Archive for the ‘Equality’ Category
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Squandering Canada’s Moment
“Seizing” the moment would mean tackling the challenges that today’s Canada faces: stagnant or falling wages for middle- and lower-income Canadians; crises in Aboriginal education, food, housing, and missing and murdered women; high youth unemployment; eroding citizen trust in democracy; and environmental degradation, to name but a few. The throne speech did not offer any real substance on these issues… Instead, the speech outlined its clearest commitment yet to austerity, and to a leaner and meaner government, no matter the cost to our standard of living.
Tags: budget, crime prevention, featured, ideology, standard of living, tax
Posted in Equality Debates | No Comments »
Is federal child care benefit good use of tax dollars?
Ottawa can’t say if the money has eased the severe shortage of child care in Canada where more than three-quarters of mothers with young families work and where there are licensed spots for only 21 per cent of kids under age 12… It doesn’t know if the money has made child care more affordable… Ottawa should be accounting for the money it is already spending before promising more.
Tags: budget, child care, ideology, standard of living, women
Posted in Child & Family Delivery System, Equality Debates | No Comments »
We must even out the tax burden
If we are to regain the kind of community well-being (infrastructure, education, health and decent housing) that once set Canadian, Ontarian and Torontonian ahead of other societies someone has to pay for it. Taxation is the only economic equalizer we have and politicians have to learn that we all have to make sacrifices. / The personal income tax in Alberta is 10 per cent no matter how high your income is. If a country wants to rebuild her economy and for the benefit of the white and blue collar workers, it should switch to flat tax.
Tags: budget, economy, ideology, tax
Posted in Equality Debates | No Comments »
Inequality, the byproduct of progress
… incomes are hardly the only measure of our quality of life. First-rate public education and health care mean that Canadians, regardless of income, are relatively more equal than almost any people in the world. Most of the goods and services we buy are relatively cheaper and more reliable than ever. In general, our lives are richer, even when our pay stubs seem smaller. What most often gets omitted in discussions about growing income inequality within rich countries, however, is the extraordinary and corresponding increase in global living standards.
Tags: globalization, poverty, standard of living
Posted in Equality History | 1 Comment »
Bold report shows Canada how to achieve true access to justice
… “A Roadmap for Change”… calls for a user-friendly system, operating in plain language and geared to keeping people out of court unless there’s absolutely no alternative. “The current system, which is inaccessible to so many… is unsustainable,” write the authors. “Access to justice is at a critical stage in Canada. What is needed is major, sustained and collaborative system-wide change.”… For the sake of fairness, the system needs to better assist this growing legion of unrepresented litigants.
Tags: featured, ideology, participation, rights, standard of living
Posted in Equality Delivery System | No Comments »
Holy fools of diplomacy in the Harper era
… in contrast to the hard-boiled Harper way, [Arbour and Fabius] find it both plausible and worthwhile to envision countries looking beyond narrow interests in order to produce more effective global institutions for promoting peace and human rights. Under previous federal governments – both Liberal and Conservative – that would not have appeared a mystically fantastic way of thinking. Nor should it today in Ottawa.
Tags: globalization, ideology, rights, standard of living
Posted in Equality Debates | No Comments »
Give native students a real chance
The First Nations Education Act, set to be tabled when Parliament resumes, is a crucial first step toward improving the dismal high school graduation rates among aboriginal Canadians and is long overdue… on-reserve schools should be fairly and reliably funded to bring them on-par with their provincial counterparts… legislation should pave the way for the creation of native-run school boards… [and] the bill should emphasize and support the development of native-based curriculum
Tags: budget, Indigenous, jurisdiction, participation, standard of living, youth
Posted in Equality Debates | No Comments »
Harper, king of the tax credits
This week the Parliamentary Budget Office reported on the cost of an adult fitness tax credit: $286-million over five years. … There are three reasons political parties conjure up targeted tax breaks. The first is to address a pressing social concern. The second is to implement changes consistent with their philosophy. The third is to buy votes. And in our democratic system, far too often, parties choose Door Number Three.
Tags: budget, economy, ideology, tax
Posted in Equality Delivery System | No Comments »
Predistribution: The neglected side of the inequality debate
There can be no doubt that progressive income taxes, which bear most heavily on the most affluent, are redistributive. So are income support programs such as public pensions, unemployment insurance and social assistance, which disproportionately benefit lower- and middle-income groups… That said, the biggest problem is on the market income side. The OECD reported in its landmark inequality study in 2011 that “the single most important driver [of growing inequality] has been growing inequality in wages and salaries.”
Tags: economy, featured, ideology, participation, standard of living, tax
Posted in Equality Delivery System | No Comments »
Why inequality rises unequally
Canada has much lower income inequality after transfers and taxes than the United States, and you might be tempted to attribute this to much greater Canadian redistribution – but you would be wrong. In fact, the reduction in inequality due to Canada’s progressive transfer and tax system (28 per cent) is only slightly greater than that of the United States (24 per cent). The main factor is much lower inequality of “market incomes” in Canada
Tags: economy, featured, globalization, ideology, standard of living, tax
Posted in Equality Delivery System | No Comments »
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