Archive for the ‘Governance Debates’ Category
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Big Tech’s net loss: How governments can turn anger into action
Democratic governments will need to wrestle with how their speech laws apply to the digital world. This is going to require bringing together the private sector and civil society in a hard discussion about the nature and limits of free speech, about who is censored online and how, about responsibilities for moderating speech at scale, and about universal versus national speech norms… the sheer breadth of the economic and social services now provided by platforms might demand a more nuanced approach to how they are governed.
Tags: featured, ideology, participation, rights
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Do you want a carbon tax, or do you want to be lied to?
… effective regulations to bring down emissions are not free. They cost people serious money, whether as taxpayers, ratepayers or consumers… One emerging conservative alternative to carbon pricing is working with business to spur the development of green technology. What that usually means is taxpayers giving subsidies to business… With emissions, you can have expensive and effective, or cheap and toothless… At least carbon taxes are transparently expensive.
Tags: budget, economy, ideology, tax
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Premier Doug Ford and the politics of spite
… his most attractive quality for many very vocal supporters is not what he will do for them, but what he will do to the people they hate. That’s why his political rhetoric is so laser-focused on “downtown elites” and other imagined enemies: who he is standing up for is less important than who he is taking down… If suspicions of petty vindictiveness as a guiding principle of government could be waved away in the early going, this week has made it all the more obvious that it is true.
Tags: budget, ideology
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The culture war has been won, so now we fight about words
The long-running fight over language – in which the words and phrases of the ideologically earnest are rejected as “politically correct” – is being mistaken for some larger and more irreconcilable battle over underlying ideas and beliefs. Those who are truly intolerant and opposed to pluralism – those who think social justice is not just an awkward phrase but a bad idea – are a small and declining group. But that group is manipulating language conflicts to their political advantage.
Tags: featured, ideology
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Ontario city rushes in where first-past-the-post adherents fear to tread [Ranked Ballots]
London, Ont., will be the first Canadian city in recent history to elect representatives using ranked ballots, in which voters mark their top three choices rather than just one, allowing an instant runoff in which losing candidates are eliminated and votes redistributed until someone has a majority. And once it’s over, the spin battle will begin – about whether that system deserves to be adopted elsewhere, or whether it’s enough of a bust that it shouldn’t even be used again here.
Tags: featured, ideology, jurisdiction
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Federal spending tops $332 billion as revenue gets a $20 billion boost
… revenue was up by $20.1 billion, or 6.9 per cent, from 2016-17 to $313.6 billion. Driving part of that increase was an additional $9.9 billion in personal tax revenue. Officials said Friday said that was in part due to a rebound of personal tax revenues from 2016-17. The drop that year was caused when high-income earners declared income in the 2015 tax year to avoid higher taxes for those making more than $200,000 introduced by the Liberals for 2016.
Tags: budget, economy, featured, tax
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The evidence is clear. Canada needs electoral reform
The imperative of moving to proportional representation is neither a right-wing nor a left-wing point of view. It’s simply democratic common sense. And recent Canadian election results underline the urgency of getting a move-on… In a proportional system, every vote will be taken into account equally… Three of the past five federal elections have produced minority governments. With a first-past-the-post electoral system, this can be a recipe for increasing instability… such a system exaggerates the effects of even tiny swings in voting
Tags: featured, ideology, jurisdiction, participation
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To avoid catastrophic climate change, we need carbon pricing
The adoption of carbon pricing is accelerating, and there are more real-world examples that carbon pricing works with each passing year… The Nobel Prize and the IPCC report are just two more data points in a sea of evidence. Climate change is real, climate change is a problem and climate change deserves a serious policy response. There will be disagreements over how we move forward, but we need to tell the truth.
Tags: economy, featured, globalization, ideology, jurisdiction, tax
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The future is populist in this age of disruption, Stephen Harper says in new book
Present-day populism is not an all-or-nothing proposition. There are parts of it that reflect legitimate grievances with the elite consensus. There are others that should be opposed. What is happening requires understanding and adaptation, not dogma and condescension. Populists are not ignorant and misguided “deplorables.” They are our family, friends, and neighbours. The populists are, by definition, the people.
Tags: economy, featured, globalization, ideology, immigration, participation, standard of living
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Doug Ford turns Conservatives to the hard right
Everyone on Ford’s team… agrees the size of government must be cut and front-line delivery of services is best left to private and non-profit sector… Ford is expected to make major changes in social support programs, and slash the senior bureaucratic ranks in the health and education ministries… Fire sales may be held for the LCBO, the Ontario Lottery and Gaming Corporation and Ontario Power Generation. Also on the possible chopping block are eHealth and dozens of agencies, boards and commissions.
Tags: budget, economy, ideology, standard of living
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