Democracy Is Under Siege Globally. Canada Is Being Tested
Finkelstein preached that you didn’t need a vision to win in politics, just good polling that revealed what people were against. Once that was established, the goal became tying the unpopular thing — immigration, carbon tax, inflation — to a flesh and blood political “enemy.” … The idea was to avoid talking about your own positions and policies, the better to demonize your opponent. The objective was not to sell yourself but rather to destroy your opponent… repeating simplistic slogans… “Axe the tax.” “Not worth the price.” “Everything is broken.”
Child & Family
Seniors’ Care Surge will require Smart Policies
Among the key recommendations: (i) provinces should invest in public home and community care while also considering mechanisms to expand the private provision of these services; (ii) Ontario and other provinces should consider providing a refundable tax credit for senior renters to access retirement homes and supportive services and; (iii) current capacity and fiscal constraints mean that expanding both publicly and privately funded options will be necessary.
Justin Trudeau announces national school food program amid rising grocery prices
Canada is the only G7 nation without a national school food program, and ranks 37th out of 41 of the world’s wealthiest countries when it comes to providing healthy food for children… one of the reasons for that was the lack of a national school food program… “We’ll finally be able to level the playing field”… the government plans to work with provinces, territories and Indigenous groups to expand existing programs, some of which are funded by under-resourced organizations.
Education
Ontario budget gets failing grade from university professors
“Universities are in a crisis that the province manufactured through chronic underfunding.” … OCUFA was glad to see an extension of a freeze on tuition fees for postsecondary students, but the government did not invest in universities for this lost revenue, expecting universities to continue to do much more with much less… $1.3 billion for Ontario’s colleges and universities over the next three years… is eight times less than… OCUFA’s recommendation for university funding to reach just the Canadian funding average.
Ontario needs to pony up more cash for colleges and universities
A short-term, piecemeal funding plan won’t work. The Ford PCs won’t be able to solve decades of chronic post-secondary underfunding in a year or two or three. But they can begin the process of instituting stable, predictable, and sufficient funding… It’s the smart thing to do. It’s the right thing to do. And in the long run, the money the government invests in education today will return more than it’s worth.
Employment
Carbon pricing is good for the climate and affordability
To keep the planet livable for humans and most other life forms, we can’t keep burning fossil fuels, which are becoming scarce and costly… Climate-related damage to everything from agriculture to human health also drives up costs for everyone… This is no time to get rid of effective policies, or even water them down. Those attacking the carbon levy with false and misleading information offer no alternatives, especially ones as cost-effective as carbon pricing.
To solve the housing crisis, we must get government building housing again
Following the end of the Second World War, the federal government built or funded hundreds of thousands of nonmarket homes. But in the 1980s and 1990s, Conservative and Liberal governments pulled back… Nonmarket housing is not something that we should pursue instead of an increase in private sector construction… But the private sector alone — even freed of zoning — can’t provide relief to Canadians crying out for help… We need the government to get back into building housing.
Equality
Liberals tax the rich, but not enough to be considered populist
… in recent decades, business interests have strong-armed governments into redesigning the marketplace to favour their own interests, through tax and regulatory changes, and the rewriting of labour laws to disempower workers. These “neo-liberal” changes haven’t brought us the productivity gains that were promised, but they have made us a much less equal society… We need to reverse the “neo-liberal” policies that are responsible for such extreme inequality.
Canada is bad at studying wealth inequality and we explain why that matters
Canada’s top 1 per cent owns 26 per cent of all wealth in Canada, and our top .01 per cent owns 12.4 per cent of all wealth. This is somewhat lower than the U.S. numbers, but it is much higher than official Statistics Canada numbers report… But looking only at income paints an incomplete picture because it ignores intergenerational wealth that has been inherited… wealth — or its absence — can be more important to the lives of individuals, as well as to broader social cohesion.
Health
Protecting public health care from private investors
In Canada, a single private equity firm already owns the largest national network of independent surgical centres — 53 operating rooms spread across 14 centres — in Quebec, Ontario, Manitoba, Saskatchewan, Alberta, and B.C… Approximately 90 per cent are publicly funded through partnerships with provincial health systems… Should profit-driven investors own health care facilities?
Cutting ER wait times? There’s an app for that
One prescription for improving the health of the urgent care sector: AI and virtual emergency departments are cutting wait times in the real ones… Researchers programmed AI into an app to determine which patients are most urgently in need of care… [plus] online emergency department bookings… with a list of criteria to determine if their condition allows for a short wait before receiving care… [and the use of] data points to boost staff at more demanding times.
Inclusion
Here are some dos and don’ts to help tackle ableism
Ableism goes beyond individual fear or prejudice. It influences who we see as having a life worth living and who is seen as a burden. That, in turn, impacts our practices and policies. We all have a role to play in challenging ableism, which may sometimes leave us feeling awkward or unsure if we’re doing and saying the right things. But, to our knowledge being awkward isn’t deadly. Ableism too often is.
After the apologies: Churches give time and money to redress residential-school wrongs
Although public apologies occurred in the 1980s and 1990s, it wasn’t until 2006 that a class-action lawsuit – the largest in Canadian history – brought about the Indian Residential Schools Settlement Agreement, which recognized the damage done to Indigenous children placed in these schools… In addition to their responsibility to fulfil the 2006 agreement, churches have made efforts to fundraise for programs that don’t fall within the agreement’s mandates.
Social Security
Basic Income for a New Model of Canadian Social Democracy
Basic income is a paradigm-shifting idea on how to ensure economic security for everyone… there are several pivotal issues around which we can begin to construct a new model of social democracy that incorporates, and complements, a basic income… Canadian social democrats should incorporate the principle of guaranteed, unconditional and universal economic security as a fundamental program for its vision a better society.
How government penny-pinching makes life harder for unhoused Ontarians
In Ontario, if you lose your home, you get less social assistance than someone who has a home. The government cuts your benefits in half. Why punish people when we can help them get back on their feet? If it’s simply about saving money, surely the government can find lots of other ways to do that without ruining people’s lives… Social assistance should help people, not make their lives even harder.
Governance
Democracy Is Under Siege Globally. Canada Is Being Tested
Finkelstein preached that you didn’t need a vision to win in politics, just good polling that revealed what people were against. Once that was established, the goal became tying the unpopular thing — immigration, carbon tax, inflation — to a flesh and blood political “enemy.” … The idea was to avoid talking about your own positions and policies, the better to demonize your opponent. The objective was not to sell yourself but rather to destroy your opponent… repeating simplistic slogans… “Axe the tax.” “Not worth the price.” “Everything is broken.”
Court strikes down most of Ontario’s Mike Harris-era anti-panhandling law
Most of Ontario’s bans on panhandling in public places… have been struck down by a Toronto judge as unconstitutional… While finding that the ban on squeegeeing and panhandling in roadways should be upheld, Centa struck down all other prohibitions on soliciting donations in public, including from people near public toilets, payphones, ATMs, taxi stands and public transit stops, as well as on transit vehicles and in parking lots.
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