Archive for the ‘Social Security Debates’ Category
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Why 68 or 70 should be the new 65
Tuesday, November 23rd, 2010
Nov. 23, 2010
[Next month] federal and provincial finance ministers meet in Alberta to discuss options for increasing Canada Pension Plan benefits and ways to pay for higher benefits. While a contribution rate increase is being considered, a retirement age increase is unfortunately not yet on their agenda. Members of Parliament will have the opportunity to put this option on the table, and they should seize it: A retirement age increase could break the reform stalemate, make the CPP more stable, maintain fairness across generations and help Canada reclaim its role as a world leader in pension reform.
Tags: budget, pensions, standard of living
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Welfare rules: A smack down, not a hand up
Tuesday, November 23rd, 2010
Nov 23 2010
This is hardly a system that encourages people to “find and keep a job.” It is, as Premier Dalton McGuinty has acknowledged, a system of counterproductive rules that “stomp” people into ground, hurting them and our economy. In a paper for the Metcalf Foundation, John Stapleton, a former social services bureaucrat, argues that these rules make the move to self-reliance almost impossible. He’s right… Bartolucci is set to release Ontario’s long-term affordable housing strategy shortly.
Tags: budget, featured, ideology, poverty, rights, standard of living
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Poverty strategy: Tories display apathy on issue
Sunday, November 21st, 2010
Nov 21 2010
What Canadians can’t afford is to continue ignoring poverty. Indeed, to drive home that very point, the report references a food bank study that pegged the annual cost of poverty to the economy at more than $72 billion. Those costs include increased spending on social services, health care and criminal justice, as well as lost productivity and tax revenue from the underemployed… a Senate subcommittee — with Conservative Hugh Segal as its vice-chair — recently concluded that many of our existing programs are so badly designed that they actually hold people down.
Tags: featured, ideology, poverty, standard of living
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If welfare rules worked, so could Linda
Saturday, November 20th, 2010
Nov 19 2010
After three decades of battling schizophrenia and homelessness and poverty, Chamberlain finally got a job… Except, under the antediluvian web of provincial rules, she lost half of her paycheque to the government, while her rent-geared-to-income skyrocketed by 471 per cent. She couldn’t keep up. Her bills mounted. She was constantly hungry… “It was killing me slowly” …for every dollar Linda earned over $440 a month, one set of government workers increased her rent, while another set took half of her paycheque. The right hand does not talk to the left.
Tags: disabilities, Health, ideology, poverty, standard of living
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To end poverty, guarantee everyone in Canada $20,000 a year. But are you willing to trust the poor?
Saturday, November 20th, 2010
Nov. 19, 2010
… what if we gave… poor Canadians something to count on: cash directly in their pockets, with no conditions, trusting people to do what’s right for them? It’s a bold idea, and it runs counter to the paternal approach to poverty that polices what is done with “our” money and tries to strong-arm the poor into better lives… It melds altruism and libertarianism, saying both that the best way to fight poverty is to put cash in poor people’s pockets and that people can make their own choices better than bureaucrats can. As a result, it can find support in theory from both left and right.
Tags: disabilities, featured, ideology, poverty, standard of living
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Pension envy all the rage
Saturday, November 20th, 2010
Nov. 18, 2010
… if Ottawa implements recommendations from a University of Toronto think-tank, the normal retirement age for… receiving Canada Pension Plan (CPP) benefits would be pushed back two years from the current 65 to 67. Worse, early reduced CPP benefits could no longer commence as early as 60 but be deferred to 62. This would happen gradually, over 10 or 15 years… It should be up to individuals to decide to work until 67, not up to government. And those running that government shouldn’t be treated more generously than the working Joes who make their early retirements possible.
Tags: pensions, rights, standard of living
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Ottawa needs plan to fight poverty
Thursday, November 18th, 2010
Nov 17 2010
Ottawa needs a comprehensive plan and dedicated funding to ease the plight of 3.1 million Canadians living in poverty, including more than 600,000 children and 700,000 working poor households, says a landmark parliamentary report… Six provinces have anti-poverty laws or plans that are beginning to make a difference, the report notes… Liberals on the committee said “limited resources… cannot be an excuse for inaction.”
Tags: poverty
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Why women need to save more than men for retirement
Monday, November 15th, 2010
Nov. 12, 2010
During their working lives, women face a much larger savings challenge than men because they typically earn less – and then have to stretch their incomes out over a longer life-span when they retire. “Women live longer and they marry people who are older than they are. Add those two together and that, in itself, will cost you 20- to 25-per-cent more,” says York University’s Moshe Milevsky… they’ve earned less than the average male… and… have a longer expected life, so [they] have to save proportionally more…
Tags: pensions, poverty, standard of living, women
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Pension reform: Governments need to move
Sunday, November 14th, 2010
Nov 14 2010
One reason the CPP is on such a solid financial footing is that its payouts are among the lowest in the world, averaging a mere $6,000 a year and capped at $11,000 annually, which is not good enough… What worked for many in the past — robust private pensions and rising markets — can’t be counted on in future… Public consultations have dragged on for years. Ontario is the latest to release a discussion paper, which calls for a “modest expansion of benefits.”… the finance ministers… need to start answering the multi-billion-dollar question of what they mean by “modest.”
Tags: pensions, standard of living
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Public Hunger Inquiry – Recession Relief Coalition
Thursday, November 11th, 2010
Nov. 11, 2010
Hunger: It is the untold story of the Recession. As governments begin “tightening their belts,” we must make sure the story is told now, before they make the problem much, much worse.
We can’t afford to be silent any longer!
[Public Hunger Inquiry, Toronto – November 23, 2010]
Tags: poverty, rights, standard of living
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