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On child care, don’t make the perfect the enemy of the good
Tuesday, March 29th, 2022
If the plan rolls out as described, it will improve early education for kids, cut costs for families at a time when they are badly pressed, and give the economy a boost by making it easier for women to participate fully in the workforce… All that being said, it’s still true that the Ontario deal is not all it could be. And, indeed, in some ways it is less than advertised… All this will be worked out in the years ahead.
Tags: budget, child care, economy, ideology, participation, standard of living, women
Posted in Child & Family Delivery System | No Comments »
Hard lessons from the siege of Ottawa
Monday, February 28th, 2022
… there is… no guarantee that the undeniable presence in Canada of disinformation-fuelled rage won’t grow. Civil society must resolve to push back against the ugly forces that caused the chaos and criminality in our national capital… It will require long overdue regulation of social media companies making obscene profits while failing to take responsibility for campaigns of hate and racism on their platforms.
Tags: featured, ideology, jurisdiction, participation, rights
Posted in Governance Debates | No Comments »
Toronto’s community crisis plan is a welcome shift away from policing mental-health care
Tuesday, January 25th, 2022
When people slip through the cracks of our broken mental health care system, they fall right to the police. And then it falls to police to deal with the situation, even though they’re ill-equipped to do so. A functioning community framework, on the other hand, would provide people with the necessary support right in their communities — not locked away in isolated institutions — and from people they know and trust.
Tags: featured, ideology, mental Health, multiculturalism
Posted in Child & Family Delivery System | No Comments »
Riches for top CEOs come at a cost to everyone else
Friday, January 7th, 2022
the federal government should review rules on how much executive compensation companies can deduct (the United States already caps it at $1 million per employee), capital gains and stock options, as well as instituting a wealth tax for the richest Canadians. “Higher taxation levels can reduce inequality and help to refill government coffers following the impact of the pandemic,” the report says.
Tags: economy, featured, ideology, standard of living, tax
Posted in Debates | No Comments »
Food banks are a blessing, but they’re no fix for poverty
Monday, November 22nd, 2021
“Until we address the systemic chronic stressors that are producing and reproducing vast inequalities in our communities, we will never be resilient to the acute shocks that occasionally arise,” the report said. “The time to act is now. We urgently need to protect low-income households who continue to struggle with job losses, reduced employment hours and precarious housing.”
Tags: economy, featured, ideology, participation, poverty
Posted in Social Security Debates | No Comments »
Ontario’s higher minimum wage is long overdue. Now go for a ‘living wage’
Wednesday, November 3rd, 2021
In no Ontario community does $15 an hour provide a living wage. By living wage we mean the sum required for shelter, food, childcare, transportation and other necessities. To determine the living wage rates, the network crunches and averages costs for a single adult, a single parent and a family of four… If anything, Ford’s announcement places a focus on other not-wonderful elements of how his government is, or really isn’t, working for workers.
Tags: economy, featured, ideology, jurisdiction, participation, standard of living
Posted in Debates | No Comments »
Ford government should dump old-school thinking on minimum wage
Wednesday, October 13th, 2021
In awarding Canadian economist David Card the Nobel Prize in economics, the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences has given a huge boost to the value of empirical study in the field of labour economics. For it was Card, working alongside American economist Alan Krueger, who put real world wage increases in New Jersey under the microscope and found no support for the theory that a rise in the minimum wage reduced employment.
Tags: economy, featured, ideology, standard of living
Posted in Debates | No Comments »
Once COVID is finally tamed, Canada will have to tackle the ‘other pandemic’
Monday, September 13th, 2021
Neither major party is prepared to go where an increasing number of medical and legal experts — from public health officers to those chiefs of police — say they should: taking possession of drugs for personal use out of the Criminal Code entirely. And neither party is particularly eager to talk about the opioid crisis during the election campaign… It should be getting more attention from both politicians and voters.
Tags: crime prevention, economy, Health, ideology, jurisdiction, mental Health, pharmaceutical
Posted in Health Debates | No Comments »
Stronger EI and paid sick days are vital for workers. Labour Day is a moment for voters to judge parties on that
Monday, September 6th, 2021
… Canada needs a modern Employment Insurance system that covers all workers, including gig workers, self-employed people and the many misclassified workers who have been abandoned on the sidelines of so-called economic progress… If the pandemic has shown anything, it’s that systemic change is needed in how we view and regulate employment, and that how we treat workers (especially those in low-wage jobs) affects us all.
Tags: economy, Health, ideology, poverty, standard of living
Posted in Debates | No Comments »
When it comes to election promises on housing, it’s the details that matter
Monday, August 30th, 2021
The pledges with a far greater chance of creating positive change are the ones that push municipalities to make better and faster planning decisions to increase housing supply, and target federal funding to create housing that’s affordable for lower earners — a niche the market will never fill… Ottawa usually works through the provinces, but it’s welcome to see federal leaders contemplating a more direct relationship with cities.
Tags: budget, housing, ideology, jurisdiction, standard of living
Posted in Debates | No Comments »
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