Wealthy Canadians get huge tax breaks, even with budget changes to capital gains
Thursday, April 25th, 2024
The tax system is much tougher on working people, who make up the vast majority of Canadians, including almost everyone in the lower and middle class. Working people pay taxes on their full working incomes, with few exemptions, and their taxes are deducted before they even receive their paycheques. Then there are those who own capital — stocks, bonds and other property… “A buck is a buck is a buck.” The budget’s tax changes are a small but important step in that direction.
Tags: budget, featured, ideology, standard of living, tax
Posted in Equality Policy Context | No Comments »
Canada disability benefit severely underfunded in Budget 2024 and Canadians with disabilities will pay the price
Thursday, April 25th, 2024
One-in-seven people who access food banks nationally rely on provincial disability income support. In many provinces, that means living more than $800 below the poverty line each month… it was never about seeing just another income support program come into effect. It was about extending the type of tangible support to Canadians with disabilities living in severe poverty, helping them overcome its relentless cycle.
Tags: budget, disabilities, jurisdiction, participation, poverty, standard of living
Posted in Inclusion Debates | No Comments »
We are rich Canadians and we support higher capital gains taxes
Tuesday, April 23rd, 2024
Ottawa wants to raise taxes for Canada’s ultra-rich. Rich people like us want that, too… with 1 per cent of the country’s residents holding over a quarter of all wealth. We need higher taxes to level out this rising wealth inequality… to fund new spending on priorities like Old Age Security, clean economy, medical care, child care, and housing, but it doesn’t go far enough to address class distortions… we’d also like to see a “super wealth tax,” an inheritance tax, and progressive property taxes
Tags: budget, economy, featured, ideology, standard of living, tax
Posted in Governance Policy Context | No Comments »
Trudeau would be wise to raise the GST to 7 per cent instead of reforming the capital gains tax
Tuesday, April 23rd, 2024
… the GST has underwritten Canada’s social safety net for more than 30 years. In 2006… the GST accounted for 30.6 per cent of all federal tax revenue… Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and finance minister Chrystia Freeland have sought refuge in progressive populism with their plan to expand the capital gains tax. But the sustainable policy choice would be to put those two points back on the GST.
Tags: budget, economy, tax
Posted in Governance Debates | No Comments »
Ottawa puts up $50M in federal budget to hedge against job-stealing AI
Sunday, April 21st, 2024
“There is a significant transformation of the economy and society on the horizon around artificial intelligence”… Some jobs will be lost, others will be created… AI is an issue “across sectors, but certainly clerical and customer service jobs are more vulnerable… two types of skills it makes sense to focus on in retraining — computational thinking, or understanding how computers operate and make decisions, and skills dealing with data.
Tags: budget, economy, participation
Posted in Debates | No Comments »
Appointing judges will not fix the criminal delay problem
Saturday, April 20th, 2024
Numerous zero-tolerance policies, which forbid dropping certain categories of charges in exchange for mediation, restitution or non-criminal sanctions put an additional burden on the system. Minor matters, which could be diverted out of the criminal justice system with non-criminal resolutions, are treated the same as serious ones… The criminal delay problem will not be solved by judicial appointments, as delay is a result of the policies and procedures administering an overburdened criminal justice system.
Tags: corrections, ideology
Posted in Governance Delivery System | No Comments »
We need to revolutionize how we organize health care in Canada
Friday, April 19th, 2024
… “achieving high value for patients must become the overarching goal of health care delivery, with value defined as the health outcomes per dollar spent.” … Our government should focus less on who they are paying, and more on what they want to buy… This would facilitate innovations in care delivery across the system, and allow for more investment in integrated care programs that span the full continuum. Funding could focus on all-in coverage… including drugs, home care and virtual innovations.
Tags: budget, Health, ideology, standard of living
Posted in Health Delivery System | No Comments »
Liberals tax the rich, but not enough to be considered populist
Thursday, April 18th, 2024
… in recent decades, business interests have strong-armed governments into redesigning the marketplace to favour their own interests, through tax and regulatory changes, and the rewriting of labour laws to disempower workers. These “neo-liberal” changes haven’t brought us the productivity gains that were promised, but they have made us a much less equal society… We need to reverse the “neo-liberal” policies that are responsible for such extreme inequality.
Tags: budget, ideology, standard of living, tax
Posted in Equality Policy Context | No Comments »
Liberal budget hits a home run on housing, but plays small ball on care economy
Wednesday, April 17th, 2024
Here are three ways federal small ball could deliver big results without big spends in the coming months: Child care Workforce Deals… with a focus on workforce attraction and retention… tracking trends in the investments occurring in our long-term care, child care and health-care sectors… examining ways of putting new guardrails on public funding… Care services such as child care, long-term care, medical or dental community clinics can be a built-in feature of new housing and infrastructure developments.
Tags: budget, economy, Health, housing, jurisdiction, standard of living, tax
Posted in Policy Context | No Comments »
Protecting public health care from private investors
Wednesday, April 10th, 2024
In Canada, a single private equity firm already owns the largest national network of independent surgical centres — 53 operating rooms spread across 14 centres — in Quebec, Ontario, Manitoba, Saskatchewan, Alberta, and B.C… Approximately 90 per cent are publicly funded through partnerships with provincial health systems… Should profit-driven investors own health care facilities?
Tags: budget, Health, housing, ideology, jurisdiction, privatization
Posted in Health Debates | No Comments »
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