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It’s time the provinces were brought to account on health-care wait times
Saturday, July 14th, 2012
Jul 13, 2012
… if wait times were unacceptable in 2005, they are no less so today… In only two provinces, Ontario and B.C., are wait times shorter now than they were at the time of Chaoulli. (In Quebec, they are almost a week longer.) In every province, they are substantially longer than they were in the mid-1990s… the solution… is to make room for competition within the single-payer system — allowing private clinics, for example, so long as they are paid for out of public funds — before we start looking at parallel private insurance systems, with all the potential for gaming they entail.
Tags: budget, Health, privatization, rights, standard of living
Posted in Health Delivery System | No Comments »
The government should be the first to fight youth unemployment
Wednesday, July 11th, 2012
Jul 11, 2012
Beyond the financial issues youth incur due to unemployment, being out of work for a year or more can have a “scarring effect”… In an increasingly competitive business world, Canadian youth continue to struggle to penetrate a shrinking job market, and those struggles risk having negative impacts on long-term earnings and career paths if long-term unemployment solutions are not put into action… any policies aimed at the employment and education needs of today’s youth will reap them tenfold the benefits in the future.
Tags: economy, ideology, participation, poverty, standard of living, youth
Posted in Debates | No Comments »
Target deal not about CanCon — it’s about easing rules on foreign ownership
Monday, July 9th, 2012
Jul 7, 2012
The news is that the minister has approved foreign ownership of a cultural distribution business, thereby once again setting a precedent that breaks policy. At least one expert in the legal tangle known as the Investment Canada Act says Friday’s Target decision is another sign that Ottawa will soon announce new cultural investment rules… the old formal blanket prohibitions on foreign ownership will soon be replaced.
Tags: economy, globalization, ideology, privatization
Posted in Debates | No Comments »
The true north LGBT: New poll reveals landscape of gay Canada
Sunday, July 8th, 2012
Jul 6, 2012
The Forum Research poll, commissioned by the National Post… found that 5% of Canadians identify as lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender. And contrary to the popular wisdom that the same-sex marriage rate is surprisingly low, the poll found that a third of LGBT people say they are in a same-sex marriage… Forum’s 5% figure jibes with the latest number out of the United States, where a University of California Los Angeles think-tank last year found 4% of Americans are lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender.
Tags: participation, rights, youth
Posted in Inclusion Debates | No Comments »
Polls show Canada actually more progressive after six years of Tory rule
Wednesday, July 4th, 2012
Jul 4, 2012
If anything the numbers indicate Canadians today are more solidly progressive than we have ever been. Perhaps we are a more complex and mature people than the received wisdom gives us credit for. And perhaps this means that our national political leaders, across the spectrum, don’t understand or reflect our views nearly as fully or as precisely as they might… The poll does not even remotely suggest a country that has been pushed rightward, or is being pushed rightward, incrementally or otherwise, by Conservative rule.
Tags: corrections, economy, ideology, rights, standard of living
Posted in Governance Debates | No Comments »
Why health reform is good news for the U.S. economy
Monday, July 2nd, 2012
Jun 29, 2012
Universal health care is not just smart and fair social policy; it is also smart economic policy. It works this way: If a worker in Canada or Europe or Japan loses his or her job, it’s a psychological and income blow. But if an American worker loses his or her job, the family faces financial ruin if sickness strikes any member because they are without health care coverage. Worse yet, if a major illness is diagnosed during a period of unemployment, a worker becomes unemployable, bringing about a life sentence of poverty.
Tags: economy, Health, ideology, poverty, standard of living
Posted in Policy Context | No Comments »
Poverty no worse for crisis
Wednesday, June 20th, 2012
Jun 20, 2012
In 2010 the percentage of Canadians who earned less than Statistics Canada’s “low-income cut-off” and therefore by universal practice are defined as poor actually fell. It went from 9.5% to 9.0%… the rate for 2010 is even lower than in 2007, the previous best year, when it was 9.1%. It’s true that, in terms of absolute numbers of Canadians falling below the low-income cut-off, 2007 was a better year, by 70,000 people. But even so, 2010 represented an improvement of 120,000 from 2009… the rate of low income among single-mom families was 20.6% in 2010, the second lowest it has ever been
Tags: economy, globalization, poverty, standard of living
Posted in Inclusion Delivery System | 3 Comments »
Online government services don’t take lunch breaks
Tuesday, June 19th, 2012
Jun 18, 2012
ServiceOntario is something of a success story… It has reduced per-transaction costs for health cards and driver and vehicle licensing by 7.6%, for example, and has set and achieved high goals for customer satisfaction… The more Ontarians can be pushed towards automated licence and registration renewals, the more the savings will rack up… there is no cause to blunder headlong into privatization for its own sake. But there is no reason whatsoever to rule it out.
Tags: budget, economy, ideology
Posted in Governance Delivery System | 1 Comment »
The wrong decision on assisted suicide
Tuesday, June 19th, 2012
Jun 18, 2012
Justice Lynn Smith determined that the ban against assisted suicide serves to discriminate against the disabled — and therefore runs afoul of the equality provisions in section 15 of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms — because it prevents disabled people from getting the help they may need to kill themselves. But the Charter is meant to defend us against violations perpetrated by the state, not abet self-inflicted injuries or death.
Tags: crime prevention, disabilities, ideology, mental Health, rights, standard of living
Posted in Health Debates | 1 Comment »
CHRC… more relevant than ever
Tuesday, June 19th, 2012
Jun 19, 2012
Of the 1,914 human rights complaints under the federal Act in 2011, only one complaint regarding hate on the Internet was given consideration. The overwhelming majority of complaints deal with allegations of discrimination on the grounds of disability or age… Today, more than 10% of the human rights complaints received by the Canadian Human Rights Commission are from aboriginal people. Such a surge is reasonable to expect, after decades of neglect.
Tags: crime prevention, disabilities, Indigenous, participation, rights, standard of living
Posted in Child & Family Policy Context | No Comments »
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