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In health care it is not privatization to fear, it’s profitization
Thursday, February 16th, 2023
Despite the evidence, Ford has permitted more for-profits in long-term care, home care, acute care, primary care, and child care. It is not impossible to reverse the corporatization of profits in health care, but trade rules, contracts and other corporate protections can make it difficult and expensive… We don’t need an action plan for corporate profit and control, using public money. We need to improve the public system.
Tags: budget, Health, ideology, jurisdiction, privatization
Posted in Health Policy Context | No Comments »
Laugh at the farcical scandals of John Tory and Doug Ford but the joke’s on the powerless
Wednesday, February 15th, 2023
… for-profit nursing homes had four times as many COVID-19 deaths as city-run homes… Ontario announced funding for new nursing home beds in 2022… adding 200 new police won’t decrease wait times for police to respond to calls. It doesn’t support the idea that more police equals less crime, either. But data shows reducing poverty can reduce crime… The proposed 2023 budget cuts $4.3 million from jobs and social services.
Tags: budget, Health, homelessness, ideology, jurisdiction, poverty, tax
Posted in Governance Debates | No Comments »
Health care transformation is needed next
Monday, February 13th, 2023
… while [the provinces] have their hands extended to Ottawa. A majority of them are in surplus, or can see a surplus just over the horizon, but the provincial share of health funding has barely kept up with pandemic-era inflation… [Ford’s] Progressive Conservative government will have $12.5 billion in “excess funds” available over the next three years and is shortchanging health care by $5 billion.
Tags: budget, featured, Health, ideology, jurisdiction, privatization, standard of living
Posted in Health Delivery System | No Comments »
Humans aren’t widgets, and Canadian workers are not in ‘short supply’
Saturday, February 11th, 2023
Tiff Macklem, Governor of the Bank of Canada, also cites employers’ complaints as justification for painful interest rate hikes. He aims to ‘solve’ the labour shortage by deliberately raising unemployment… The federal government, too, is catering to employers by increasing immigration targets… Properly planned and supported immigration is good for the economy and for society. But importing masses of workers just to make life easier for employers is the wrong way to do it
Tags: economy, globalization, ideology, immigration, standard of living
Posted in Policy Context | No Comments »
COVID ‘blank cheque’: Report finds large corporations spent billions on dividends and share buybacks while receiving government wage subsidies
Friday, February 10th, 2023
Canadians For Tax Fairness found 37 corporations that had received the Canada Emergency Wage Subsidy and spent a total of $81.3 billion on dividends, $41.1 billion on share buybacks and $51.1 billion on taking over other companies… up to $9.9 billion may have gone to companies which weren’t eligible to receive it… some kind of clawback mechanism is needed, either for this time around, or when designing future programs.
Tags: budget, economy, Health, privatization, tax
Posted in Debates | No Comments »
Centralized wait-lists work. So why isn’t Canada using them in health care across the country?
Friday, February 10th, 2023
Of course wait-list management isn’t all we need. At its best, it simply taps the potential of underutilized capacity in hospitals. We also need to stanch the hemorrhage of doctors and nurses out of publicly-funded care, and need a better spectrum of care to get people into and out of hospital more quickly. And we need more focus on keeping people out of hospital in the first place… It means better primary care through more interdisciplinary teams.
Tags: budget, Health, jurisdiction, standard of living
Posted in Health Delivery System | No Comments »
Private foundations sit on billions of dollars while charities struggle
Thursday, February 9th, 2023
We don’t need more tax breaks for charitable giving — Canada already has among the world’s most generous charitable tax breaks, and we are overflowing with charitable funds. It’s just that we can’t get at them. What’s needed is a major overhaul of Canada’s two-tier charity sector where private foundations controlled by wealthy families sit on mountains of idle cash while thousands of working charities are starved for funds as they struggle to deliver services to Canadians.
Tags: budget, economy, ideology, standard of living, tax
Posted in Inclusion Policy Context | No Comments »
There’s money for police and the World Cup. So why did council give the cold shoulder to warming centres?
Thursday, February 9th, 2023
The city owns big heated buildings that are empty at night. We could unlock the doors and let them sit inside… Instead, [Council] made yet another request to the provincial and federal governments to chip in dollars to help out… the city’s current shelter system “has the ability to meet the need” without doing so… On the icy Toronto streets, when our city government fails to act, lives are at stake.
Tags: budget, homelessness, jurisdiction, poverty, standard of living
Posted in Inclusion Debates | No Comments »
Ontario needs to invest in the non-profit business model for health and social services
Wednesday, February 8th, 2023
In Canada, we have a long tradition of non-profits working in partnership with governments to build community infrastructure and provide services. But for the past 20 years, for-profit corporations have been taking over these services and the results have been disastrously poor, including short cuts in service provision and understaffing… Accessibility is top-of mind as service provision is based on community needs, regardless of ability to pay or complexity of care.
Tags: budget, ideology, privatization
Posted in Governance Debates | No Comments »
Queen’s Park must pull its weight on health care spending
Wednesday, February 8th, 2023
… the FAO says. Under current plans, funding for health care over the next three years will be $5 billion less than what is needed just to maintain existing programs… it now appears that any bilateral deal between Ontario and Canada will require that the province at least maintain current spending levels (presumably adjusted for inflation). That’s not a high bar. Ottawa could do more, especially when it comes to blocking provincial plans to siphon public dollars into private profits.
Tags: budget, featured, Health, jurisdiction, privatization, standard of living
Posted in Health Debates | No Comments »
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