Archive for the ‘Governance History’ Category

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For Ed Broadbent, socialism meant providing for average people — and fighting for the cause

Sunday, January 28th, 2024

For Ed, democratic socialism meant waging a constant battle against the inequality-producing tendencies of the market. It meant institutions that were democratically accountable shaping markets to serve the needs of people not private interests… The right to affordable housing and dental care, for example… ought to be guaranteed rights of citizenship. Being rights, not privileges, they should be available to everyone

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Bleeding the patient: tracking five years of Ontario revenue reductions

Sunday, January 28th, 2024

Since 2018, the Ministry of Finance has made close to 30 policy changes that have cut taxes, cut fees, and paid out large sums in the form of tax credits. As the table below shows, those changes are draining a minimum of $7.7 billion from the provincial treasury in 2023-24… it looks like it’s coming out of public services… successive governments have deliberately bled themselves dry and then pled poverty afterward.

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Always ahead of her time, Kathleen Wynne has some advice as she prepares to leave Queen’s Park

Wednesday, April 6th, 2022

The pioneering ideas Wynne fought in vain for are back in vogue after the realities of the pandemic: Child care. Check. Pharmacare. Check. Paid sick days. Check. Minimum wage increases. Check. Basic income support. Check. Wynne’s defeat led to the demise of her reforms in all these areas, as Ford’s Tories systematically dismantled what she had built. Within days of taking power, the PCs pulled the plug on her OHIP+ drug program and then went down the list.

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Canada needs a new grand national bargain: Quebec and Alberta

Tuesday, October 13th, 2020

Canada’s greatest challenge now is to get a new national grand bargain in the face of multiple external adversities – COVID-19, international forces that are increasingly hostile to Canada and its resource industries… Canadians themselves are ready – they are pragmatic and they want a united country that is serious about climate change… The challenge for Ottawa, the provinces, the Indigenous community and the business community is to find mutually supportive ways forward.

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How Canadians learned the art of sharing

Monday, August 17th, 2020

The often-fractious Canadian federation is certainly not without defects – and the now-convoluted equalization program is flawed. But since Ottawa sent out the first equalization cheques in April, 1957, that willingness to share has encouraged social unity and mutual trust. We save ourselves when we save each other.

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It took a disaster for Doug Ford to abandon Mike Harris’s destructive legacy

Saturday, June 27th, 2020

Never mind the rhetoric about cutting red tape, slashing taxes, unplugging photo radar, downsizing government and downloading welfare, its underpinning is simply this: Politics shall henceforth be transactional. Not transformational. Ask not what you can do for your country or province. Ask what your government can do for you to keep more money in your pocket… But it took the COVID-19 crisis to truly unravel that revolution — at least for now.

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The same old stories: How the narratives around Canada’s political parties become pathology

Sunday, October 6th, 2019

Parties and their leaders are encumbered and shaped by their histories and internal and external expectations. Even if there have been some unexpected twists at times, each occupies a distinct space in the Canadian political system. And each is prone to following its past patterns and pathologies.

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Let us now give thanks for Michael Wilson’s GST

Wednesday, February 13th, 2019

The GST was designed to be revenue-neutral; its goal was not increasing government revenue but instead raising it in a smarter, more progressive and more economically efficient way… Value-added taxes tax spending and encourage saving. Traditional sales taxes are regressive, falling hardest on low-income people, but credits for low-income Canadians make the GST progressive. The revenue is fairly stable. The system of input credits makes tax evasion far less likely than under a sales tax.

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The left has yielded language to the right

Monday, November 5th, 2018

… the biggest rhetorical victory of the right has been its capture of the term “populist.” Historically in North America, populism has had both left and right variants. Some were anti-immigrant and racist. But the most successful, such as the People’s Party of the late 19th century or the Progressives of the early 20th were left-leaning… populism has been no stranger to either Canada or the U.S. So it seems odd that it has become, among left-liberals, a dirty word.

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In praise of the income tax, on its 100th birthday

Thursday, July 6th, 2017

The income tax made it possible for Canada to develop into the advanced society that we are today, enabling us to raise the revenue to fight the Second World War and then create strong public programs in health care, education and social insurance that have pushed us toward the top of every global index of human development.

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