Archive for the ‘Governance Policy Context’ Category

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From sunny ways to icy reception: How the Liberals are handling issues involving Big Tech firms

Wednesday, December 23rd, 2020

“… we’ve come to the realization that this great, wonderful promise of the free internet… came at a pretty steep cost”… Ottawa’s more aggressive push also comes at a time of rising public distrust of the tech giants worldwide… they appear to have public opinion on their side… polls… showed broad support for policies such as more social-media regulation and requiring digital platforms to charge sales tax.

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Jason Kenney doesn’t seem to understand what the Charter actually says

Thursday, November 26th, 2020

“as a general rule, individual rights in Canada are more circumscribed, and collective or ‘group’ rights, protecting linguistic, religious or aboriginal communities, are more generous than in the United States. In the United States the ethic of the individual is foremost; in Canada there is more concern for the general public welfare and members of disadvantaged groups.” … the Charter doesn’t give cover to governments that don’t want to do what’s required to limit the devastating effects of a pandemic, and it doesn’t explain their decision to slow-roll any public health measures or restrictions.

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Canada needs a robust Digital New Deal to ensure data is used effectively for a public good

Wednesday, November 18th, 2020

The Digital New Deal would introduce Canadian data protocols so that data generated from public infrastructure investments can be shared and accessed effectively, for the public interest… With real data governance, Canadian municipalities, innovators and problem solvers would no longer be working in isolation, without common guideposts or clear, shared goals… we can… be a country that uses technology to its advantage, and doesn’t just let it use us.

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Ottawa faces a fiscal reckoning. It must review all programs and costs 

Friday, September 25th, 2020

The task ahead is on a different scale than any government has faced since the Second World War. It demands not just new programs, but a new way of thinking. This government needs to roll up its sleeves and thoroughly re-examine not only its spending priorities, but its revenue sources, its antiquated tax code, its industrial strategy… Without it, this remains just an unsustainably expensive wish list.

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The poetry of peace, order and good government must be made practical, too

Tuesday, September 22nd, 2020

With some lawyers in masks behind plexiglass and others on screens, with nine judges spread throughout the courtroom and with smoke from American forest fires still lingering over Canadian provinces, the Court will ask what POGG’s [“Peace, Order and Good Government”] poetry means in the very real era of climate change and in the face of powerful provincial arguments that the federal legislation reaches too far into provincial domains.

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Austerity wasn’t the right path before the pandemic, and it can’t be the road chosen after it

Sunday, July 26th, 2020

The need to shrink government, and by implication social programs, will be pitched as inevitable math and unarguable morality… because Canadians think they have no other options, it will be a missed opportunity, and a great mistake… Canada needs more of some things that only government can do. And it needs these not to end the free market, but to bolster its best qualities by ameliorating its worst.

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Alternative Federal Budget Recovery Plan

Thursday, July 23rd, 2020

Among the key issues in the AFB Recovery Plan requiring immediate action: implement universal public child care so people can get back to work, reform employment insurance, strengthen safeguards for public health, decarbonize the economy, and tackle the gender, racial, and income inequality that COVID-19 has further exposed.

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A new social contract requires new programs and higher taxation

Tuesday, July 21st, 2020

We devote a relatively low share of GDP to social expenditure: Canada spends 17.3 per cent, whereas the 10-country comparator group spent on average 25.5 per cent… Canada has a low-social-expenditure/low-tax social contract. So, there is lots of room to raise taxes to get better services… Let us ensure that this truth is part of the conversation as we write a new social contract.

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Submission to the Government of Ontario regarding a provincial poverty reduction strategy

Thursday, April 30th, 2020

Maytree outlines the principles that should make up the foundation of the province’s five-year poverty reduction strategy and illustrates how these principles translate into action. This strategy will be implemented amid and in the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic. This crisis will have ripple effects across the province for years to come… It is crucial that Ontario’s poverty reduction strategy strengthens or builds systems to protect people from the worst impacts and facilitates an economic recovery that benefits all.

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There’s less than meets the eye in Ontario’s COVID-19 plan

Wednesday, March 25th, 2020

Hospitals… are getting $935 million under this plan, which isn’t far off what they said they needed just to maintain the existing level of care before the coronavirus… there’s no plan for direct cash payments to help those who have lost work or been forced to isolate because of COVID-19…. plenty of other provinces are jumping in to enhance the Trudeau government’s stimulus package with their own measures, believing it is a necessary provincial role… The Ford government, by contrast, seems keen to leave the heavy lifting to Ottawa.

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