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Ontario’s buck-a-beer playbook is coming to a campus near you — with tuition discounts too good to be true
Sunday, January 20th, 2019
… you don’t need a university degree to know that discounted tuition comes at a cost… This isn’t the first government to promise reduced post-secondary costs. The difference is the Tories won’t be making up the difference — because the money will come straight off the bottom line of Ontario’s cash-strapped colleges and universities.
Tags: budget, ideology, participation, standard of living
Posted in Education Debates | No Comments »
Where would Tim Hudak take Ontario?
Tuesday, October 30th, 2012
October 29, 2012
in his new economic plan (unveiled just days before McGuinty’s announcement), Hudak still clings to panaceas: Unspecified tax cuts to goose economic growth, ramp up total revenues and magically balance the budget at warp speed. Note that Hudak never says which taxes he’d cut… he wants a “flatter personal income tax structure” that squeezes out the last remnants of progressivity from our system.
Tags: budget, economy, ideology, standard of living, tax
Posted in Governance Debates | No Comments »
How Dalton McGuinty can undo the welfare legacy of Mike Harris
Thursday, October 11th, 2012
October 11, 2012
Social assistance today is more or less unchanged since the Harris Tories… in the mid-1990s… The current culture stresses catching people out rather than helping them out with housing, health or addiction challenges that keep them on welfare… all these years after Harris squeezed welfare, the best way to get more out of it — and secure public support — is not necessarily with more money or less, but sounder investments.
Tags: budget, disabilities, featured, housing, ideology, mental Health, poverty, standard of living
Posted in Social Security Policy Context | 1 Comment »
Tory plan puts politics ahead of health in Ontario
Wednesday, September 12th, 2012
September 10, 2012
the core Tory belief is that that LHINs (and CCACs) “are administrative bodies that don’t produce value for money.” A Tory corollary is that little or no money need be spent on administration, since co-ordination has no implicit value — only “front-line care” counts. Following that logic, the Tories would replace LHINs with something simpler and cheaper: “Health Hubs” — low-cost co-ordinating bodies staffed by local volunteers.
Tags: budget, Health, ideology, mental Health, standard of living
Posted in Health Debates | 2 Comments »
How medicare is morphing from ‘bare minimum’ to ‘best practices’
Friday, August 10th, 2012
26 July 2012
Most studies show our medicare is wasteful — not always healthful — compared with public systems across Europe… harvesting low-hanging fruit won’t get them to best practices, which requires rather more heavy lifting… Doctors take up one-quarter of all health expenditures in Ontario, about $48 billion, and roughly 42 per cent of all program spending in the province… provinces are also keen to replicate Ontario’s experience in pushing down the price of generic drugs
Tags: budget, Health, ideology, mental Health
Posted in Health Policy Context | No Comments »
How the Liberals buried a $14 billion liability late in the day [WSIB]
Tuesday, June 5th, 2012
Jun 04 2012
The WSIB has only 55 per cent of what it needs to meet its obligations. In other provinces, its counterparts are more or less fully funded. The problem is that Ontario businesses keep complaining they’re tapped out, while payouts and other costs keep rising… Businesses demand that the WSIB operate in a more businesslike way, but then demand a break on premiums. If car or home insurance companies provided insurance at a loss — or without well-paid actuaries — they wouldn’t stay in business… the government promises it will be fixed ASAP. Target date: 2027.
Tags: budget, disabilities, Health, pensions, tax
Posted in Debates | No Comments »
Why Ontario’s doctors won’t win fight on fees
Sunday, May 13th, 2012
May 12 2012
… doctors can’t complain of falling behind: payments have increased by 75 per cent since the Liberals took power in 2003. They remain the best-paid in the country… threats of another brain drain are contradicted by the quiet return of émigré doctors from the once-promised land of America… technological advances have bolstered the government’s case for fee reductions… expert opinion — and a strong all-party political consensus — is pushing to reallocate spending to long-term care and home care, freeing up acute care beds.
Tags: budget, Health, ideology, standard of living
Posted in Health Delivery System | No Comments »
How Canada let Caterpillar strip a plant clean
Sunday, February 5th, 2012
Feb 04 2012
… the union was locked out on New Year’s Day. There were no replacement workers to bust the union, because the union was merely invited to slit its own wrists — by halving most wages from $34 to $16.50 an hour. The U.S.-based owner, multinational giant Caterpillar Inc… started and ended this negotiation with a carefully choreographed plan to pack up, shut down and leave town… It won’t just relocate the heavy equipment on the factory floor, but harvest the technological know-how subsidized with government incentives and writeoffs. This wasn’t bullying, it was highway robbery — with our politicians watching from the sidelines.
Tags: economy, featured, globalization, ideology, rights, standard of living
Posted in History | No Comments »
Dalton McGuinty can’t play Captain Canada to rescue medicare
Sunday, January 15th, 2012
Jan 14 2012
Flaherty’s diktat has sucked the air out of the premiers’ conferences because there is little left to fight about — except amongst themselves. A split has emerged between western premiers who deemed Ottawa’s offer reasonable and those who denounced it as wretched… Victoria can serve as a clearing house for “best practices” and interprovincial brainwaves on innovation, but it won’t provide any panaceas… McGuinty needs to get out in front of the funding challenges in his own backyard: highly paid doctors, a poorly integrated health care system, modest community care and meagre home-care programs.
Tags: budget, featured, Health, ideology, standard of living, tax
Posted in Health Policy Context | No Comments »
How to save medicare while saving money
Wednesday, December 28th, 2011
Dec 21 2011
After working on two recent studies of health-care inefficiencies, Drummond’s reform agenda is no secret: reintegrating the system; and reallocating more money to health promotion, community care, home care and long-term care… Drummond has looked closely at the Saskatchewan experiment because it comes closest to a sustained transformation of government finances. It’s a lesson Duncan has also heeded. The treasurer has taken to telling his fellow Liberals in caucus and cabinet that the prairie New Democrats pioneered an ambitious reform model…
Tags: budget, Health, standard of living
Posted in Health Policy Context | No Comments »
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