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Correcting Course: Employment Insurance Needs a Redesign to Counter Recessions and Achieve Equity
Tuesday, October 11th, 2022
As a primary pillar of Canada’s social safety net, Employment Insurance (EI)… has also gone off track from its original main goal: to provide insurance against unpredictable job losses… The authors make three main policy recommendations: (i) Implement uniform or more universal entrance requirements. (ii) Sharply reduce the number of EI regions. (iii) Improve the responsiveness of the benefit duration formula to labour market downturns and recoveries.
Tags: economy, ideology, jurisdiction, standard of living
Posted in Policy Context | No Comments »
Big hurdles remain in pharmacare implementation plan
Wednesday, July 3rd, 2019
The national pharmacare advisory council’s ambitious report presents a staged, eight-year plan to reduce drug costs and make public drug coverage universal with the participation of the provinces. But there are major stumbling blocks ahead. The report is silent on how the initiative would be paid for; it proposes a convoluted and unequal federal funding transfer to encourage provincial and territorial participation; and, it makes potentially naïve assumptions about how private insurers will react to the expansion of public drug insurance.
Tags: budget, economy, featured, Health, ideology, mental Health, participation, pharmaceutical, standard of living, tax
Posted in Health Policy Context | No Comments »
Set national standards for EI
Tuesday, November 8th, 2011
Nov. 8, 2011
… losing a job can cause laid-off workers similar hardship regardless of where they live… the bulk of the Canadian labour market, through its EI contributions, redistributes income toward seasonal workers and industries. Variable entrance requirements are the opaque screen through which this redistribution takes place. As a consequence, the EI program leads to under-coverage for some workers in certain areas of the country, weakening EI’s effectiveness as a social safety net.
Tags: economy, ideology, rights, standard of living
Posted in Policy Context | 1 Comment »
How a simple policy change could increase organ donation
Saturday, October 16th, 2010
Oct 16 2010
… individuals lead busy lives, do not always use good sources of information, and must make many decisions each day. Individuals are not likely to give a lot of attention to one issue, and are not always well placed to make decisions with regard to a low-probability, psychologically stressful event, such as organ donation…. By moving toward a consent model that motivates people to make organ donation decisions, individual freedoms are still recognized, but the likelihood that people make consent decisions that are good both for them and for society would improve.
Tags: Health, ideology, participation
Posted in Inclusion Debates | No Comments »
What level of ‘pensions’ do Canadians really want?
Friday, March 19th, 2010
March 19, 2010
Canadians — employers, employees and the self-employed — need both adequate information and, most importantly, appropriate vehicles to provide efficient risk-adjusted management of their savings both during working years and in retirement… if Canadians want high incomes and consumption in their retirement years, they will have to save more of their incomes and forgo more consumption during their earning years.
Tags: pensions
Posted in Debates | No Comments »
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