« Older Entries | Newer Entries »
Why you shouldn’t expect to see populism take root in Canada
Friday, July 26th, 2019
Middle class incomes aren’t stagnating in Canada: they’re up a third after inflation from where they were 20 years ago. The share of income going to the “top 1 per cent” is falling, not rising, here, and has been for more than a decade; at 7.3 per cent, after-tax, it is at its lowest level since 1996. Poverty levels are the lowest on record.
Tags: globalization, ideology, immigration, multiculturalism, standard of living, tax
Posted in Governance Debates | No Comments »
If ‘pharmacare’ means ‘give us billions,’ the provinces are interested
Wednesday, July 17th, 2019
… while they agree it would be great if Canada had a national drug plan, they want it to be under their control, designed according to standards developed in each individual province, with only the money coming from Ottawa… They also want to be able to opt out, while keeping the money as if they’d remained within the plan. They didn’t say what they’d do with the money: that would be up to each province.
Tags: budget, Health, jurisdiction, mental Health, pharmaceutical, tax
Posted in Health Debates | No Comments »
Why Conservatives have more at stake than Liberals in Canada’s class war
Tuesday, July 9th, 2019
A society that sneers at tradespeople is a society on its way to the poorhouse… A society that sneers at “so-called experts” is a society on its way to the madhouse… Liberal “virtue-signalling” may flatter the moral vanity of the educated classes, but it is Conservatives who have played the class card more heavily, and with more destructive results. Class wars are always toxic, but class wars organized around “is education a good thing” are suicidal.
Tags: ideology
Posted in Governance Debates | No Comments »
Having better health care than the U.S. shouldn’t be good enough for Canadians
Sunday, July 7th, 2019
We need to stop settling for “better-than-America” and aim for “as good as much of Europe.” We also need to realize that there are ways to improve the system that are not either “just throw ever-more public dollars at the problems” and “burn medicare to the ground and pay for everything out of pocket.” If we ignore them while they’re still fixable — when the economy is good, there’s no weird epidemics afoot and the full impact of the upcoming demographic shift hasn’t yet hit — we’ll pay for it later.
Tags: budget, economy, featured, Health, ideology, jurisdiction, mental Health, standard of living, tax
Posted in Health Debates | No Comments »
What is the problem to which creating a wealth tax is a solution?
Tuesday, June 25th, 2019
The stock of wealth in a country is typically many multiples of the flow of income; its concentration in a few hands is likewise greater. The top one per cent earn roughly 20 per cent of America’s income, but control 40 per cent of its wealth. They also pay 40 per cent of the income tax, but never mind: by taxing their wealth as well, vast sums of money could ostensibly be raised from relatively few people, and at relatively low rates.
Tags: economy, ideology, standard of living, tax
Posted in Debates | No Comments »
OSAP offers have arrived, and students are stunned at the numbers
Tuesday, June 25th, 2019
Lowering tuition would help all students across the province, the government has argued. But some students say reductions to grants mean they’re actually further behind. The issue has generated a Twitter storm as students posted comparisons of what they will be getting this year compared with last… Ross Romano, the new minister of training, colleges and universities, said the government is committed to restoring financial sustainability to OSAP…
Tags: budget, featured, ideology, participation, poverty, standard of living, youth
Posted in Education Debates | No Comments »
Gender politics has no place in the classroom
Saturday, June 22nd, 2019
… now we’re going to find out — courtesy of the Ontario Human Rights Tribunal… whether little girls have the right to maintain their normative, common, practical and realistic world-view and opinion of their own bodies, or whether that is trumped administratively and legally by the existence of the incoherent set of rights inexcusably and forcibly granted to the tiny minority of people who insist that their “identities” are entirely self-generated and absolutely inviolate socially and legally.
Tags: ideology, mental Health, rights, youth
Posted in Child & Family Debates | No Comments »
What happened to missing and murdered Indigenous women was horrific, but it wasn’t genocide
Wednesday, June 5th, 2019
These crimes, though horrific and far too numerous, were certainly not “committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part” a particular racial or ethnic group by the co-ordinated efforts of some other racial or ethnic group… 90 per cent of these murders are committed by Indigenous men who knew their victims; 72 per cent of Aboriginal women are murdered mainly in their homes; very few women involved in the sex trade, whether Indigenous or not, are murdered by their clients…
Tags: crime prevention, ideology, Indigenous, rights, women
Posted in Equality Debates | No Comments »
At MMIW report’s heart, a contradiction that’s impossible to ignore
Wednesday, June 5th, 2019
… the data… suggests a truth airbrushed by the commissioners: Indigenous men commit the majority of acts of violence against Indigenous women… Not always, but most often. There are mitigating circumstances — crimes are committed by people for whom violence has become normalized, often because they themselves were victimized in childhood. The residential schools system’s legacy is with us still, affecting generations of Indigenous people and their children.
Tags: crime prevention
Posted in Equality Debates | No Comments »
Censoring free speech breaks faith with Canadians. Don’t go there
Tuesday, June 4th, 2019
The argument against censorship, even when labelled a hate speech ban, is not that its targets are always noble sentiments that only upset idiots and the hypersensitive. It is that in the battle of ideas truth will prevail, and that preventing the airing of ideas undermines truth and decency… freely elected governments almost never try to silence popular opinions… It is a perilous thing to arrogate to yourself the power to silence ideas you find disagreeable.
Tags: crime prevention, ideology, participation, rights
Posted in Governance Debates | No Comments »
Recent Comments