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The caging of capitalism
Saturday, March 24th, 2012
Mar. 05, 2012
It has taken a century to turn capitalism from an awesome force of nature, rude, raw and rambunctious, to the subservient thing it is today… Getting the right balance between economic and political freedoms isn’t as easy as ideological rhetoric makes it appear.
Tags: economy, globalization, ideology, rights, standard of living
Posted in Debates | No Comments »
Ontario goes it alone on immigration, says Ottawa’s policy hurts province
Friday, March 23rd, 2012
Mar. 02, 2012
… although Ontario remains by far the largest recipient of new immigrants in Canada, it has suffered as a result of changes to immigration policy. The rapid growth of provincial nominee programs has drawn immigrants away from Ontario to the West and Atlantic Canada… In 2009, Ontario’s share of immigrant landings sank to its lowest level in nearly 30 years. Part of that may be related to its economic decline. But the province is laying part of the blame at the feet of the federal bureaucracy, which the Ontario government claims has tens of thousands of Ontario-bound applicants in its backlogs.
Tags: economy, immigration
Posted in Child & Family Debates | No Comments »
Putting the ‘system’ in education for on-reserve students
Monday, February 27th, 2012
Feb. 27, 2012
… reserve schools have two major tasks – to teach traditional culture and the core competencies of reading, writing, science and mathematics necessary for success in the mainstream economy. With honourable exceptions, on-reserve schools are failing at both tasks… “The education ‘system’ for first nations students on reserve is a far cry from any system that other Canadians would recognize in terms of … degree of input, accountability, and democratic governance most Canadians take for granted.”
Tags: budget, Indigenous, standard of living, youth
Posted in Education Delivery System | No Comments »
The ‘freedom’ show on the Rideau
Friday, February 24th, 2012
Feb. 24, 2012
Conservatism has contradictory impulses. The pursuit of freedom and the pursuit of order run at cross-purposes… the Conservative government has a nationalist bent, evident in its elevation of military values, populist anti-intellectualism, moral certitude on foreign policy, law-and-order fixation and message-control mania. This kind of nationalism requires state-driven conformity, not liberty. And so, while Conservatives are supposed to cherish government that is off the backs of the people, what we have is something closer to the opposite.
Tags: featured, ideology, participation, rights
Posted in Equality Debates | No Comments »
Lack of transparency on budget cuts ‘strains credibility,’ Liberals say
Friday, February 24th, 2012
February 23, 2012
… even though the Conservative government is readying to launch an austerity program that will see billions of dollars cut from Ottawa’s annual budget, the full details may be hard to come by and would perhaps only emerge from departmental leaks… “That strains credibility,” Mr. McCallum said, adding that it crippled parliamentarians from doing their jobs. “If we don’t have the detailed information, how can we look at it in committee”…
Tags: budget, participation, rights, standard of living
Posted in Governance Debates | No Comments »
Exploiting Canada’s resources can be a fool’s game
Wednesday, February 22nd, 2012
Feb. 22, 2012
Canada has one of the worst productivity records in the industrialized world. Upon productivity improvements household incomes depend, not burgeoning household debt. When you ask why median household incomes stagnated for a long time in Canada, and why the lowest-income Canadians have gotten poorer, one reason (among many) is low productivity… If nothing changes, taxes will certainly have to rise on them just to deal with aging alone, unless those who remain in the work force are more productive… Without better productivity, forget real income growth.
Tags: economy, globalization, privatization, standard of living
Posted in Debates | No Comments »
The next generation gap: equity and fairness
Tuesday, February 21st, 2012
Feb. 21, 2012
Crises in inequality and governability increasingly feed social instability… meaningful reforms must be both political and economic… perhaps the time has come to develop a more applied principle of intergenerational equity – requiring legislatures, judges, pension fund trustees and, yes, corporate CEOs and boards of directors to consider and be held accountable for the impact current decisions have on future generations’ interests
Tags: economy, ideology, standard of living, tax, youth
Posted in Equality Debates | 1 Comment »
Is all-day kindergarten really a leg up?
Tuesday, February 14th, 2012
Feb. 14, 2012
According to its advocates, all-day kindergarten… offers a crucial leg up for disadvantaged children. For this reason alone, it’s essential to our economic prosperity… In 2002, the U.S. government launched the massive Head Start Impact Study to determine how well the program worked. The final report… found that the modest gains achieved by Head Start students wore off by the end of Grade 1 – they wound up no further ahead than those who weren’t in the program… the benefits of early childhood education have been vastly overstated. It’s not a magic bullet.
Tags: budget, poverty, standard of living, women, youth
Posted in Education Policy Context | No Comments »
Why we’re seeing the ugly new face of capitalism
Tuesday, February 14th, 2012
Feb. 14, 2012
The implicit deal is that lower taxes create more investment and competitive cost structures create more demand. Both supposedly create more (good-paying) jobs. Lower taxes, check. Lower payroll costs, check. More good-paying jobs here at home: Insert sound of crickets chirping… in Canada, federal taxes on profits had fallen to 16.6 per cent by fiscal 2010-11 after briefly dipping to 13.2 per cent in 2008, a level not seen since the Great Depression… Unlike the 1930s, corporate profits in Canada have rebounded since the 2008-9 crisis, nearing the previous high water mark… Despite growth, there is no shortage of profitable firms telling workers they can keep their jobs only if they agree to get less.
Tags: economy, featured, globalization, ideology, standard of living, tax
Posted in Policy Context | No Comments »
In challenge to Ottawa, judge refuses to impose mandatory sentence
Tuesday, February 14th, 2012
Feb. 14, 2012
An Ontario Superior Court judge has refused to impose a mandatory three-year sentence on a man caught with a loaded handgun, putting the courts on a collision course with the federal government’s belief in fixed sentences that provide judges with little discretion… Several months ago, in another major challenge in Ontario Superior Court, a similar sentencing provision was upheld in a firearms case, Regina v. Nur. That, combined with the Smickle ruling, could well result in a high-profile appeal that goes all the way to the Supreme Court of Canada.
Tags: corrections, crime prevention, ideology, rights
Posted in Child & Family Policy Context | No Comments »
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