The Equal Opportunity program in the Canadian province of New Brunswick was created to ensure equal services would be provided to citizens in all parts of the province regardless of the wealth in the area.
Prior to the implementation of this program, New Brunswick's health and education systems were governed and funded by county governments. The result was far superior social systems in cities and other rich areas.
Liberal Louis Robichaud had grown up in a poor, rural community on New Brunswick's east coast and set out to change this when he became Premier in 1960.
Under Equal Opportunity, county governments were dissolved and the province assumed responsibility for education and health care.
Famous quotes containing the words equal, opportunity and/or program:
“The influx of women into paid work and her increased power raise a woman’s aspirations and hopes for equal treatment at home. Her lower wage and status at work and the threat of divorce reduce what she presses for and actually expects.”
—Arlie Hochschild (20th century)
“The peculiar evil of silencing the expression of an opinion is, that it is robbing the human race; posterity as well as the existing generation; those who dissent from the opinion, still more than those who hold it. If the opinion is right, they are deprived of the opportunity of exchanging error for truth: if wrong, they lose, what is almost as great a benefit, the clearer perception and livelier impression of truth, produced by its collision with error.”
—John Stuart Mill (1806–1873)
“Utah is the only State that gives condemned men a choice between death by hanging or before a firing squad. Most prisoners prefer the firing squad, but one obstinate convict in 1912 elected to be hanged because “hanging is more expensive to the state.””
—State of Utah, U.S. public relief program (1935-1943)