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Ottawa can strike a blow against precarity with stronger protections for gig workers
Monday, February 28th, 2022
What is really needed to stop the spread of misclassification is to start with the presumption that a worker is an employee, unless a case can be made that they are a bona fide independent contractor. A clear and relatively simple test can be established to determine whether someone is a legitimate contractor — i.e., do they set their own prices, perform work that is not the company’s “core” business, and have their own business doing the same work that they market independently? — or a misclassified employee.
Tags: economy, globalization, ideology, jurisdiction, standard of living
Posted in Policy Context | No Comments »
Hard lessons from the siege of Ottawa
Monday, February 28th, 2022
… there is… no guarantee that the undeniable presence in Canada of disinformation-fuelled rage won’t grow. Civil society must resolve to push back against the ugly forces that caused the chaos and criminality in our national capital… It will require long overdue regulation of social media companies making obscene profits while failing to take responsibility for campaigns of hate and racism on their platforms.
Tags: featured, ideology, jurisdiction, participation, rights
Posted in Governance Debates | No Comments »
Sadness rules the day as Ottawa protest comes to an end
Tuesday, February 22nd, 2022
It was heartbreaking to see so many, ill-informed and hurting, fight for a cause they believe they are defending… Perhaps it was because they were repeatedly lied to… threats of violence… hate on display… so little consideration for the residents of downtown Ottawa… It was sad the residents of Ottawa felt the police couldn’t be trusted to enforce the law… It was sad that Ontario stood on the sidelines of the crisis for so long…
Tags: crime prevention, featured, ideology, jurisdiction, participation, rights
Posted in Governance Debates | No Comments »
As Toronto’s homeless freeze, modular housing for them sits empty in a city parking lot. Blame Doug Ford’s government
Thursday, February 10th, 2022
The city asked for a special minister’s order to fast track modular housing for the homeless in Willowdale. The province has refused… The modular housing units sit empty near Finch Station, a five-minute drive from their intended destination… the… government’s new report on housing affordability recommends limiting exactly that: the seemingly endless community consultations that stall new housing in cities.
Tags: disabilities, homelessness, housing, ideology, jurisdiction, mental Health
Posted in Inclusion Delivery System | No Comments »
Could a $10-a-day deal hurt Ontario’s thousands of child-care businesses?
Wednesday, February 9th, 2022
… nobody is worse off, and more are better off. The new federal funding expands and improves the quality of care, helping licensed businesses stay afloat and focus on the business of care. It creates more better-paid job opportunities… And it reduces uncertainty for parents and providers in tandem, instead of waiting for markets to deliver what they haven’t — quality care where and when it is needed.
Tags: child care, economy, featured, participation, privatization, standard of living, women
Posted in Child & Family Policy Context | No Comments »
Doug Ford is the only premier who has yet to sign Ottawa’s $10-a-day child-care deal. He’s right to push back
Wednesday, January 26th, 2022
Ontario wants the feds to either give it more money, or acknowledge the care it already provides in full-day kindergarten, which costs the province $3.6 billion annually… It makes no sense that Ontario’s success in providing early learning and child care to the vast majority of four-year-olds through full-day kindergarten isn’t included, because excluding it makes meeting federal access targets unachievable.
Tags: budget, child care, economy, featured, jurisdiction, tax
Posted in Governance Debates | No Comments »
Toronto’s community crisis plan is a welcome shift away from policing mental-health care
Tuesday, January 25th, 2022
When people slip through the cracks of our broken mental health care system, they fall right to the police. And then it falls to police to deal with the situation, even though they’re ill-equipped to do so. A functioning community framework, on the other hand, would provide people with the necessary support right in their communities — not locked away in isolated institutions — and from people they know and trust.
Tags: featured, ideology, mental Health, multiculturalism
Posted in Child & Family Delivery System | No Comments »
Israel capped CEO pay for banking execs at $1 million. Its unique experiment could work here, too
Friday, January 14th, 2022
Over the years, the ratio between those who hold the top jobs and regular employees has gone up tremendously. Justifications for this were always based on arguments that CEO pay is set in a competitive market. The reality, however, is different. CEO pay has no equilibrium and continues to ratchet up endlessly… For too long we’ve been brainwashed by free-market myths about CEO pay. The natural experiment in Israel has refuted them.
Tags: economy, ideology, privatization, standard of living, tax
Posted in Debates | No Comments »
After decades of delay, national child-care plan proves an ambitious social agenda is possible
Thursday, January 13th, 2022
… now that it’s clear a national child-care system is politically viable, it will be up to the Trudeau government to ensure that the one it’s started to build is strong — and public. The success of Scandinavian-style child care stems from the fact that it is a truly public system — like our school system — with no place for private profit-making, which leads to cutting corners on staff and resources.
Tags: budget, child care, economy, ideology, privatization
Posted in Child & Family Policy Context | No Comments »
Canadians with disabilities fell through the cracks in the pandemic response. Here’s what needs to change as Omicron surges
Tuesday, January 11th, 2022
… living with a disability is one minority group that anyone can join. Disability Without Poverty is led by people with disabilities and came about around the end of 2020 in response to gaps in how the government served their communities during the pandemic and to push for a national disability benefit, which has been slowly moving through Parliament and would provide support besides existing provincial programs.
Tags: budget, child care, disabilities, ideology, participation, poverty, rights, standard of living
Posted in Inclusion Policy Context | No Comments »
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