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Don’t let Canada be jailed for debt
Thursday, February 17th, 2011
February 17, 2011
Parliament… is failing to live up to its basic responsibilities, because it doesn’t know what the financial implications are of the government’s many crime bills… To the extent Canada allows for untrammelled (and unnecessary) growth of the prisons, it will have less money available to invest in people and productivity… Mr. Page told the committee he does not accept the government’s contention that the costs are a “cabinet confidence.”
Tags: budget, corrections, crime prevention, ideology, rights
Posted in Governance Debates | No Comments »
When jails become a jobs program
Tuesday, February 15th, 2011
Feb. 15, 2011
The jails plan to hire 5,000 new employees, according to Don Head, the commissioner. He says the service is trying to count up the costs of the government’s multiple crime bills. Did no one think to do that first? Even apart from all those jobs is the cost of the new infrastructure needed to house a spike in the number of prisoners… Yet the Conservative government has provided no comprehensive costing, and none for a new bill, Bill S-10, that provides for mandatory-minimum sentences for some drug crimes, such as six months for growing six or more marijuana plants.
Tags: budget, corrections, ideology
Posted in Debates | No Comments »
Strong loonie shifting Canadian production offshore: EDC
Monday, February 14th, 2011
Feb. 10, 2011
Canadian firms are increasingly shifting their production offshore in response to the pressures of globalization and the strong loonie, Export Development Canada says. A new study from the Crown corporation shows sales from foreign affiliates of Canadian firms grew by more than twice the rate of exports from firms inside Canada between the years 2000 and 2008… As well, overseas investment assets by Canadian firms nearly doubled from $356-billion to nearly $650-billion during the period… “Ultimately what it does is create jobs that are higher up the value chain in Canada”…
Tags: economy, globalization, standard of living
Posted in Debates | No Comments »
Chief statistician asked to rethink census for 2016
Saturday, February 12th, 2011
Feb. 11, 2011
Mr. Smith…has been asked to study how other countries gather information and report with options that could shape the 2016 census. Examples range from a register-based census, where governments dip into their records on their citizens, to surveying a different part of the country every year… if we could make a register[-based] census work in Canada, we could save buckets of money and avoid annoying a whole bunch of Canadians in asking them to fill out forms
Tags: ideology, participation, rights, standard of living
Posted in Governance Policy Context | No Comments »
Hollywood needs new script: the rich don’t marry the poor
Saturday, February 12th, 2011
February 11, 2011
… the wealthier or poorer a person’s parents are, the greater the chances that he or she will marry someone from the same financial background, according to a new study… And the results didn’t change much when the researchers adjusted for education and race… Interestingly, wealth affected the success of marriages as well. The richer a woman’s parents were, the more likely her marriage was to fail, irrespective of how wealthy her husband’s family is.
Tags: ideology, participation, standard of living, women
Posted in Equality Debates | No Comments »
Fight over cost of Tory crime bills sets up Commons confrontation
Saturday, February 12th, 2011
Feb. 11, 2011
The debate exposes an anomaly in Canada’s political system. Whereas legislation in the United States or Germany must be accompanied with estimates as to what the measures will cost, that doesn’t happen in Ottawa. The creation of the Parliamentary Budget Office was supposed to help with this, but the Conservatives dispute the PBO’s estimates of how much the justice measures will cost. Further, watchdog Kevin Page has said he often runs into problems getting documents from government that parliamentary committees have asked him to find.
Tags: budget, corrections, rights
Posted in Governance Debates | 1 Comment »
Daycare: the plot to steal your child’s mind
Friday, February 11th, 2011
Feb. 11, 2011
How do we account for this weird conservative antipathy to something as sensible, practical and non-ideological as ECE? … Many Conservatives… simply have an irrational hatred of ECE, a delusional certainty that its purpose is evil, and a paranoid fear of its impact on their children… The consequences of this blind conviction is to severely penalize millions of Canadians desperate for assistance with childcare…
Tags: budget, child care, ideology, participation, standard of living
Posted in Child & Family Policy Context | No Comments »
What would a fair Internet payment system look like?
Thursday, February 10th, 2011
Feb. 09, 2011
Although next-generation satellites and wireless networks will be more advanced than today’s networks… The cost per gigabyte of wireless data has a floor of about $3-5 per GB. Land line access through DSL or cable has a floor that is 90 per cent lower, and fibre lower still. But not all Canadians have access to the former, and getting fibre to the whole country would cost tens of billions of dollars… In a capitalist system, if companies do not feel they will be rewarded for making investments then they’ll stop making them.
Tags: economy, ideology, participation, standard of living
Posted in Governance Debates | No Comments »
A new kind of revolution
Thursday, February 10th, 2011
Feb. 10, 2011
Internet innovations such as Facebook, YouTube and Twitter radically lower the cost and effort of collaboration. Social media are a game changer because they greatly facilitate citizens’ ability to organize despite censorship. They speed up the metabolism of dissatisfaction, enabling peers to come together to produce leaderless but nevertheless powerful movements for change… Could the first revolution born through peer collaboration lead to a new kind of collaborative government that engages its citizens in co-creating public value, democracy and social justice?
Tags: ideology, participation
Posted in Inclusion Debates | No Comments »
Liberals come out against Tory ‘dumb on crime’ legislation
Wednesday, February 9th, 2011
February 9, 2011
“We’re all in favour of cracking down on serious criminals, but this bill doesn’t distinguish between massive grow-ops and a first-time offender with a small amount,” he said. “What’s more, the Conservatives won’t tell us what the fiscal implications of this bill are. How many billions will it cost? How many mega-prisons will have to be built? For these reasons, we just can’t support it.” … That looming expense has convinced Liberals they can safely vote against S-10 without suffering political consequences.
Tags: corrections, crime prevention, ideology, youth
Posted in Child & Family Debates | No Comments »
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