Linda McQuaig is a Canadian journalist, columnist and non-fiction author. Long a business reporter at the Globe and Mail, she subsequently wrote a column for the National Post before moving to her current job at the Toronto Star. She first came to national prominence in 1989 for uncovering the Patti Starr Affair, where a community leader was found to have used charitable funds for the purpose of lobbying the goverment. McQuaig was awarded the National Newspaper Award for her work on this story.
She is currently best known for her series of books challenging Canada's departure from the principles of universal social programs towards an American model of strict means-based programs. She came to prominence with her best-selling 1993 book The Wealthy Banker's Wife , which refuted the argument that universal social programs such as the child welfare benefit (which had recently been discontinued) could be less expensive if funds were not paid to well-off people (such as the wife in the title). McQuaig exposed that in Western Europe, such programs were common and even the Queen of the Netherlands received the benefit when she had minor children.
This theme was explored further in her 1995 book Shooting the Hippo , which argued against the proposition that goverments facing deficits should cut spending rather than raising taxes on the wealthy. Her thesis was that additional taxation was just as valid a solution to budget crisises as spending cuts, and that in many cases deficit spending was justified to ensure the survival of programs that provided citizens with minimum benefits.
In her 1998 book, The Cult of Impotence , McQuaig challenged assumptions about the effect of globalization on industrial economies and the argument that market forces could not be controlled by government intervention. She argued that attempts to rein in inflation because of the largely theoretical benefits to economic growth from zero inflation were actually causing high unemployment and that a move towards moderate inflation and high employment would naturally raise government revenues and reduce government welfare spending.
In All You Can Eat, McQuaig challenged the system of regressive taxation that led to the unequalled accumulation of wealth by the top 1% of the Canadian population since the early 1980s. Her proposition was that by cutting taxes and government benefits, the wealthy had benefitted primarily at the cost of the less advantaged, including the middle class, whose real wages and wealth had barely grown during that period of time.
Her latest book, It's The Crude Dude , is an investigation of United States foreign policy from the assumption that it acts in order to secure its supply of petroleum products, particulary in light of the recent actions of the United States in Iraq.
In Popular Culture
In the CBC comedy The Newsroom, she played herself as a guest to discuss her book Shooting the Hippo. This led to this exchange:
- Jim Walcott (clueless pretty-boy anchorman): "I really am enjoying reading your book Shooting the Hippo, but tell me, why did you give it that title?"
- McQuaig: "I explained that on the first page of the book."
By the end of the show, she storms off in a huff when she finds out that the producers of the show have asked conservative commentator Hugh Segal to appear for "balance".
She was famously criticized by Conrad Black who once commented that she deserved to be "horsewhipped". He later hired her as a columnist when he owned the National Post.
External Link
Toronto Star (registration required)
