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With its 2024 budget, the Ford government is asking you to trust it. You shouldn’t
Thursday, March 28th, 2024
… it’s one thing to announce billions in new health-care spending… It’s another to admit that 1.3 per cent growth is below inflation and nowhere near enough to sustain public health care in the province, let alone sufficiently expand it. It’s another still to admit that all this program spending amounts, on balance, to real-dollar cuts… The government is going all-in on highways and roads — with a few nods to the poor suckers stuck taking inadequate, crumbling public transportation.
Tags: budget, economy, featured, Health, housing, ideology
Posted in Governance Debates | No Comments »
Ontario needs to pony up more cash for colleges and universities
Friday, March 8th, 2024
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.
Tags: budget, ideology, jurisdiction, participation, standard of living
Posted in Education Debates | No Comments »
Ontario’s universities face a looming crisis. ‘Efficiencies’ aren’t the answer
Sunday, January 14th, 2024
Neither domestic nor foreign students can afford a tuition increase, yet universities can’t make ends meet without more funding. Ontario student funding is already the lowest in the country… first and foremost, the Ford government needs to increase per-student funding to institutions by at least the 10 per cent its own panel recommended and prepare for more increases down the road.
Tags: budget, ideology, jurisdiction, standard of living
Posted in Education Delivery System | No Comments »
The Ford government is bad at budgeting — or it isn’t being straight with Ontarians
Thursday, June 15th, 2023
… it misled everyone and projected a deficit and smaller future surpluses so it could starve programs, limit new spending, and divert that future money elsewhere to big tax cuts, corporate giveaways (hello, Stellantis), pre-election voter inducements, or paying down the debt… it boils down to this: the government is either incompetent or dishonest. We don’t have enough information to draw a firm conclusion either way.
Tags: budget, economy, ideology, jurisdiction
Posted in Governance Debates | No Comments »
It’s time to abolish the Catholic school system in Ontario
Thursday, June 1st, 2023
The demographic and political imperatives that required a separate system no longer exist. The system continues to exist because of a powerful lobby, entrenched interests, and inertia… it would take only Ontario and the federal government to do so. The legal path to ending public denominational funding is much easier than you think. There would be court challenges and protests, but the separate-system backers would lose.
Tags: budget, featured, ideology, jurisdiction, multiculturalism
Posted in Education Debates | No Comments »
Education isn’t about job training — no matter what Doug Ford wants you to believe
Thursday, April 20th, 2023
… they’ve decided to reshape the province’s education plan, gearing it toward ideas that are more reminiscent of plans for an early 20th-century Fordist or Taylorist factory than a contemporary society… Ontario has one of the best systems in the world, outperforming all other G7 countries on reading and beating all G7 countries except Japan in math and science… If the government wishes to improve education, it can spend more on teachers and reduce class sizes.
Tags: economy, ideology, standard of living
Posted in Education Debates | No Comments »
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