Archive for the ‘Policy Context’ Category
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Statscan numbers highlight concerns about aging and the work force
Friday, February 3rd, 2012
Feb. 03, 2012
“Since 2006 the share of the working-age population has decreased in most eastern provinces; it has remained the same or increased in Ontario and western provinces,” the Statscan document says… Canada will soon reach, or has already reached, the point where the number of younger people of age to enter the labour force equals the number of Canadians old enough to leave it. Immigration and delayed retirement, however, could ease this looming pressure on the work force.
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Can Ottawa spark innovation? It hasn’t yet
Wednesday, February 1st, 2012
Feb. 01, 2012
the federal government has… more than 100 programs, institutes and regional development agencies to support business. That figure doesn’t include an array of tax incentives, the largest of which is the Scientific Research and Experimental Development (SR&ED) tax credit. All together, these business programs cost $6.44-billion in the fiscal year 2010-2011… Whether government programs are at the heart of the problem is doubtful, given that the R&D tax credits have been among the most generous in the world… Canada has industries that just don’t do much research and development…
Tags: economy, standard of living, tax
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Canada chops employment insurance staff, leaving jobless in the lurch
Monday, January 30th, 2012
Jan 29 2012
An applicant who provides all the information required by Service Canada is supposed to get his or her first benefit payment within 28 days. But thousands of laid-off workers say they’ve been waiting months. It’s impossible to get though to Service Canada; the phone lines are jammed. It takes hours to get an appointment with a claims officer when they go to the office in person. And when their turn finally comes, they’re often told their claim is “spooling” or “churning” in the computer and won’t be retrievable for three weeks… Why is the federal agency failing to keep its part of the bargain?
Tags: economy, ideology, rights, standard of living
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Policy, not technology is killing Canadian manufacturing
Friday, January 27th, 2012
Jan. 24, 2012
… technology can explain some of the job loss, but not most of it. It certainly cannot explain the disproportionate carnage in Canadian manufacturing… The loss of 500,000 manufacturing jobs in Canada over the last decade was far more dramatic than most jurisdictions. Many factors contributed to this miserable record… [but] Caterpillar’s demand to cut Canadian wages in half has nothing to do with technology. It reflects power: a global company’s ability to isolate and threaten workers, one factory at a time. And it reflects policy: an active decision by governments (like Canada’s) to let them do it.
Tags: economy, globalization, ideology, rights, standard of living
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Ottawa favours foreign businesses over Canadian employees
Tuesday, January 17th, 2012
Jan 16 2012
Ironically, the Harper government has complained forcefully about “foreign” interference from outside environmentalists protesting a proposed pipeline across the Rockies. But when it comes to foreign companies stripping Canadian workers of half their wages and then moving operations out of the country, the government hasn’t a negative word to say. Harper is of course staunchly pro-capitalist, and has aggressively lowered corporate tax rates, while refusing to link lower taxes to investment or job creation.
Tags: economy, ideology, participation, standard of living
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Keynes Was Right
Sunday, January 8th, 2012
Dec. 29, 2011
… the real test of Keynesian economics hasn’t come from the half-hearted efforts of the U.S. federal government to boost the economy, which were largely offset by cuts at the state and local levels. It has, instead, come from European nations like Greece and Ireland that had to impose savage fiscal austerity as a condition for receiving emergency loans — and have suffered Depression-level economic slumps… 2011 was a year in which our political elite obsessed over short-term deficits that aren’t actually a problem and, in the process, made the real problem — a depressed economy and mass unemployment — worse.
Tags: budget, economy, featured, ideology, standard of living, tax
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Payroll taxes go up but jobless relief deteriorates
Saturday, January 7th, 2012
Jan 05 2012
Most of the jobs available now are part-time, short-term or casual. They seldom last long enough to provide workers with the hours they need to qualify for EI benefits… Rates of coverage vary widely across the country. In Ontario, less than 40 per cent of the jobless receive EI benefits… Successive governments have pared EI benefits… The rate-setting mechanism no longer functions as intended… surpluses cannot be accumulated in good years to use in lean years… (so) that when the economy slumps EI premiums go up, forcing workers to pay more when they can least afford it.
Tags: economy, ideology, rights, standard of living
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The moose and the modern welfare state
Wednesday, December 28th, 2011
Dec. 27, 2011
Sweden was perhaps the most fiscally disciplined of the EU countries, a discipline maintained since the 1990s when it hit the wall early on (as did Canada). In 2009, Sweden’s deficit was running at 0.9 per cent of GDP, the lowest in Europe. It became the only euro-club member to need no extraordinary fiscal restraint. Paradoxically, however, Sweden employs more public-sector workers, as a percentage of labour force, than any other OECD country: 31 per cent.
Tags: economy, ideology, standard of living
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Progressive taxes will get us out of recession
Thursday, December 15th, 2011
Dec 14 2011
Since the private sector is unwilling to invest now in job-creating activity, surely it is up to the government to do so… Surely then is the time to raise the taxes on the upper income levels and on corporations to obtain the capital for the needed investment. The country cries out for investment in infrastructure: roads, bridges, public transit, high-speed railways, aboriginal problems. Our medical services are strapped, and working women lack affordable child care, etc. As Keynes taught us, times of recession require the stimulation of effective demand for goods and services, to create jobs.
Tags: economy, ideology, standard of living, tax
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Higher education brings security, higher wages, especially for men
Wednesday, December 14th, 2011
Dec. 14, 2011
The relative earnings of those with a university education in Canada and Ontario are higher than the OECD average, but the degree of difference varies by age and gender… In Ontario, the apparent value of a university education is much greater for men than for women: compared to their male counterparts with high school or non-post-secondary qualifications, men with higher education earn 150 per cent more, while women have a 68 per cent earnings edge. And women with higher education still earn only 61 per cent of what men with a comparable education make.
Tags: economy, globalization, standard of living, women
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