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Time to put the capita back in GDP per capita

Thursday, March 7th, 2024

The more societies set the stage to maximize their macroeconomic potential, the more they can make the impossible possible…the challenge isn’t about finding a better metric; it’s about putting the focus on the capita in GDP per capita. Because money doesn’t make an economy. People do. They — we! — are the true measure of an advanced economy.

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Why is Ontario embracing private health care? The Scandinavian experience shows it hurts both the quality and choice of care

Tuesday, February 20th, 2024

A new report examines trends in Sweden, Norway, the United States, France and Great Britain, where the pursuit of profit by financial capital is systematically devouring public funding, eroding quality of care and degrading working conditions. Sound familiar? It should: The tapeworm economy has arrived in Ontario, and we need to control it… The escalating profitization of care gobbles up funds that could improve care.

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After 57 years, Canadians finally have a reason to ‘say cheese’

Thursday, December 14th, 2023

Tooth decay is a preventable disease and a low-cost public health intervention. By publicly funding this care, we should be getting vastly improved preventive and primary care, better health outcomes, and new levers to contain costs… Today it’s not just kids and the elderly who need help. It’s the twenty-, thirty-, even forty-somethings whose jobs don’t come with benefits packages, and whose pay hasn’t kept up with soaring rents and groceries. 

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Ontario’s solution to the health care crisis is to hire nurses through agencies — and the cost has now quadrupled

Thursday, July 27th, 2023

What was bad last year is worse this year. That’s because there’s still no plan to tackle the root causes of burnout and turnover. Hospitals are still so short-staffed, nurses are simply thrown at the labour crisis of the day, some not even able to take pre-scheduled vacations, know when or how long they are going to work on any given day, or what kind of work they will be asked to do. Shift the lens to child care, long-term care and other forms of health care, and the same story emerges.

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An Ontario doctor’s wait-list database is saving patient lives. It’s madness a doctor had to do it himself

Saturday, March 25th, 2023

It’s a searchable database of specialists and procedures, by location and wait times. Yet by simply showing the full extent of available specialists in his community, this young family doctor vividly saw how access could be speeded up, reducing patient anguish and hardship… Qamar and his partners hope the province will see the database’s value and step in to fund the minimal costs of updating it.

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How much progress have women made in the workplace? 46 facts to mark 46 years of International Women’s Day

Wednesday, March 8th, 2023

Average annual employment income of Canadian women: $39,900; Average annual employment income of Canadian men: $54,300; … Percentage of women in the House of Commons: 30; … Percentage of women in federal cabinet: 46; … Percentage of women in the Ontario cabinet: 26; … Number of economists Forbes magazine says are redefining everything: Five; Percentage of those economists who are women: 100

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Affordability — not inflation — is the biggest crisis Canada’s economy faces today

Wednesday, March 1st, 2023

Five fiscal approaches… could lower costs, tackle long-term affordability and create more economic resilience… Reform Employment Insurance… Build more affordable rental housing… Fund school food programs… Focus on low-income households for energy-efficiency retrofits… [and] Avoid wasting money in health care… All governments need to prevent the galloping profitization of care…

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In health care it is not privatization to fear, it’s profitization

Thursday, February 16th, 2023

Despite the evidence, Ford has permitted more for-profits in long-term care, home care, acute care, primary care, and child care. It is not impossible to reverse the corporatization of profits in health care, but trade rules, contracts and other corporate protections can make it difficult and expensive… We don’t need an action plan for corporate profit and control, using public money. We need to improve the public system.

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Centralized wait-lists work. So why isn’t Canada using them in health care across the country?

Friday, February 10th, 2023

Of course wait-list management isn’t all we need. At its best, it simply taps the potential of underutilized capacity in hospitals. We also need to stanch the hemorrhage of doctors and nurses out of publicly-funded care, and need a better spectrum of care to get people into and out of hospital more quickly. And we need more focus on keeping people out of hospital in the first place… It means better primary care through more interdisciplinary teams.

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Four ways the fall economic statement could help prepare all of us for the coming recession

Thursday, November 3rd, 2022

People are anxious. The world is talking about recession… What can the government do about any of it? Help those struggling to choose between heating or eating, or even between food or shelter, by asking a bit more from those who saw a windfall in corporate profits and shareholder dividends.  Here are four ways to do just that…

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