Archive for the ‘Governance Debates’ Category
Raising the incomes of the poorest Ontarians
Friday, May 6th, 2022
While the cost of living is going up dramatically, Ontario Works and ODSP rates have been frozen since 2018… more than 843,000 Ontarians are living in deep poverty. / Ontario is in the midst of an affordable housing crisis. / … precarious working conditions… the minimum wage well below the living wage. / Long-term care residents have suffered more than almost any other group in our province during the pandemic.
Tags: disabilities, economy, featured, Health, homelessness, housing, ideology, poverty, standard of living
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Why Doug Ford will once again win the Ontario election
Wednesday, May 4th, 2022
If a politician or a political party believes voters cast ballots in favour of policy positions laid out in a party platform, then they badly misunderstand persuasion and what it takes to motivate a voter… elections are communication challenges, and communication is not a rational process of information transmission… Communication is a process of producing an impact on others, not transmitting information on policy goals.
Tags: ideology, participation
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Ontario budget falls flat on funding for public services
Wednesday, May 4th, 2022
Despite all the spending, public services do not seem to be a priority… Normally, health spending must rise by at least 4.5% a year just to maintain services. The budget’s plan for health care is to cut it… Take [federally funded Early Learning & Child Care] out of the education budget and the net result is that, in a time of high inflation, education is almost certainly seeing a cut in real funding per student…
Tags: budget, disabilities, featured, ideology, jurisdiction, standard of living, tax
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Canada’s parliamentary watchdogs struggle for more financial independence
Saturday, April 30th, 2022
The auditor general is Canada’s first officer of Parliament, created shortly after Confederation to check government spending. In the firmament of the nine agents of Parliament, the auditor general, with a $117-million budget, is the uber-watchdog, the most visible and often better known than ministers… the auditor general’s office has a deeply entrenched culture of independence and a “semi-adversarial role” in dealing with government.
Tags: budget, economy, jurisdiction
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New bill will force tech giants to negotiate deals to pay media to use their content
Tuesday, April 12th, 2022
“Now more than ever, Canadians need reliable and credible information, especially in a time of greater mistrust and disinformation.” The bill, designed to support Canada’s independent media, is modelled on an Australian law making tech companies such as Google and Meta, which owns Facebook and Instagram, pay for news content on their platforms.
Tags: ideology, jurisdiction, Media
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Close to home: The Canadian far right, COVID-19 and social media
Monday, April 4th, 2022
The far-right benefited from social media’s tendency to privilege reductionist and simplified narratives… algorithmic dynamics helped the far-right in propagating the binary populist framework — “we, the people” versus “the corrupt and evil elites,” “bad politicians and leaders” who implemented COVID-19 measures versus “good politicians and leaders” who don’t — to foster and incite rage among discontent Canadians.
Tags: crime prevention, ideology, mental Health, multiculturalism, participation, rights
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Senators overwhelmed by emails, calls pushing conspiracy theories about basic income legislation
Thursday, March 31st, 2022
… there’s nothing new about conspiracy theories but the pandemic has “pushed them into hyperdrive,” fuelling a movement of people willing to believe there’s a global movement to “enslave” humanity… people in these online forums are largely unaware of how the government operates — or how a bill is passed through Parliament — and those knowledge gaps “are easily filled with fantasy.” “It’s easy to see a sinister plot when you don’t actually understand how the government works.
Tags: economy, globalization, ideology, mental Health, pensions, rights
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Ford government appeals to Canada’s top court to keep premier’s mandate letters secret
Wednesday, March 30th, 2022
Mandate letters traditionally lay out the marching orders a premier has for each of his or her ministers after taking office — and have been routinely released by governments across the country. Ford’s government, however, has been fighting to keep his mandate letters from the public since shortly after the premier took office in June 2018… It’s unclear how many tax dollars and government resources have been spent trying to deny the public access to the mandate letters.
Tags: ideology, jurisdiction, rights
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The ‘care economy’ is growing the government, whether conservatives like it or not
Wednesday, March 30th, 2022
The government isn’t just getting bigger. It’s getting bigger specifically in the areas where costs are most likely to grow over the long-term… National child care, having been implemented, stands a fair chance of being permanent now. And COVID-19 has spurred even penny-pinching provinces like Ontario to commit to substantial health-care capacity expansions.
Tags: budget, child care, economy, featured, Health, ideology, pharmaceutical, standard of living
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Look out Conservatives — big government is back, and Canadians like it
Wednesday, March 30th, 2022
Sean Speer, former economic adviser to Stephen Harper, wrote in The Hub in February, “We’ve gone from every major political party supportive of balanced budgets as recently as 10 years ago to today’s new multi-partisan consensus in favour of larger and longer deficits. Something obviously changed.”… historians may point to the moment last week when Canada’s social-safety net was significantly, and quite possibly, permanently expanded.
Tags: budget, child care, economy, Health, pharmaceutical, standard of living
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