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Why voting for municipal action on affordable housing is in everyone’s interest

Monday, October 24th, 2022

Many people with mental illness and addictions, older adults, people with disabilities and victims of violence can only maintain housing with help. Encampments are a symptom of inadequate supportive housing. And demonstration projects have shown that supportive housing for high-need clients is cost effective, reducing service use in other sectors like hospitals, emergency services, policing and the criminal justice system. But this type of supported housing is woefully undersupplied.

Tags: housing, poverty, standard of living
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Alternative Federal Budget 2023: Rising to the challenge

Thursday, September 22nd, 2022

… The ongoing impact of Covid-19, inflation gnawing at stagnant paycheques, a health care system squeezed to the limit, the climate crisis, and the ongoing need to dismantle colonialism and systemic racism… The AFB advances solutions and places the responsibility for change squarely on the federal government, working with the provinces and territories, to rise to the challenge…

Tags: budget, child care, economy, featured, Health, ideology, Indigenous, mental Health, poverty, standard of living
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Pierre Poilievre vs. the elites (unless they’re rich)

Sunday, September 18th, 2022

Decades of regressive tax measures, particularly lower rates of tax on business and capital, have had a significant role to play in wealth inequality. Progressive adjustments to our tax system could help reduce it. Yet it seems no amount of wealth disparity or empirical evidence can sidetrack Poilievre from his mission to make tax a four-letter word.

Tags: economy, ideology, standard of living, tax
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Liberals to announce plan to double GST tax credit, launch youth dental care and top up housing benefits, NDP sources say

Thursday, September 8th, 2022

The New Democrats say they have inked an agreement with the Liberals… that would double the GST tax credit for a period of six months. About 12 million Canadians could be eligible… Both parties also reached consensus on a plan that could see low-income youth under 12 receive a cheque for dental services by the end of the year. The plan is intended to be a temporary solution until a permanent dental care plan can be implemented by the end of 2023 and extended to those under 18, seniors and people living with a disability.

Tags: budget, disabilities, featured, Health, housing, ideology, Seniors, standard of living, tax, youth
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Provinces need to have a plan for health-care funding — or they shouldn’t get the money

Monday, August 15th, 2022

Provinces want $28 billion more from the feds for health care… Yes, health care needs more funding. But negotiations need to focus on producing better results. Our premiers need to do more than just acquire more money — they need to govern our public resources, and show us their plans for using an infusion of federal dollars so we can buy change. No plan? No money.

Tags: budget, featured, Health, jurisdiction, mental Health
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What is Doug Ford hiding in his mandate letters to government ministers?

Thursday, August 4th, 2022

Ever since he became premier in 2018, Ford has refused to let the public see his mandate letters to his cabinet ministers. Indeed, Ford is so desperate to keep the letters secret that he’s waging a costly legal battle to prevent their release. It’s a fight he has lost all the way to Ontario’s top court and is now appealing to the Supreme Court of Canada… he’s also keeping the letters secret even from key bureaucrats who help analyze and formulate government policy.

Tags: featured, ideology, jurisdiction, participation
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Healthcare needs collaboration, not finger-pointing

Monday, July 18th, 2022

The health-care crisis is different in nature from the pandemic, but alike in urgency. As such, it is a challenge of sufficient scale and complexity to be addressed at the first ministers’ level. This is especially true when [negotiating] pharmacare and national dental care programs… Collaboration on those files and addressing the crisis must involve more than cheque-writing that pours more money into systems proving inefficient. It must involve systemic and structural reforms to help make the healthcare system more sustainable – and easily accessible.

Tags: budget, featured, Health, jurisdiction, pharmaceutical, standard of living
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The Rogers outage, and other scenes from the death of neo-liberalism

Friday, July 15th, 2022

The premiers met in B.C. this week and wailed hysterically about needing more money to fix health care. I wouldn’t give them another cent till they pass a written test on what went wrong. They adopted the just-in-time principle from manufacturing (which led to bottlenecks and inflation now rampant) for health. They cut staff to a minimum. Why? Because it fit with the neo-liberal agenda to slash taxes and pay for it with decreased spending on public programs… Then when COVID hit, the system began to crumble.

Tags: economy, Health, ideology, jurisdiction
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Enjoy Doug Ford’s cheaper gas while you can. It comes at a high cost

Thursday, July 7th, 2022

You can’t promise to rebuild a cash-starved health care system while squeezing government revenues. You can’t pledge to build out long-term care and expand child care while cutting gas taxes… How do you defend bleeding the treasury of money that’s needed more than ever for services people truly need? … The problem with Ford’s vote-buying is that we can ill-afford the toll it takes on an ailing health care system.

Tags: budget, Health, ideology, tax
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PCs form “majority” government with 40.84% of the vote: Ontario voters cheated by first-past-the-post

Sunday, June 5th, 2022

Only 40.84% of Ontario voters supported the PCs, yet the voting system has handed Doug Ford’s PCs 67% of the seats and 100% of the power. The election results were a gross misrepresentation of what voters said with their ballots… Voter turnout fell to 43.54%. That means the current “majority” government is supported by 17.77% of eligible voters.