Liberals tax the rich, but not enough to be considered populist
Thursday, April 18th, 2024
… in recent decades, business interests have strong-armed governments into redesigning the marketplace to favour their own interests, through tax and regulatory changes, and the rewriting of labour laws to disempower workers. These “neo-liberal” changes haven’t brought us the productivity gains that were promised, but they have made us a much less equal society… We need to reverse the “neo-liberal” policies that are responsible for such extreme inequality.
Tags: budget, ideology, standard of living, tax
Posted in Equality Policy Context | No Comments »
Canada should support G20 plan to tax billionaires
Thursday, March 7th, 2024
In an unprecedented development, the G20 has announced it is exploring the idea of co-ordinating efforts to ensure the world’s billionaires pay annual taxes worth at least 2 per cent of their wealth… By co-operating, the world’s leading economies could curb the ability of the superrich to play countries off against each other, and incentivize nations to tax their own billionaires… It’s a plan Freeland should support, even enthusiastically champion.
Tags: budget, economy, ideology, standard of living, tax
Posted in Equality Policy Context | No Comments »
Financed by Canada, medical breakthrough helps Big Pharma, not global poor
Thursday, December 14th, 2023
Canadian taxpayers played a key role in funding the technology that made mRNA vaccines possible. Yet Canadian authorities took no steps to ensure that the resulting vaccines would be made accessible to people who needed them rather than simply becoming enormous profit-generators for Big Pharma… Today’s system, which prioritizes private profits and intellectual property rights, is in sharp contrast with the system in place for six decades when Canada had publicly-owned Connaught Labs.
Tags: economy, globalization, pharmaceutical, privatization, rights, standard of living
Posted in Debates | No Comments »
Time to hit the rich with a wealth tax
Thursday, November 30th, 2023
… in their budget last March, the Liberals proclaimed they were “ensuring the wealthiest Canadians pay their fair share,” as they brought in income tax changes that will raise another $525 million a year from high-income earners. But these changes will have little impact on the wealthiest Canadians, who are largely able to avoid income taxes. To tax the truly wealthy – and only them — a wealth tax is far more effective… A wealth tax would apply exclusively to those with net assets of more than $10 million…
Tags: economy, ideology, tax
Posted in Equality Debates | No Comments »
National pharmacare dream dying as Trudeau appears ready to cave to Big Pharma
Thursday, November 16th, 2023
… pharmacare would increase Canadian government spending by the equivalent of about one-third of one percentage point of GDP… Even so, politicians seem willing to conjure up the threat of a credit downgrade, scaring Canadians into falsely believing universal pharmacare is unaffordable. (Instead, the Liberals may propose a smaller means-tested program.) … don’t be fooled into believing it’s because we can’t afford it.
Tags: budget, Health, ideology, pharmaceutical
Posted in Health Debates | No Comments »
New rules to shield private clinics from public scrutiny
Thursday, April 6th, 2023
Ontario already has private clinics. But the government is greatly expanding them in number and function and carving out a whole new zone within our health care system where they’ll be allowed to operate with far less public accountability, scrutiny and oversight than is currently required of private clinics… Bill 60 imposes no financial disclosure requirements on the director, who will have sweeping powers over the awarding of lucrative clinic licences.
Tags: featured, Health, ideology, privatization
Posted in Health Policy Context | No Comments »
Biden breaks taboo on taxing wealthy, showing Trudeau how to do it
Thursday, March 23rd, 2023
… their wealth is largely held in corporate stock and, unless they sell stock and trigger a capital gain, no income tax applies. The wealthy are a formidable interest group who play an enormous — although largely hidden — role in shaping the political agenda. Still, they’d have more trouble keeping a wealth tax off the agenda if our progressive politicians embraced the idea with the same gusto as the broad Canadian public.
Tags: budget, economy, featured, ideology, standard of living, tax
Posted in Governance Debates | No Comments »
Private foundations sit on billions of dollars while charities struggle
Thursday, February 9th, 2023
We don’t need more tax breaks for charitable giving — Canada already has among the world’s most generous charitable tax breaks, and we are overflowing with charitable funds. It’s just that we can’t get at them. What’s needed is a major overhaul of Canada’s two-tier charity sector where private foundations controlled by wealthy families sit on mountains of idle cash while thousands of working charities are starved for funds as they struggle to deliver services to Canadians.
Tags: budget, economy, ideology, standard of living, tax
Posted in Inclusion Policy Context | No Comments »
Premier Doug Ford should explain why he underfunds public health care
Thursday, January 26th, 2023
If Ontario just spent the average of what the other provinces have spent on health care per capita over the past five years, we’d be spending an additional $7.2 billion this year — more than enough to properly pay our beleaguered nurses, lure thousands more nurses to Ontario and bring back into use countless hospital operating rooms all over the province idled by years of budget cuts.
Tags: budget, Health, ideology, jurisdiction, participation
Posted in Health Debates | No Comments »
Ontario’s health-care system isn’t candy store to be plundered
Thursday, August 25th, 2022
With our health-care system reeling, Ford is charging ahead with further privatization — Ontario health care is already 40 per cent private — and selling this as a way to save the system through “innovation.” … The system’s problems have been thoroughly studied by countless commissions and the solutions do not involve privatization… Ontario has lots of unused hospital operating rooms, idled after years of cutbacks.
Tags: budget, economy, featured, Health, ideology, privatization
Posted in Health Policy Context | No Comments »
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