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Bow Down Canadians, Corporations Are King
Wednesday, February 1st, 2012
Jan. 30, 2012
What kind of society beggars those of its citizens who worked all their lives and now want to retire in dignity while privileging the rich and super-rich by slashing their income taxes and allowing them to transfer wealth to their children untouched? … Since the mid-1980s, and accelerating with the signing of the Canada-U.S. “free trade” deal, the guiding principle of neo-liberalism seems to have been “Ask not what your economy can do for you, ask what you can do for your economy.” … The economy is now defined as the narrow interests of global corporations.
Tags: budget, economy, featured, globalization, ideology, privatization, standard of living, tax
Posted in Debates | No Comments »
Stephen Harper and the Big Oil Party of Canada
Tuesday, January 17th, 2012
16 Jan. 2012
Canadian governments pre-Harper actually balanced their promotion of corporate interests… That practice, where no budget was ever presented to Parliament before being vetted by the most powerful CEOs in the country, effectively ended when Stephen Harper became prime minister… It might have something to do with the fact that they can’t buy favours anymore, with the new election financing rules. But actually, it goes back 20 years to the formation of the Reform Party… Not only was Alberta the most “free market” province of all, it was the one that resisted most vigorously the social democratic state that evolved in the 1960s.
Tags: economy, globalization, ideology
Posted in Governance History | 2 Comments »
Surely Harper Doesn’t Want More Poor People. Or Does He?
Tuesday, January 17th, 2012
11 Jan 2012
As the Fraser Institute’s Niels Veldhuis observed, “taking money from successful Canadians and redistributing it to lower income Canadians will only decrease the incentives for lower income Canadians to become successful.”… Minimum wage laws and the right to be represented by a union infringe on the economic freedom of employers and employees, they say. Having a legislated minimum wage must inhibit a prospective employee’s freedom to choose an even lower wage… as Canada’s standing on the economic freedom index rises, so do the number of billionaires and the ranks of the poor and struggling
Tags: budget, economy, ideology, poverty, standard of living, tax
Posted in Debates | No Comments »
This Year, Put the Country Ahead of the Party
Wednesday, January 4th, 2012
Jan. 1, 2012
There is a deep malaise in Canadian democracy rooted, it seems, in a profound alienation from politics and radically lowered expectations of what is possible from government. Much of this is the result of a deliberate strategy of voter-suppression employed by the Conservatives, a strategy of making politics so offensive and good government so unimaginable that millions of people simply tune out, as if it has nothing to do with them.
Tags: budget, ideology, participation, rights, standard of living
Posted in Governance Debates | No Comments »
Tech-Savvy Classrooms to Personalize Learning
Tuesday, December 27th, 2011
Dec. 26, 2011
BYOD or “bring your own device” policies, which started a few years back as cost-saving measures in the workplace, are now being considered in school districts worldwide… why ignore this obvious resource? Since young people have taken so readily to mobile technology, it makes sense to teach them how they can use that tool for mobile learning. BYOD policies could also help realize “personalized instruction”… Schools will thrive under a BYOD policy, but only if the change is implemented as part of a well-crafted strategy.
Tags: globalization, standard of living, youth
Posted in Education Debates | No Comments »
What Open StatsCan Can Do for You
Monday, December 19th, 2011
Dec 14, 2011
This February, Statistics Canada will make some of its vast stores of information, including census data and CANSIM, available to the public — not just free of charge, but largely free to do with as the public sees fit… the move is welcome among local government officials. “They see this as part of a positive trend where StatsCan is increasingly seeing their role as facilitating access and use of data by Canadians and by other governments and agencies to make better planning and policy decisions.
Tags: ideology, participation, rights
Posted in Governance Delivery System | No Comments »
Wake up and Listen to Occupiers
Tuesday, November 22nd, 2011
Nov. 21, 2011
… power is entrenched, protected and ruthless, and it will not be denied easily what it has accumulated over the decades… The occupiers have already made history. They have broken the media and elite-imposed taboo on talking about the destructive impact of inequality on the lives of hundreds of millions of people around the world in developing and developed countries. The new feudalism that has been emerging for over twenty years is now exposed. Everyone can see the elephant in the room.
Tags: economy, featured, globalization, ideology, standard of living, youth
Posted in Equality Debates | No Comments »
Harper’s Plan to Dismantle Canada’s Safety Nets
Tuesday, November 8th, 2011
Nov. 7, 2011
When Harper stated that we would not recognize the country after he was through, this is in part what he was talking about. Ideology is meaning in the service of power, and the Conservative government, libertarian to its core, intends to create the appearance of an increasingly volunteer society as it systematically guts the social and cultural role of government. Harper hopes to justify massive cuts to programs (and in general the role of the federal government period) by shifting responsibility to charities and foundations.
Tags: economy, featured, ideology, philanthropy, standard of living, tax
Posted in Equality Debates | No Comments »
The Tyee Reader on Inequality
Monday, October 31st, 2011
28 Oct 2011
The Tyee has been covering the Occupy Movement since we started back in 2003… So we’re happy to provide you with links to scores of articles dealing with inequality in British Columbia, in Canada, and elsewhere. We’ve organized them in chronological order within each section. And we’ve included some bonus links to other useful sources on inequality.
Tags: economy, globalization, ideology, participation, poverty, rights, tax
Posted in Equality Policy Context | No Comments »
Elites Foolish to Dismiss Occupy Wall Street
Tuesday, October 18th, 2011
Oct. 17, 2011
… governments, especially in the U.K. and the U.S., failed to regulate and failed to enforce their own laws. And then, having used public money to revive economies, governments passively watched the bail-out recipients take that money as rewards for mismanagement… the failure of capitalism is so egregious that the poor masses all over the western world saw these shenanigans and need little prodding to take them to the streets… The genie is out of the bottle…
Tags: economy, ideology, participation, standard of living
Posted in Equality Debates | No Comments »
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