Archive for the ‘Governance Debates’ Category
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Reform taxes, don’t hike them
… structural deficits… are best dealt with through fiscal reforms that make government spending more effective and reduce the economic costs of raising taxes… a crisis should not be wasted if substantial program spending and tax reforms are to be adopted to put the economy on a better track for the long run… An explosion in new taxes will do little for economic growth. Premier Wynne should… reduc[e] the structural deficit with expenditure and tax reforms…
Tags: budget, economy, featured, ideology, tax
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Democracy at risk: what you can do to help
Harper and the Conservatives have suppressed public information, shut down Parliament twice for purely partisan political reasons, broke election spending rules and introduced a “fair elections act” that was anything but fair. The list goes on… his efforts to degrade our democracy are sparking a backlash among a growing number of Canadians… Canada may be at a tipping point, with calls for democratic reform having a major impact on a federal election for the first time in decades.
Tags: featured, ideology, participation, rights, standard of living
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Austerity or Prosperity? Canada’s $626 Billion Question
The key is not just high government spending but a dedication to revenue collection that comes as close as possible to eliminating leakage in the tax system… broad tax bases… further encourages low levels of tax avoidance… Third, [is] the subsidization or public provision of goods that are complementary to working — including child care, elderly care, transportation and education– encourages a high level of labour supply.
Tags: budget, economy, featured, globalization, ideology, standard of living, tax
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No need to settle for poll-driven tinkering
Should either the New Democrats or Liberals take power Canadians can expect a restoration of their democratic institutions… A rational cost-benefit analysis would persuade… government to re-think Harper’s harsh crime crackdown… Canada’s employment insurance system is badly out of sync with today’s labour market… modernization of Canada’s 40-year-old tax code, which encourages the top 0.1 per cent of earners to skim off an ever-larger share of the national income.
Tags: ideology, participation, standard of living
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Political Divides
24% – Proportion of Canadians who self-identify as right-wing – 10 percentage points higher than those who saw themselves on the political right in 2010. They’re more likely to be male, in the top income bracket, and/or immigrant. / 14% – Proportion of Canadians who self-identify as left-wing. They’re more likely to be under 30, university educated, and/or cite no religious affiliation. / 48% Percentage of Canadians who agree “the Canadian government should implement strong policies to reduce income inequality”; only six per cent disagree.
Tags: ideology, participation, rights
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Election year offers chance to put Canada on a better path
Despite the downturn in oil prices Canada stands to rack up federal budget surpluses of more than $30 billion in the next five years… Harper[‘s]… chief interest has been reducing the size and ambition of the federal government. As a result of profligate Conservative tax giveaways federal revenues are now at their lowest point in half a century as a percentage of our economic output, and the Tories have been paring spending and services to eliminate the deficit.
Tags: budget, economy, ideology, tax
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In Canada’s contest of ideas, the left is winning
Kathleen Wynne won the Ontario election on an aggressively left-wing budget/platform that not only increased spending, taxing and borrowing, but proposed the first major addition to the social safety net in decades: the Ontario Retirement Pension Plan. Elsewhere there are serious proposals on the table for a national daycare plan, a national pharmacare plan, a surge in spending on urban transit and other infrastructure. The left is doing all the running on the environment, where it is no longer taboo to talk about carbon pricing…
Tags: budget, economy, ideology, tax
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How partisan Conservative ads undermine the rule of law
Governments are allowed to advertise about services and programs that they are implementing, but when some of them are either untruthful, promote partisan positions or are not even authorised by Parliament, it becomes a vehicle to undermine the foundations of any democracy that values the spirit and letter of the rule of law… Mr. Harper has found a way for his government to flood the media with partisan propaganda to the tune of hundreds of millions of our dollars.
Tags: budget, featured, ideology, rights, standard of living, tax
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Tory government using publicity agency to create, distribute news
The Conservative government has been using a publicity agency to create and distribute government-approved news items to community newspapers, television and radio stations… The articles must be credited to News Canada, but there is usually nothing in the so-called news articles or television and radio scripts that would explicitly let readers or viewers know it is sponsored content.
Tags: budget, featured, ideology, standard of living, tax
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How Manning, Smith and Prentice are all testing the Conservative faith
Does conservatism want to be a movement of ideas, or a political movement of tactics and slogans? … the Conservative government in Ottawa, ha[s] eagerly capitalized on all of the advances in the sciences of polling, voter analysis and political marketing. But how committed are Conservatives… to applying the same empirical approach to governing? How interested are they in figuring out which policies work, which do not, and why
Tags: economy, featured, ideology, standard of living
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