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Canada aims to accept far more immigrants in next three years
Sunday, November 1st, 2020
Immigrants are needed to reduce labour shortages in Canada and to pay taxes to help sustain health care and other services. But the pandemic forced Canada to close its borders to all non-essential travellers… Immigration and refugee experts welcomed the move to grant permanent residency to those already in the country… “people who are already educated here, or have work experience here, or at least have lived here… These are people who are already demonstrating their genuine interest in Canada”
Tags: economy, immigration
Posted in Inclusion Policy Context | No Comments »
People with disabilities deserve a basic income
Monday, October 26th, 2020
It’s time to treat people with disabilities with respect instead of paternalism and to address the inadequacies of the current system. The proposed federal Disability Benefit is an opportunity to do better. Will it measure up to a basic income? Let’s hope so.
Tags: disabilities, ideology, participation, pensions, poverty, standard of living
Posted in Social Security Debates | 2 Comments »
Federal NDP chooses wealth taxes as the wedge issue party needs right now
Wednesday, October 14th, 2020
The biggest knocks against wealth taxes is that they encourage the flight of capital and tax avoidance, and they shrink incentives for investment. The Parliamentary Budget Officer costed the 1-per-cent tax proposal and estimated it would raise $5.6-billion in the current fiscal year, but also that each family’s net worth would shrink by 35 per cent in a vast expansion of avoidance behaviour.
Tags: budget, economy, ideology, tax
Posted in Governance Debates | No Comments »
Canada needs a new grand national bargain: Quebec and Alberta
Tuesday, October 13th, 2020
Canada’s greatest challenge now is to get a new national grand bargain in the face of multiple external adversities – COVID-19, international forces that are increasingly hostile to Canada and its resource industries… Canadians themselves are ready – they are pragmatic and they want a united country that is serious about climate change… The challenge for Ottawa, the provinces, the Indigenous community and the business community is to find mutually supportive ways forward.
Tags: economy, globalization, ideology, jurisdiction, standard of living
Posted in Governance History | No Comments »
The resilient city: Why Canadian metropolises will thrive despite the pandemic
Saturday, October 3rd, 2020
Previous urban pandemics have spawned major changes to the shape of the city… All big cities now face a similar moment, but the locus of contemporary intervention has to shift from the inner city to the inner suburbs, and its focus broadened from needed physical and mobility improvements to an action plan that places income support, social services, education and training at its heart.
Tags: economy, Health, housing, immigration, participation, poverty
Posted in Inclusion Policy Context | No Comments »
It is possible to end chronic homelessness if we act now
Monday, September 28th, 2020
Our goal must be more than moving people off the street. It must be to help people live full lives and be connected, healthy and well. At a time when we are all struggling with feeling disconnected, this is more relevant than ever. Homelessness in Canada is not inevitable; it is the predictable outcome of choices we have made collectively over past decades. We must expand housing and support services to end chronic homelessness. At the same time, we need to address the forces that cause people to become homeless in the first place.
Tags: budget, Health, homelessness, housing, ideology, mental Health, participation, standard of living
Posted in Inclusion Delivery System | No Comments »
An ambitious plan for an alternate reality
Friday, September 25th, 2020
This is the prospect that has so entranced the Prime Minister’s Office: bundling all the policies they’d ever dreamed of together and passing them all in a rush – in the name of “the pandemic” – and doing it all with borrowed funds. The government that failed at so basic a state responsibility as safeguarding public health is eager to take on new challenges.
Tags: budget, economy, Health, ideology, standard of living, tax
Posted in Governance Debates | No Comments »
Ottawa faces a fiscal reckoning. It must review all programs and costs
Friday, September 25th, 2020
The task ahead is on a different scale than any government has faced since the Second World War. It demands not just new programs, but a new way of thinking. This government needs to roll up its sleeves and thoroughly re-examine not only its spending priorities, but its revenue sources, its antiquated tax code, its industrial strategy… Without it, this remains just an unsustainably expensive wish list.
Tags: budget, economy, ideology, tax
Posted in Governance Policy Context | No Comments »
The poetry of peace, order and good government must be made practical, too
Tuesday, September 22nd, 2020
With some lawyers in masks behind plexiglass and others on screens, with nine judges spread throughout the courtroom and with smoke from American forest fires still lingering over Canadian provinces, the Court will ask what POGG’s [“Peace, Order and Good Government”] poetry means in the very real era of climate change and in the face of powerful provincial arguments that the federal legislation reaches too far into provincial domains.
Tags: ideology, jurisdiction, rights
Posted in Governance Policy Context | No Comments »
Should we spend more on health? Only if we get better care
Tuesday, September 22nd, 2020
… what the premiers are proposing is that the feds absorb some of their current spending. They want Ottawa to transfer money rather than use their own powers of taxation to increase revenues… This pandemic, more than anything, has exposed the shortcomings in health and welfare systems, particularly in caring for elders and other marginalized groups. That’s what we need to fix. The last thing we need is buck-passing.
Tags: budget, child care, Health, jurisdiction, pharmaceutical, tax
Posted in Health Debates | No Comments »
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