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  • Debates

    Approaching carbon tax one reason now is a good time for broad-based tax reform

    posted October 16, 2018 / No Comments

    … what if the carbon tax was implemented in tandem with broad-based tax reform? Could the two reinforce each other? Not only would there be that much more in the way of revenues with which to make meaningful cuts in corporate and personal tax rates, but the cuts might then be deep enough to make possible a more radical reform of the tax code than might otherwise be attempted. Sometimes the best policy is also the most practical.

  • Debates

    Protesters urge Ford to keep worker protections, minimum wage bump in place

    posted October 16, 2018 / No Comments

    In addition to increasing the province’s minimum wage, Bill 148 provided two paid, job-protected emergency leave days for all workers, increased holiday entitlement, mandated equal pay for casual and part-time workers doing the same job as full-time employees, enshrined, improved scheduling protections and boosted protections for temp agency workers… About one-third of Ontario’s workforce are vulnerable workers in low-wage, precarious employment… “Our message is, Premier Ford, do the right thing.”

  • Hot! Debates

    Stephen Harper comes across as banal in effort to claim mantle of populism

    posted October 11, 2018 / No Comments

    … if the populist is famously “for the people,” it invites the question of who is against — the Them that is supposedly menacing Us. The populist is never short of Thems: elites, foreigners, racial minorities, “globalists” — or in Harper’s (borrowed) formulation, the cosmopolitan “Anywheres” who owe no allegiance to nation-states, move between homes in New York, London and Singapore, and hanker after a world without borders… whom Harper is convinced now control “all the main traditional political parties.”

  • Debates

    The dirty little secret anti-carbon tax folks would prefer you did not know

    posted October 7, 2018 / No Comments

    You can try to cut emissions by other ways: regulations on business are a particular favourite. But those come with costs just as surely as a carbon tax does — every dollar of which would be passed on to the same “hard-working families” the critics pretend to care about. In fact, for virtually any alternative you can name (subsidies are even worse) the costs are higher — often much higher — per tonne of emissions reduced than for an equivalent carbon tax.

  • Debates

    Ford’s move to flatline minimum wage is bad for workers, and Ontario

    posted September 28, 2018 / No Comments

    The Ford government is ignoring numerous studies that demonstrate that providing workers with a decent wage puts more money into the economy, which in the long term benefits everyone. It also leads to higher morale among employees, lower turnover and higher productivity for employers. Nor does increasing the minimum wage necessarily lead to job losses, as some business organizations suggest.

  • Debates

    Not a moment to lose to protect $15

    posted September 25, 2018 / 1 Comment

    1.7 million of us are poised to get a $15 minimum wage on January 1. Millions more will benefit from the fairer scheduling rules that are also coming on January 1. For the first time in our lives, all of us have paid sick days and job-protected emergency leave. The new equal pay for equal work rules that prevent wage discrimination based on part-time or temporary employment contracts have made life-changing differences for so many of us — including workers of colour, newcomers and women. We have come this far by fighting for every inch of progress.

  • Debates

    Corporate Canada is Demanding More Tax Giveaways. They Already Get $18 Billion From Special Loopholes.

    posted September 21, 2018 / No Comments

    The billions in tax revenue that could be generated simply by closing tax loopholes could instead be invested in new public programs and initiatives like National Pharmacare, green infrastructure or universal childcare… In other words, Corporate Canada is asking Canadians to choose between public programs that benefit everyone or more tax giveaways for big business and the wealthiest 1%.

  • Debates

    Is Canada’s ‘dairy cartel” really milking the system?

    posted September 16, 2018 / No Comments

    Somehow, the orderly, fair-all-round provision of basic food has split the Conservative Party and become a major sticking point in Canada’s most important trade negotiations of the century. But that’s what happens when ideology attacks evidence — either from without, in the case of Donald Trump, or from within, in the form of Canadian free traders who simply cannot abide the existence of a successful counter-example to their orthodoxy.

  • Debates

    Ontarians rally in support of $15 minimum wage: ‘We cannot survive’

    posted September 16, 2018 / No Comments

    A study by the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives found that a minimum-wage increase to $15 an hour would mean an extra $1,465 in the pockets of the working poor, as compared to Ford’s plan to freeze the rate at $14 and eliminate provincial income taxes on those making less than $30,000. The report found that two-thirds of the 4.9 million Ontarians making less than $30,000 already pay no income tax.

  • Debates

    Celebrate Labour Day by telling Doug Ford: “Hands off our rights!”

    posted September 3, 2018 / No Comments

    In its first months, the Ford government has used legislation to force workers off the picket lines, undermining their democratic right to collective bargaining. It has cut funding to schools and to after-school programs. In Doug Ford’s Ontario, our government exchanges the rights of Ontarians and quality public services for a lower minimum beer price… The premier has shamefully said that he will cancel the raise in the minimum wage… Without that increase, even a minimum wage worker who has full-time work will still fall below the poverty line.

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