Archive for the ‘Governance’ Category
Stephen Harper promised accountable government but hasn’t delivered
May 12 2012
Harper used the words “accountable” and “accountability” no fewer than 10 times on the first page of the manifesto…. This is political sleight-of-hand and message control, and it appears to be an accelerating trend. These shabby tactics keep Parliament in the dark, swamp MPs with so much legislation that they can’t absorb it all, and hobble scrutiny. This is not good, accountable, transparent government. It is not what Harper promised to deliver.
Tags: ideology, participation, rights, standard of living
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You can talk about efficiency, but you can’t hide the axe
May. 11, 2012
The line is that budget cuts of $4-billion will not affect service to Canadians, but rather can be absorbed by (the following words are in the budget): rationalizing, consolidating, integrating, streamlining, refocusing, reconfiguring, modernizing, realigning and everywhere seeking efficiencies… Doubtless, efficiencies can be found and should be pursued. But there are not $4-billion of them to be found. Only if governments stop doing things can such sums be saved, which is what is happening…
Tags: budget, ideology, participation, standard of living
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Norway using oil money wisely
May 09 2012
The paradox is that Norway does not use the benefits of its oil reserves to fund the costs of government and of social programs, including education… The Norwegian government, with citizen support, has decided to fund its social programs with high levels of taxation. At the same time, as McQuaig indicates, Norway manages “to compete effectively in the global economy.” Norway, using proportional representation and electing large numbers of women, has good forward-looking government. Canada does not. Norwegian students and citizens benefit, Canadians do not.
Tags: economy, ideology, standard of living, tax
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An accountable act
May 05, 2012
Although this bill on its own won’t undo the damage of the Indian Act, it helps to address one of the fundamental problems on many native reserves today — a lack of accountability for taxpayers’ dollars spent… This legislation is meant to deal with the worst of the worst, so individual band members can ask their leaders where the money went when the water isn’t running, the heat isn’t turned on, or the school isn’t being built. It’s a direct way of empowering natives to question their leaders, without fear of reprisal.
Tags: Native, poverty, rights, standard of living
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Stealth and misdirection are constants of Harper’s majority
May 3, 2012
The recent budget… signals “the crushing of the progressive state,” conjuring images of “the ’20s and ’30s, a time of massive inequality and personal vulnerability which presaged the Great Depression… The policy direction has firmed up, perceptibly… What has not changed is the refusal to explain what it is doing, still less why. All is stealth and indirection, surprise and ambiguity, as before. Big changes, when they happen, are done suddenly, casually, without warning or justification, as if they were of no importance: buried deep in an omnibus bill
Tags: budget, featured, ideology, participation, rights, standard of living
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StatsCan, or StatsCan’t?
May 2, 2012
Just two months ago, economists and policy wonks were cheering the news that Statistics Canada, the much lauded government statistics office, had eliminated fees for its online databanks, making millions of figures available for free. Now the quantity of that data is under threat from the biggest budget cuts in recent memory… Nearly half of the agency’s 5,700 staff have received the layoff notices… Three-quarters of the savings would come from cutting programs, meaning fewer surveys, less data and less analysis.
Tags: budget, ideology, participation, rights, standard of living
Posted in Governance Delivery System | 1 Comment »
Taxing Times
May 1, 2012
$38 billion – That’s how much less Canadians now pay in individual income tax compared to 2000… $19 billion – That’s how much less Canadians pay now in sales taxes compared to 2000. Since the Harper government cut the GST by two points in 2007, the average annual revenue loss to the treasury is about $12 billion… $18 billion – That’s how much less corporations pay now in Canadian taxes compared to 2000… 49.5% – Ontario’s marginal tax rate once the new tax hike on the highest income earners kicks in. In the 1950s, the ’60s and early ’70s the marginal tax rate (including federal and provincial) for this income range was 80 per cent.
Posted in Governance Policy Context | No Comments »
Bill C-38 shows us how far Parliament has fallen
Apr 30, 2012
The bill runs to more than 420 pages. It amends some 60 different acts, repeals half a dozen, and adds three more, including a completely rewritten Canadian Environmental Assessment Act. It ranges far beyond the traditional budget concerns of taxing and spending, making changes in policy across a number of fields from immigration… to telecommunications… to land codes on native reservations… It is what is known as an omnibus bill. If you want to know how far Parliament has fallen, how little real oversight it now exercises over government, this should give you a clue.
Tags: ideology, participation
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Harper unbound: An analysis of his first year as majority PM
Apr. 28, 2012
For most of Canada’s history the Liberals and the Progressive Conservatives did not differ fundamentally in political philosophy. Each attempted to broker competing regional, linguistic and class interests. A third, values-based party, the NDP, camped out on the left. But Stephen Harper’s Conservative Party is infused with his own dedication to economic and social conservatism. Rather than being a brokerage party, it is values based. Eventually, a progressive coalition will rise to challenge it, making national politics a two-party, values-based contest. That progressive coalition could form around the NDP or the Liberals – or it could emerge from a merger of the two.
Tags: ideology
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Harper’s revolution missing in action
April 28, 2012
Very simply: there is nothing, not a line in Budget 2012, that could arguably not have been introduced by a Liberal Party led by a John Manley (minister of everything during the Chretien years), or a Frank McKenna (former premier of New Brunswick) – in other words, by conservative Liberals… There is one area, arguably, where the Tories are doing things in a way that looks and feels quite different… That is its handling of federal-provincial relations, which hurls entire areas of provincial jurisdiction, previously seized by Ottawa, back at the provinces. But even here, the concept is not new or particularly radical…
Tags: ideology
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