Canada needs a sovereign wealth fund
Tuesday, October 7th, 2025
This fund must operate as an investor – not a grant dispenser. It should back Canadian-owned businesses through direct investments, co-investments and fund commitments, in a way that attracts private capital rather than crowds it out… This is not about picking corporate winners. It’s about ensuring that industries essential to sovereignty remain anchored in Canada.
Tags: economy, globalization, ideology, jurisdiction
Posted in Debates | No Comments »
If the notwithstanding clause is the nuclear option, Ottawa should respond proportionately
Monday, September 22nd, 2025
… the original constitutional bargain, the one at our founding in 1867, was that the federal government would be the defender of rights against the depredations of local majorities. And the instrument of that defence… was to be the disallowance power… Disallowance, to be sure, has lately fallen into disuse. So, for more than 30 years, had notwithstanding. That has not prevented provincial governments from reviving it; neither should the mere passage of time prevent Ottawa from invoking disallowance.
Tags: featured, ideology, jurisdiction, rights
Posted in Governance Policy Context | No Comments »
When mental-health diagnoses become brands, the real drivers of our psychic pain are hidden
Monday, September 15th, 2025
The mental-illness health epidemic is growing alongside a crisis of economy and political legitimacy in Western societies. The distress and insecurity produced becomes another source of profiteering in the marketized economy where personhood is socially produced through individualized consumption… this enables distraction from social causes of distress such as poverty, inadequate housing, social injustice, discrimination, exclusion, and chronic financial insecurity; alongside militarism, and appalling levels of violence inflicted by governments on global citizens they control (or try to control).
Tags: featured, housing, mental Health, poverty, standard of living
Posted in Equality Debates | No Comments »
A needed cut of Ontario’s school boards
Monday, September 15th, 2025
Vigorous reform would end the charade of off-loading parents’ concerns to increasingly powerless trustees, rather than the existing chain of command within the school system. Overhauling the outdated trustee model will make it much clearer to parents that the government is ultimately responsible for the education of their children.
Tags: budget, Education, ideology, jurisdiction, participation
Posted in Education Policy Context | No Comments »
Yes, Canada should (mostly) end our temporary foreign worker programs
Wednesday, September 10th, 2025
Make it easy for businesses to recruit from overseas for the most highly skilled and highly paid positions. Make it impossible to bring in temporary workers from overseas for low-wage and low-skill work… hundreds of thousands of temporary foreign workers to make pizzas, stock shelves or deliver food orders? At a time of rising unemployment and near-record youth unemployment, it makes less sense than ever.
Tags: economy, globalization, immigration, youth
Posted in Debates | No Comments »
Ending vaccine mandates is a cynical political play – and it threatens children’s lives
Wednesday, September 10th, 2025
Only two jurisdictions – Ontario and New Brunswick – have legislated mandatory vaccine requirements for attendance at schools and daycares, but they allow medical, religious and philosophical exemptions. We make vaccine recommendations (which, for no good reason vary by province and territory) and expect parents to do the right thing for their own child and others.
Tags: Health, ideology, jurisdiction, participation, pharmaceutical, rights
Posted in Child & Family Policy Context | No Comments »
The three fiscal taboos Canada can no longer afford
Saturday, September 6th, 2025
Federal health and social transfers have also long outlived their usefulness: where once conditional transfers might have been needed as a catalyst for national standards, today they are among the main obstacles to health care reform; Restoring the two points to the GST… would leave it no higher than it was 20 years ago, and far lower than in most countries with similar taxes; … those at the top paying more in tax, overall… on their stock options… capital gains… dividend tax credits
Tags: budget, economy, featured, tax
Posted in Governance Debates | No Comments »
Why do we keep letting Canada’s ultrarich use tax havens to stash wealth?
Friday, July 25th, 2025
The Tax Justice Network has estimated that international tax abuse costs Canada about $15-billion in revenue every year. According to the Parliamentary Budget Officer, that’s enough to fund both our new dental care program and a single-payer universal national pharmacare program… Mr. Carney needs to end a near-universally loathed loophole that only the wealthiest people and largest corporations in Canada can take advantage of…
Tags: budget, economy, featured, standard of living, tax
Posted in Equality Policy Context | No Comments »
A shrinking population is hardly what this country needs right now
Tuesday, July 22nd, 2025
Are wages stagnant? Are houses overpriced? Is the health care system overburdened? It must be because of all those pesky people: the “overpopulation” and “crowding”… [But] Population growth has already slowed to a trickle… The problem… is not that we have too many people: it is that we have too little capital, and too little incentive to make efficient use of the capital we have. Fixing those ought to be our priority
Tags: economy, Health, housing, ideology, standard of living
Posted in Policy Context | No Comments »
‘Nation-building’ projects should also reflect Canadian values
Wednesday, June 11th, 2025
In his 2021 book, Value(s): Building A Better World For All, Mr. Carney reflects thoughtfully on the corrosive impact of inequality and unhealthiness, and how more equal societies are more resilient. He also writes about seven key values that are essential for building a better world: solidarity, fairness, responsibility, resilience, sustainability, dynamism, and humility, all laced with compassion. The way to embrace those values is to invest in programs that make people healthier and more equal…
Tags: budget, economy, featured, Health, standard of living
Posted in Health Debates | No Comments »
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