Archive for the ‘Governance’ Category
Four decades of tax cuts, deregulation and privatization equals a serious distribution of wealth problem
Saturday, July 6th, 2024
After slashing government funding to public services starving them into crisis just to pay for tax cuts to the wealthy and their corporations, they then present privatization as the solution to a problem they created. The only thing deregulation and privatization does is create more profit-making opportunities…
Small tax cuts to the general population have been used as a cover for massive tax cuts to the wealthy and their corporations. Reversing tax cuts is not raising taxes, it is restoring revenue to rebuild our once civil society.
Tags: budget, ideology, privatization, standard of living, tax
Posted in Governance Debates | No Comments »
Doug Ford has bungled affordable housing and now Ottawa is rubbing his nose in it
Tuesday, May 14th, 2024
The federal government now says it will send funding directly to municipalities, cutting Ontario out of the equation entirely… Why can the two levels of government come together to build subsidized factories, but not subsidized housing? … Ultimately, the friction over funding may have less to do with personalities than priorities. In Ford’s Ontario, unaffordable factories count for more than affordable housing.
Tags: budget, economy, housing, jurisdiction
Posted in Governance Debates | No Comments »
We are rich Canadians and we support higher capital gains taxes
Tuesday, April 23rd, 2024
Ottawa wants to raise taxes for Canada’s ultra-rich. Rich people like us want that, too… with 1 per cent of the country’s residents holding over a quarter of all wealth. We need higher taxes to level out this rising wealth inequality… to fund new spending on priorities like Old Age Security, clean economy, medical care, child care, and housing, but it doesn’t go far enough to address class distortions… we’d also like to see a “super wealth tax,” an inheritance tax, and progressive property taxes
Tags: budget, economy, featured, ideology, standard of living, tax
Posted in Governance Policy Context | No Comments »
Trudeau would be wise to raise the GST to 7 per cent instead of reforming the capital gains tax
Tuesday, April 23rd, 2024
… the GST has underwritten Canada’s social safety net for more than 30 years. In 2006… the GST accounted for 30.6 per cent of all federal tax revenue… Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and finance minister Chrystia Freeland have sought refuge in progressive populism with their plan to expand the capital gains tax. But the sustainable policy choice would be to put those two points back on the GST.
Tags: budget, economy, tax
Posted in Governance Debates | No Comments »
Appointing judges will not fix the criminal delay problem
Saturday, April 20th, 2024
Numerous zero-tolerance policies, which forbid dropping certain categories of charges in exchange for mediation, restitution or non-criminal sanctions put an additional burden on the system. Minor matters, which could be diverted out of the criminal justice system with non-criminal resolutions, are treated the same as serious ones… The criminal delay problem will not be solved by judicial appointments, as delay is a result of the policies and procedures administering an overburdened criminal justice system.
Tags: corrections, ideology
Posted in Governance Delivery System | No Comments »
Federal government goes big on housing—is it enough?
Wednesday, April 17th, 2024
2024 federal budget makes biggest investments in housing, care economy in generations with its second-to-last budget before an election… “This government has done more for housing than previous, more recent federal governments…” it will impose a higher tax on capital gains above $250,000 a year… “While the pharmacare program is still quite limited in scope… Combined with dental care, the confidence and supply agreement has driven major changes in the health care landscape in a very short period of time.”
Tags: Health, housing, participation, pharmaceutical, standard of living, tax
Posted in Governance Policy Context | No Comments »
Fiscal folly in Ontario: New report reveals a cheapskate province
Tuesday, April 16th, 2024
In 2022-23, Ontario spent $3,251 less per person on public programs compared to the average of the other provinces… to reach the Canadian average, we would have to spend close to 27 per cent more on programs than we do now… On the revenue side, Ontario raises $4,033 a year less per person than the average of the other provinces… we would have to increase our total revenues this year by 32 per cent to be average.
Tags: budget, economy, featured, ideology, jurisdiction, standard of living
Posted in Governance Policy Context | No Comments »
Democracy Is Under Siege Globally. Canada Is Being Tested
Monday, April 8th, 2024
Finkelstein preached that you didn’t need a vision to win in politics, just good polling that revealed what people were against. Once that was established, the goal became tying the unpopular thing — immigration, carbon tax, inflation — to a flesh and blood political “enemy.” … The idea was to avoid talking about your own positions and policies, the better to demonize your opponent. The objective was not to sell yourself but rather to destroy your opponent… repeating simplistic slogans… “Axe the tax.” “Not worth the price.” “Everything is broken.”
Tags: featured, globalization, housing, ideology, immigration, rights, tax
Posted in Governance Debates | No Comments »
Court strikes down most of Ontario’s Mike Harris-era anti-panhandling law
Wednesday, April 3rd, 2024
Most of Ontario’s bans on panhandling in public places… have been struck down by a Toronto judge as unconstitutional… While finding that the ban on squeegeeing and panhandling in roadways should be upheld, Centa struck down all other prohibitions on soliciting donations in public, including from people near public toilets, payphones, ATMs, taxi stands and public transit stops, as well as on transit vehicles and in parking lots.
Tags: crime prevention, ideology, jurisdiction, rights
Posted in Governance Policy Context | No Comments »
Justin Trudeau offers provinces billions of dollars for housing — but with strings attached
Tuesday, April 2nd, 2024
… $5 billion — will be tied to provinces promising to meet certain conditions, among them to allow multiplex townhouses and multi-unit apartments…. “It’s off the table for us,” Ford said last month. “We’re going to build homes, single-dwelling homes, townhomes, that’s what we’re focused on.” … The remaining $1 billion of the $6-billion infusion for housing infrastructure is to be directed to municipalities to address “urgent” infrastructure needs that directly create new housing
Tags: budget, economy, featured, housing, jurisdiction
Posted in Governance Policy Context | No Comments »
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