Archive for the ‘Equality Policy Context’ Category
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Ontario to tackle gender wage gap
Ontario Labour Minister Kevin Flynn has been ordered to develop a strategy to close the 31.5 per cent wage gap between men and women in the province… According to the latest available data, women earned an average of $33,600 in 2011 while men earned $49,000. Equal pay advocates, who have been calling for a provincial strategy similar to Ontario’s anti-poverty and accessibility plans, are thrilled Wynne has highlighted the issue as a government priority.
Tags: economy, ideology, rights, standard of living, women
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3 graphs that show Canada’s deep and persistent wealth inequality
… based on custom Statistics Canada data from the agency’s Survey of Financial Security, a snapshot of the distribution of assets, debts and net worth of Canadians… The top 10% of Canadians accounted for almost half (47.9%) of all wealth in 2012. This group saw their median net worth rise by 41.9% since 2005 (to $2.1 million). Compare this to a 150% drop in the median net worth of the bottom 10% (to negative $5,100).
Tags: economy, featured, ideology, jurisdiction, participation, poverty, standard of living, tax
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Inequality Is a Drag
It’s true that market economies need a certain amount of inequality to function. But American inequality has become so extreme that it’s inflicting a lot of economic damage. And this, in turn, implies that redistribution — that is, taxing the rich and helping the poor — may well raise, not lower, the economy’s growth rate… incentives aren’t the only thing that matters for economic growth. Opportunity is also crucial. And extreme inequality deprives many people of the opportunity to fulfill their potential.
Tags: budget, economy, featured, ideology, standard of living, tax
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Hectoring from Ottawa won’t solve Ontario’s fiscal woes
Close the multitude of tax loopholes that allow the country’s wealthy elite to stash income in shell companies that pay low corporate taxes; hide assets in offshore tax havens; write off personal expenses and exploit all the tax credits, deductions, refunds and allowances in Canada’s 3,236-page Income Tax Act… billions of foregone dollars would flow into federal and provincial coffers. Not only would this ease Ontario’s fiscal woes; it would narrow the gap between rich and poor
Tags: budget, economy, featured, ideology, jurisdiction, tax
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UN report on aboriginals misses the central dilemma
The entire constitutional, political, economic and sociological structures of aboriginal Canada have been based for many decades now on parallelism within Canada, a hard sell to the rest of the population that is strongly integrationist… The rhetoric and political pressuring of aboriginal leadership has been to disassociate their communities to the greatest extent possible from mainstream Canada by, on the one hand, creating parallel institutions while simultaneously, in many but not all cases, objecting to avenues for creating wealth on lands they claim or own.
Tags: economy, featured, ideology, Indigenous, jurisdiction, rights, standard of living
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Women still face barriers to equality
Two measures do appear to make a significant difference. The first is the availability and price of child care. That explains why all three Quebec cities in the index had strong scores. The second is the implementation of pay equity legislation. Cities which required equal-pay-for-work-of-equal-value among municipal workers outscored those with no such policies.
Tags: ideology, standard of living, women
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Inequality punishes Canada both inside and out
… as a 2013 Conference Board of Canada study points out, the domestic economy remains near the bottom of the range in terms of spreading the wealth… The rich are getting richer but on an international level the relative economic growth of developed and emerging countries shows the exact opposite trend. Less wealthy emerging nations are generating a steadily rising portion of the global economy at the expense of high wage countries like Canada.
Tags: economy, featured, globalization, standard of living, tax
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Why aboriginal audits miss the real problem
Demanding “accountability” and “transparency” that can never be realized in small and poorly-functioning tribal communities is ineffective and hugely wasteful. Were the government to accept its responsibility to native people, and become accountable for providing education, health care and housing, it would be the first step in eliminating the nepotism, resource squandering and entitlement orchestrated by the Aboriginal Industry.
Tags: featured, Health, Indigenous, participation, poverty, standard of living
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Government policies have widened Canada’s income gap
Rising market income inequality in Canada over the 1980s and continuing into the 1990s was broadly offset by redistributive government policies until the early 1990s. However, for a decade, from the early 1990s to the early 2000s, the redistributive impact of the personal income tax and income transfer system faded significantly, and then stabilized at a lower level.
Tags: economy, featured, ideology, poverty, standard of living, tax
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How marriage contributes to household inequality
What the marriage gap data tells us, in reality, is that married couples are doing much better economically than everyone else. Are we absolutely certain that these are the households that need a tax break? The families living in the bottom of the income distribution in Canada have seen no improvement in their standard of living over the past 35 years… If we really care about the welfare of families in this group what we really need is policies that allow unmarried households, particularly those with children, to have a standard of living that at least approaches those of married households.
Tags: child care, ideology, poverty, standard of living, tax, women
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