Archive for the ‘Social Security Policy Context’ Category
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Screwing veterans to balance the books
Thursday, October 3rd, 2013
Under the new charter, these lifetime support payments were replaced with one-time lump sum payments, up to a maximum of $250,000. Programs to help veterans retrain for civilian life or get an education were also launched. It hasn’t worked out. Injured veterans of recent operations, most notably the war in Afghanistan, are measurably worst off than they would have been under the old system.
Tags: budget, disabilities, Health, mental Health, pensions, poverty, standard of living
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No better time for an economics debate
Thursday, September 26th, 2013
Senator Segal has been… one of the most creative voices on economic policy…. Segal advocates for a guaranteed annual income, a policy that has friends on both the left and the right, but evidently very few in the centre of the economic policy consensus. But he has advanced good arguments about the afflicted among us for a long time, and that is worth saluting. A good argument about economics is too rare in Canada. A byelection here is a good time to have one.
Tags: economy, ideology, poverty, standard of living, tax
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Society can afford to care for least fortunate
Tuesday, September 24th, 2013
Canada has a guaranteed income for seniors and Ontario tops it up further. At the moment the annual payment is $16,542 for singles and $27,050 for couples. A single person on Ontario Disability Support Payments gets $10,584, a couple $14,268. Whether the right number is $16,500 or $20,000 can be debated, but a simple guaranteed income for the disabled is the minimum requirement for a social safety net in a wealthy society.
Tags: budget, disabilities, ideology, mental Health, pensions, standard of living
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How New Brunswick became a pension trailblazer
Wednesday, August 21st, 2013
Canada’s third-smallest province is a North American leader in pension reform. A year ago, it introduced an innovative retirement plan that guarantees its public employees a secure pension but makes allowances for market conditions. It takes into account the increased life expectancy of retirees. And it has the backing of the Canadian Union of Public Employees (CUPE).
Tags: economy, globalization, ideology, jurisdiction, pensions, standard of living
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Sound research needed in weighing pension options
Tuesday, July 23rd, 2013
My study cites how RRSPs offer greater flexibility for individual savings, but finds that the balance weighs in favour of CPP expansion… Unlike savings in an RRSP, the forced savings in the CPP are professionally managed, have minimal cost and excellent returns, and generate assured benefits that are inflation-indexed… apart from reduced flexibility, each dollar of savings via CPP is superior to each dollar of RRSP savings, even if the former were to fully displace the latter.
Tags: ideology, pensions, privatization, standard of living
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Changes to social assistance
Thursday, June 13th, 2013
… increasing the basic allowance for Ontario Works beyond the meagre one to three per cent proposed, indexing Ontario Works and ODSP to the cost of living and maximizing the Ontario Child Benefit have all been proven as effective ways to reduce poverty rates, changes not implemented in the new budget… Ontario often treats the symptoms of poverty rather than tackling causes… We still have a long way to go.
Tags: budget, Health, ideology, poverty, standard of living
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Good news on the poverty front in Kathleen Wynne’s first budget
Thursday, May 9th, 2013
… buried within the budget are several surprisingly robust improvements to Ontario’s current welfare mess. And behind the scenes, the Liberals are looking at an even more ambitious second phase of reforms that could be rolled out within the next year: indexing the minimum wage, hiking welfare payments by an additional $100, and indexing those payments… But financial analysts frown upon welfare increases that drag down the bottom line, threatening Ontario’s credit rating. And the more Wynne talks up welfare, the more she plays into Tory caricatures of her as a left-leaning premier.
Tags: budget, disabilities, ideology, participation, poverty, standard of living
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Changes to social assistance ‘far-reaching and fundamental’
Saturday, May 4th, 2013
Anti-poverty activists are welcoming the Wynne government’s “first steps” to transform Ontario’s $8.3 billion welfare system into a program that helps more people, including the disabled, escape poverty through employment. However, they want… the Liberals during budget negotiations to increase the Ontario child benefit by $200 per child this year to $1,310 as originally promised in the its five-year poverty reduction plan.
Tags: budget, ideology, poverty, standard of living
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Ensuring the Welfare of ‘Welfare Incomes’
Tuesday, April 30th, 2013
The Canada Social Report will present key socioeconomic data and will track major policy developments in such areas as child care, seniors, disability, mental health, home care and affordable housing. Its purpose is to provide… accurate and up-to-date information on key social and economic trends… Maintaining Welfare Incomes as part of this work will protect an invaluable source of data that took years to develop and is still evolving with various shifts in provincial and territorial policies.
Tags: budget, ideology, jurisdiction, poverty, standard of living
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Danes Rethink a Welfare State Ample to a Fault
Saturday, April 20th, 2013
… [Danes are] deeply engaged in a debate about whether their beloved welfare state, perhaps Europe’s most generous, had become too rich, undermining the country’s work ethic… Denmark has been at work overhauling entitlements, trying to prod Danes into working more or longer or both… The population is aging, and in many regions of the country people without jobs now outnumber those with them. Some of that is a result of a depressed economy. But many experts say a more basic problem is the proportion of Danes who are not participating in the work force at all
Tags: budget, economy, ideology, standard of living, tax
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