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Ontario’s equalization outrage welcome, if late
Thursday, February 17th, 2011
February 17, 2011
…there is a $25-billion gap each year between what Ontario businesses and individuals pay to Ottawa and what they receive back in the form of health and education transfers, pensions, income supplements and federal services. The gap has grown in recent decades, too, even as the economies of the have-nots have grown and the income disparity among Canada’s richest and poorest provinces has largely disappeared.
Tags: budget, economy, featured, ideology, standard of living
Posted in Governance Delivery System | No Comments »
When jails become a jobs program
Tuesday, February 15th, 2011
Feb. 15, 2011
The jails plan to hire 5,000 new employees, according to Don Head, the commissioner. He says the service is trying to count up the costs of the government’s multiple crime bills. Did no one think to do that first? Even apart from all those jobs is the cost of the new infrastructure needed to house a spike in the number of prisoners… Yet the Conservative government has provided no comprehensive costing, and none for a new bill, Bill S-10, that provides for mandatory-minimum sentences for some drug crimes, such as six months for growing six or more marijuana plants.
Tags: budget, corrections, ideology
Posted in Debates | No Comments »
McGuinty must fixsignature program [child care]
Monday, February 14th, 2011
Feb 14 2011
McGuinty has acted only on that part of his plan and left aside the rest of what was supposed to be a much broader push to meet all the needs of young children and their families… The original plan put forward by Charles Pascal, Ontario’s early learning adviser, would have ended the patchwork of programs and created a seamless education and child-care system. But without that integration, we are seeing the chronically underfunded child-care system crumble from the loss of 4- and 5-year-olds. Their fees have always subsidized younger children.
Tags: budget, child care, participation, standard of living, women
Posted in Child & Family Debates | 1 Comment »
Disability tax credit: Probe highlights need for review
Saturday, February 12th, 2011
Feb 12 2011
The province should crack down on any company that takes advantage of people or misleads them into believing they need to pay a private company to get a public benefit. Indeed, MPs routinely help people fill out these and other tax benefit forms for free… The revenue agency should review its own procedures and look out for companies that may be pushing exaggerated disability claims. But it must do that without making it harder for those with legitimate claims to get or keep their benefits.
Tags: disabilities, ideology, participation, tax
Posted in Inclusion Debates | 1 Comment »
The child-care challenge: Parents deserve a real choice
Sunday, February 6th, 2011
Feb 04 2011
No one wants a one-size-fits-all model in which children are rounded up into daycares every morning. But the fact that not everyone wants or needs it is no reason to deny it to those who do. The 1950s are over. Stay-at-home moms are an increasing rarity. And, despite what Finley may think, mothers (or fathers) don’t give up being parents by putting their kids in child care… choice in child care is important. But it must include affordable, regulated child care. For far too many parents, that will never be an option without a national plan.
Tags: budget, child care, featured, ideology, participation, women
Posted in Child & Family Debates | 1 Comment »
Dust-up over daycare
Sunday, February 6th, 2011
Feb. 5, 2011
While 33% of respondents would give a high priority to child care for working parents, 32% would give a high priority to financial support for stay-at-home parents. And so, rather than shove a massive Liberal coast-to-coast daycare program down Canadian taxpayers’ throats, wouldn’t it be better to provide any new funding to the parents themselves — as the Tories argue — and let them make up their own mind? … instead of finding ways to push more babies out of the nest, politicians should look at ways to support all parents’ choices…
Tags: budget, child care, ideology, participation, women
Posted in Child & Family Debates | No Comments »
Selling medicare can be good for your health
Wednesday, February 2nd, 2011
February 2, 2011
Medicare and entrepreneurship may yet go hand in hand. Some Toronto hospitals are selling cancer treatment to Kuwaitis, though local residents may be on waiting lists for such care. But treating medical expertise as a product for sale to foreign patients makes sense, if it increases medicare’s capacity to offer services to Canadians. If it has the additional benefit of spurring innovation and higher-quality care, as entrepreneurship has been known to do, all the more reason to try it.
Tags: budget, Health, ideology
Posted in Health Debates | No Comments »
Lower corporate taxes no cure-all
Monday, January 31st, 2011
Jan 31 2011
If corporate taxes were all that mattered, Ireland with its rate of 12.5 per cent would still be booming. No one would do business in Scandinavia, where taxes remain high. In the United States, where corporate taxes vary enormously from state to state, companies would be flocking to zero-tax areas like Nevada and Wyoming. Curiously, they aren’t… Other measures, such as spending on infrastructure or cuts to personal income taxes, may help create as many or more jobs.
Tags: economy, globalization, ideology, standard of living, tax
Posted in Debates | No Comments »
Build families, not prisons to reduce crime
Monday, January 31st, 2011
January 30, 2011
We know that prisons have little effect in reducing crime. Those who might be deterred by prison, such as criminal corporation executives, rarely end up in prison. Some offenders become more involved in crime because of their prison experiences. For decades, however, we have known that a better quality of life for children reduces crime. Research on child development shows that support to vulnerable first-time mothers helps children become less troublesome young adults.
Tags: crime prevention, ideology, poverty
Posted in Child & Family Debates | No Comments »
Toward a lower corporate tax
Friday, January 28th, 2011
Jan. 27, 2011
Instead of cutting corporate taxes, Mr. Ignatieff proposes to jack rates back up to 18% and spend the additional revenue on home care for the elderly and daycare for toddlers. But as the response to similarly ambitious Liberal initiatives in recent years shows, the public has little appetite for a new nanny-state program… Reducing corporate tax cuts will keep Canada competitive and attract investment, at a time when our economic recovery needs all the help it can get. This is not the time for new social programs and grandiose government schemes.
Tags: economy, ideology, tax
Posted in Policy Context | No Comments »
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