social loss contest.   And our treasury will fall inevitably into bankruptcy.

So much money is spent on cures, surgeries, medications and research for more and more of the same, so little money is spent on identification of the causes of illness and preventative measures.  For example, what proportion of all the money raised by the Cancer, Heart and Stroke, Diabetes, Mental Illness agencies is spent on identifying the causes of disease and preventative measures?  The sad truth is substanially less than what is spent on cures.

Similarly, we spend a fortune on the so called "war on crime", only to find the problem growing in the trafficking of drugs and people, not to mention corporate crime.  We talk and have some provincial legislation on the seizure of the "proceeds of crime", but those programs do not even pay their own costs of administration.  Our police forces are overcome by "social terrorism", our courts seem hamstrung by a Charter of Rights that appears to pay insufficient concern to the Rights of the Collective and convictions are thwarted, while our jails are bursting and serve mainly to provide training grounds and recruits for organized crime.

What can be done so that we can afford the social & health programs that the sick, homeless, elderly, poor and disabled so desparately need and have a right to expect?

The answers lie in the way we define "crime".  The regulation of "naturally occurring drugs" and the strictest prohibition and punishment of chemically modified and "designer drugs" and a de-coupling of addiction and criminal prosecution are two major strategies that will lead to huge social cost savings and make possible the funding of health and social programs on a sustainable basis.  Failure to inact the needed provincial and federal legislation makes government complicit in the spreading cancer of organized crime in drugs and people trading.

And to complete the "triple bottom line" argument - what are we going to do to mitigate the environmental causes of disease, poverty and crime?