Archive for the ‘Governance Debates’ Category
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Stephen Harper’s pre-election spending binge isn’t the final word
… the Conservatives propose to claw back $12.5 billion from taxpayers, mostly by cancelling the Child Tax Credit and by taxing the enhanced new child benefit. That’s the equivalent of a third of their new giveaways. Except for affluent households this Tory largesse turns out to be considerably less than meets the eye… Mulcair and Trudeau owe it to Canadians to come up with better approaches… the opposition has good reason to roll back Harper’s regressive policies, if elected.
Tags: budget, child care, ideology, standard of living, tax
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The federal government should cut taxes
The anticipated 2015 federal election promises to offer differing visions about the role of the federal government… Governments are big enough. We need smart – not more – spending. To achieve smart spending, we need political accountability where political decision-makers are accountable to their own electorates. So if the federal government has a bag of money to spend after this year, better to cut taxes and debt. This can best accommodate the provinces, who can then choose whether to tax their population more or not.
Tags: budget, featured, ideology, jurisdiction, standard of living, tax
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Turn tables with attack ads
How about a blooper in a speech playing in the background and “He is offended by facts” constantly playing over this politician’s head. Then we can cycle the following: “Facts mess up his plans for Canada,” “Who needs facts when you’ve got big oil filling your coffers”; “He was wrong on Iraq, wrong on banking regulation … but who needs the facts”; “Would you want your doctor ignoring the facts or curing your condition?”; “The fewer the facts, the longer his government will last”; and “Don’t support Harper’s war on science.”
Tags: ideology, standard of living
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What’s the big threat to democracy? Distraction
Those who have learned to pursue the news become politically active. No news habit. No engagement… No generation has ever had such news tools. But the number of people paying attention and participating continues to shrink, as it has for decades… People can be taught to engage in their society… students will need news skills because they’re a kind of literacy. It’s a literacy that’s fundamental to becoming an active citizen… And technology can play a part
Tags: economy, featured, globalization, ideology, participation, rights, standard of living, youth
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What did we give up to lower the deficit?
The roughly $11-billion public bonus seems a lot like good news, but… $2.8 billion came from unexpected program cuts… Two successive parliamentary budget officers have been stymied in their efforts to find out how the deep cuts begun in the 2012 federal budget are being implemented… [EI] premiums have been frozen at a rate much higher than needed, producing billions of dollars that won’t be paid out to the program’s recipients.
Tags: budget, economy, ideology, rights, standard of living, tax
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The Harperites and the joy of negative advertising
… the government wants a monopoly on unfettered access to news content. The proposed exemption is limited to “publicly elected officials, party leaders, and those who intended to seek such positions,” as well as to registered political parties and their agents… The Harper government wants to give itself free rein to fire off attack ads at will. It can hardly prevent the other parties from doing the same, but it doesn’t want to see anyone else, yourself included, getting involved. That’s a foul idea that should die a quick death.
Tags: ideology, participation, rights, standard of living
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In lead-up to federal election, all politics is fiscal
Next year, for the first time since the recession of 2008-09, the federal government will be in the black, to the tune of about $7 billion… The impending tax cuts will… certainly alter significantly the fiscal posture of the federal government by causing that budget surplus to mostly evaporate… the opposition… know that they cannot offer Canadians a vastly different agenda than the Conservatives while adhering to the fiscal structure the Harperites have put in place.
Tags: budget, economy, ideology, standard of living, tax
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If tax cuts are Stephen Harper’s re-election Plan A, he may need a Plan B
… voter resistance to the government has grown to extent that a few hundred bucks thrown here and there may prove inadequate to the cause. The cuts Mr. Harper have in mind seem more suited to fulfilling ideological agendas than winning back straying Conservatives… If you’re going to buy votes, it would make sense to spread the bribe as widely as possible. Instead the Conservatives continue to focus on pockets of voters with narrowly-defined offers that may attract the few at the expense of the many.
Tags: budget, economy, featured, ideology, privatization, tax
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Scientists rail against imposed ignorance
What was striking, when all the evidence was laid out, was how successful Prime Minister Stephen Harper has been in silencing individuals and agencies that challenge his ideology or track the impact of his decisions… the scientists’ list goes on for eight pages, dating back to 2006… “Canadians are being made more ignorant about our country and ourselves,” said Margrit Eichler, president of Scientists for the Right to Know.
Tags: economy, featured, ideology, participation, standard of living
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We Must Heed Naomi Klein’s Call
… a “robust social movement [that] will need to demand (and create) political leadership that is not only committed to making polluters pay for a climate-ready public sphere, but willing to revive two lost arts: long-term public planning, and saying no to powerful corporations.” … This Changes Everything is unambiguous in its condemnation of a system whose failures are now writ so large as to present the greatest mortal and moral threat our species has ever faced.
Tags: economy, globalization, ideology, participation, standard of living
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