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It’s not too late to fix a government benefit that could lift thousands more Canadians out of poverty
Tuesday, November 26th, 2024
… its very design ensures that [the Canada Disability Benefit] will help far too few people in need. There are two key reasons for its underwhelming impact: unnecessarily restrictive eligibility criteria, and the wildly insufficient size of the benefit… The CRA applies rigid, and often arbitrary criteria, to establish eligibility — especially with respect to mental health conditions and chronic illness… The other critical flaw in the Canada Disability Benefit’s design is the woefully low benefit of only $2,400 per year.
Tags: disabilities, featured, Health, participation, poverty, standard of living
Posted in Social Security Debates | No Comments »
How the public sector is fighting income inequality (and why it’s still not enough)
Wednesday, February 28th, 2024
The public sector’s impact on gender pay equity is very concentrated among middle- to middle-low income earners who were making around $20 an hour in 2023. At that income level, women in the public sector make roughly the same as men in both the public and private sectors, achieve pay equity. It’s a rare phenomenon… Also, the gender pay gap widens in both sectors at higher-income levels.
Tags: economy, standard of living
Posted in Equality Delivery System | No Comments »
Missing teeth: Who’s left out of Canada’s dental care plan
Tuesday, January 30th, 2024
The choice is twofold: (1) Continue to create new medical care programs with a fill-in-the-gaps model and an income cap, like Canada is currently doing on dental care, or (2) Align new medical care programs with the principles of the Canada Health Act, which is based on the underlying principle of health care for all. The findings in this analysis of Canada’s nascent national dental care plan might also be relevant to the much anticipated announcement of a national pharmacare plan.
Tags: budget, Health, ideology, jurisdiction, participation, standard of living
Posted in Health Policy Context | No Comments »
Canadian CEO pay breaks all records, reflecting a new Gilded Age for Canada’s rich: report
Wednesday, January 17th, 2024
In 2022, the average worker in Canada got an average pay raise of $1,800, or three per cent. But, prices went up by 6.8 per cent in 2022… This report proposes that governments address the rampant income inequality between the rich and the rest of us through four taxation measures that both disincentivize extreme CEO compensation and redistribute CEOs’ extreme income to Canadians on the lower end of the income spectrum.
Tags: economy, standard of living, tax
Posted in Equality Debates | No Comments »
Not done yet: $10-a-day child care requires addressing Canada’s child care deserts
Monday, May 22nd, 2023
… child care deserts are a feature of child care provision all across Canada. This reality, which represents the dysfunctional child care market that has developed over time as Canada has, until now, lacked unifying early learning and child care policy and funding… purposeful and rational expansion of public and non-profit licensed child care is a critical next step to ensure that all Canadian families can access the more affordable fees already in play.
Tags: child care, featured, ideology, jurisdiction, participation, standard of living
Posted in Child & Family Delivery System | No Comments »
No Strings Attached: Canada’s health care deal lacks key conditions
Friday, February 17th, 2023
… despite provincial ad campaigns that show destitute doctors and nurses begging for federal funding, the question of who is responsible for the crisis in Canadian health care is not so clear cut. Health care is a provincial jurisdiction and the big provinces are flush with cash. It’s not money stopping them from fixing their systems, it’s political will.
Tags: budget, Health, ideology, jurisdiction, standard of living
Posted in Health Debates | No Comments »
Where are your inflation dollars going? Inflation broken down by profit, wages and industry
Tuesday, January 24th, 2023
The data is clear—the largest driver of inflation is corporate profits… Of every dollar spent on higher prices in the last two years, 47 cents was converted into corporate profits in four industries, led by mining, oil and gas extraction, explains a new report by the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives (CCPA).
Tags: economy, standard of living, tax
Posted in Debates | No Comments »
Show me the money: It’s not a worker shortage, it’s a wage shortage
Monday, September 5th, 2022
One of the key worker reasons for not taking jobs is that the jobs are lousy. One of the key ways that a job is lousy is that the pay is too low. Given the disruption in work experienced earlier in the pandemic, followed by sky-high inflation, expecting 10 people to apply for a $15 an hour job isn’t realistic… Job seekers are waiting for employers to show them the money—and to offer good working conditions too.
Tags: economy, featured, Health, ideology, immigration, jurisdiction, participation, standard of living
Posted in Debates | No Comments »
Budget 2022: Some progress, but no need for panic at the country club
Friday, April 8th, 2022
Today’s federal commitment to create a national dental care program will help millions of Canadians, but there’s a huge missed opportunity to move forward on pharmacare, long-term care and needed health care spending to deal with the pandemic’s impact… Many Canadians are feeling the weight of living in uncertain times. They need better income security, better access to Employment Insurance if they lose their job, more affordable housing, and the world needs a bolder climate change plan than what’s on the table.
Tags: budget, economy, featured, Health, housing, ideology, pharmaceutical, poverty, standard of living, tax
Posted in Governance Policy Context | No Comments »
Budget 2021 analysis: Does it deliver?
Wednesday, April 21st, 2021
About two-thirds of the spending is short-term, related to COVID-19 and the final third carries over to the third year. The programs that extend to the long-term are child care (for which this budget is transformative), long-term care, some business supports and some environmental measures (around clean fuel and climate adaptation)… a historically large budget, but it’s within Canada’s ability to both deal with the impact of a global pandemic and to plant the seeds for a public-led recovery.
Tags: budget, child care, economy, featured, Health, ideology, jurisdiction, Seniors, tax, women, youth
Posted in Governance Policy Context | No Comments »
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