Archive for the ‘Governance’ Category
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The Localist Revolution
Localism is the belief that power should be wielded as much as possible at the neighborhood, city and state levels. Localism is thriving — as a philosophy and a way of doing things… But under localism, the crucial power center is at the tip of the shovel, where the actual work is being done. Expertise is not in the think tanks but among those who have local knowledge, those with a feel for how things work in a specific place and an awareness of who gets stuff done. Success is not measured by how big you can scale, but by how deeply you can connect.
Tags: globalization, ideology, jurisdiction, participation
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Federal government urged to rein in mandatory minimum sentences
“Crowns and judges alike… share the concern of the Criminal Lawyers’ Association that mandatory minimum sentences interfere with the ability of the parties to properly assess cases, properly exercise discretion and to resolve matters that should be resolved.” … “The proliferation of mandatory minimum penalties not only disproportionately impacts Indigenous peoples, but also harms us all by making Canada a harsher, more punitive country and by undermining our commitment to equality and the rule of law,”
Tags: budget, corrections, featured, ideology, Indigenous
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How the underfunding of legal aid is clogging up the justice system
“It should be obvious to any outside observer that the income thresholds being used by Legal Aid Ontario do not bear any reasonable relationship to what constitutes poverty in this country”… With the heightened scrutiny on delays in the criminal justice system, which can lead to cases being tossed for violating an accused person’s right to be tried within a reasonable time, one area that experts have said warrants further attention is the chronic underfunding of legal aid.
Tags: budget, corrections, crime prevention, ideology, jurisdiction, participation, poverty, rights, standard of living
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Canadians with offshore holdings evade up to $3 billion in tax per year
… the government estimates Canadian individuals are hiding between $75.9 billion and $240.5 billion in offshore tax havens and elsewhere, and not paying tax on it… the fact that so much wealth is being hidden offshore reveals a dangerous attitude among the wealthy… After years of refusing to estimate how much tax was being lost to cheating… the CRA did an about-face and started issuing partial tax gap estimates in 2016, shortly after the Panama Papers were made public.
Tags: budget, economy, featured, globalization, tax
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We can’t return to a Senate ruled by partisan politics
Diluting the worst partisan excesses of a Chamber’s operations after 150 years and replacing them with a less partisan, more open, balanced and considered operational context is not to be sneezed at. It has the genuine impact of improving the legislative framework of how our parliamentary democracy works – no small achievement – especially when, on a global basis, democracy is under significant dysfunctional pressure.
Tags: featured, ideology, participation
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Number of police officers per Canadian hits 13-year low, Goodale told
… there were roughly 69,000 police officers in Canada on May 15, 2017 — about 188 officers for every 100,000 Canadians. It’s a slight drop from the 2016 policing strength rate and the sixth consecutive annual drop… While the ratio of police officers to citizens is decreasing, the briefing note to Goodale notes the number of civilians working for police forces is growing. About 30 per cent of all police service personnel are not police officers
Tags: crime prevention
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Can the federal public service fix its culture problem?
the public service of Canada has a problem of truth-telling – or, as we say in the public sector, speaking truth to power. But it is not alone. In fact, every large, hierarchical organization, in the public or private sector, has the same problem of truth-telling. For obvious reasons. Managers are only human. And so they have an inevitable tendency to surround themselves with people who agree with them, support their ideas and directions and tell them what they want to hear.
Tags: featured, ideology, participation
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Now He’s Won, Can Doug Ford Fill Voters’ Desire for ‘Order?’
With economic upheavals, there is a segment of the population looking for stability and order. Not sharing in economic prosperity, they look to government to slow social change, such as those related to immigration and multiculturalism. Lacking faith in transformative change, they look to politics as a way to deliver small material benefits like a tax cut or cheaper hydro. Holding onto those voters is a fundamental challenge for Ford and his government.
Tags: budget, economy, ideology, participation, standard of living, tax
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The coming, chaotic battle for the soul of a Doug Ford government
He wants to cut taxes on corporate and personal income and fuel. He wants to increase spending on health care and infrastructure and (so far as one can tell) by further using provincial funds to relieve energy ratepayers. He intends to do all this and much more while steering the budget back to balance, without cutting a single public-sector job. In other words, he has conveyed no priorities at all, because he has displayed no willingness to choose between incompatible things.
Tags: budget, ideology, tax
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Ontario voters cheated by first-past-the-post with PC false majority by Fairvote Canada
Ontario’s voting system took only 40.5 per cent of the votes to manufacture a majority for Doug Ford’s PCs as voters were cheated by First-past-the-post… “That’s the way our system works, or more accurately, this is how our system does NOT work, to elect a government that reflects the views of the majority. How are voters supposed to hold the government accountable when it answers to only 40% of the voters?”
Tags: featured, ideology, jurisdiction, participation
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