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Canada has never had shared values
Dec. 22, 2011
Canada is a liberal democracy, and like similar societies, it is designed to allow us to get along despite widespread and non-negotiable disagreements over values – that is, over how people should live their lives. Our political institutions, underwritten by constitutional declarations such as the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, don’t assume that citizens have shared values. Instead, they work by providing a framework that is neutral with respect to controversial questions of value. This neutrality is what underwrites our freedoms of expression, of religion, and of association.
Tags: ideology, multiculturalism
Posted in Inclusion Policy Context | No Comments »
Oh, those lucky poor people
Dec. 16, 2011
A little historical perspective can be an excellent way to show people that progress is possible – which is the first step in getting them up and working toward a better world… Consider Attawapiskat. The issue is living conditions and what we can or should do about them. The distant past isn’t relevant to that question. What’s relevant are living conditions elsewhere around the country. They’re far superior – which shows we can easily do better for the people of Attawapiskat. And that’s the only perspective we need.
Tags: ideology, Native, poverty, standard of living
Posted in Equality Debates | No Comments »
Ottawa and provinces should be thinking big
Dec. 14, 2011
… social determinants of health, predictors of the outcomes around illness and the related stresses, help fill our hospitals and increase the strains on health care. A majority of those who live beneath the poverty line do have jobs, often more than one, but still do not earn enough to make ends meet. If our health-care system is to be one where flexibility, access, appropriate care and financial sustainability are real assets in the service of Canadians, it is vital that any new formula for health-care financing take the social determinants of health into account.
Tags: budget, Health, ideology, standard of living
Posted in Health Policy Context | No Comments »
Alienated from what? By whom?
Dec. 8, 2011
A new study… found non-voters are not apathetic or ignorant of the political system… politics only became a source of frustration through unpleasant interactions with political institutions… Is it possible that when it comes to political engagement, most Canadians are… neither alienated nor engaged until they are asked by a social scientist, at which point they just fall back on the default public vocabulary of a broken machinery of government manipulated by knavish politicians.
Tags: participation
Posted in Inclusion Debates | No Comments »
The upside of downloading
Dec. 3, 2011
given the altered incentives created by Paul Martin’s restructuring of transfers, many provinces also reformed their welfare systems to focus on better results and controlling costs. But different provinces focused their attention on different things, tailoring reform to their local circumstances. B.C. focused on time limits on entitlements, Alberta on getting employable young people into work, and Ontario on workfare. This is downloading at work. It was directly responsible for a wave of innovative experimentation by the provinces, freed from Ottawa’s poorly thought-out policy ambitions.
Tags: budget, economy, ideology, standard of living, tax
Posted in Governance Debates | No Comments »
Who are Canada’s one per cent?
October 20, 2011
Individual Canadians who make approximately $200,000 annually in total income are considered in the top one per cent of earners, while $100,000 in annual income will put you in the top five per cent, according to the most recent data from Statistics Canada… the top quintile (20 per cent) of Canadian earners (aged 16 and older) received 51 per cent of total income, while the top two quintiles (40 per cent) of earners made 75 per cent of the total income in Canada… the top one per cent of income earners paid 18 per cent of total taxes in 2004…
Tags: economy, standard of living, tax
Posted in Employment Debates | No Comments »
Occupy this: if you’re living here, you’re already one of the ‘one per cent’
October 18, 2011
North America and Europe, geographic epicentres of the Occupy Wall Street movement, are the fattest of fat cats, globally speaking… adults in North America, Western Europe and a few Asian countries, most notably Japan, together possess almost all the world’s household wealth (a measure of total assets, including real estate, investments and all other property, net of any debt.), about 88 per cent. Everyone else, the majority of the world’s people, share the remaining 12 per cent.
Tags: economy, globalization, ideology, standard of living
Posted in Equality Policy Context | No Comments »
Government can work smarter
July 5, 2011
A shortage of qualified change leaders is another critical constraint stemming from a number of factors: lack of executive development programs on transformation or innovation leadership in the public service; rotation of senior managers out of project management roles before they achieve success; a limited number of innovative projects to lead; and a reliance on external consultants to assume project management roles… Despite these gloomy observations, there is, in fact, a lot of scope for innovation in government.
Tags: ideology, participation, standard of living
Posted in Governance Delivery System | No Comments »
Gender inequality isn’t a ‘women’s issue’
July 5, 2011
… Women’s World participants are seeking to address: problems such as poverty, food insecurity and homelessness, pornography, sex trafficking and war rape, to name just a few. Because at root, these are all challenges – or crimes – of equality. They are symptoms of the bigger issue: the ongoing disenfranchisement of a shocking percentage of the world’s women. And every government that’s not investing significant resources in righting that wrong is negligent, short-sighted and failing to nurture its nation’s true capacity.
Tags: participation, rights, standard of living, women
Posted in Equality Debates | No Comments »
How civil servants serve a hated master
June 30, 2011
the civil service is, in theory, a neutral administrative tool. In reality, of course, civil servants have scruples and ideologies just like the rest of us… Thus, when serving a government whose policies they personally dislike, senior civil servants can’t help but face a powerful ethical choice: lead with enthusiasm, secretly resist, or resign? Economist Albert Hirschman nicely laid out the choices in his classic text, Exit, Voice and Loyalty: keep one’s mouth shut (Loyalty); protest forcefully from within (Voice); or leave (Exit).
Tags: ideology, participation
Posted in Governance Delivery System | No Comments »
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