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Business groups frustrated as sick leave debate carries on
Wednesday, April 28th, 2021
While businesses — and some governments — are inclined to focus on the upfront cost of providing paid sick leave, there are solid business arguments to make for supporting it… “You can be closed down if there’s an outbreak. That’s a huge cost for a business”… Slowing COVID’s spread will also make it possible for the economy to open up sooner and more reliably…
Tags: budget, economy, Health, ideology, standard of living
Posted in Debates | No Comments »
The Ford government has landed on the wrong fix for long-term care — again
Wednesday, April 28th, 2021
There are compelling reasons — beyond just reducing the dangers of spreading COVID — to limit the practice of long-term-care homes relying on a revolving-door workforce of part-time staff with few benefits and temporary agency workers with too little training… it will always be hard to attract workers, and harder still to keep them, until the government truly takes steps to improve working conditions.
Tags: Health, housing, ideology, standard of living
Posted in Governance Debates | No Comments »
Supporters fight to keep midwifery program in northern Ontario
Monday, April 26th, 2021
… approximately 27 per cent of families who choose midwifery care are unable to access it — and far more so in the north… in northern Ontario, some 60 per cent of midwives are Laurentian graduates, and more than 90 per cent of Francophone midwives practising in places such as Sudbury, Thunder Bay, Hearst and Attawapiskat First Nation… the program was in the black this year and that a petition to keep it going has more than 20,000 signatures.
Tags: budget, Health, ideology, standard of living, women
Posted in Education Debates | No Comments »
Pandemic pay bonuses are going to executives, instead of the front-line workers taking all the risks
Monday, April 26th, 2021
At the same time that executives at Chartwell — Canada’s largest operator of retirement and long-term-care homes — were writing each other big cheques, they were outright rejecting a shareholder proposal to study the possibility of a living wage for their staff. Think about that. They weren’t even being asked to actually pay a living wage — hardly a huge ask in itself. They were only being asked to look into the possibility of doing it, and they said no.
Tags: economy, ideology, standard of living, tax
Posted in Equality Debates | No Comments »
Under pressure, Ontario government scrambles to launch a provincial sick leave program
Tuesday, April 20th, 2021
Ford scrapped the previous two days of guaranteed paid sick leave that were on the books after his Progressive Conservative toppled former premier Kathleen Wynne’s Liberals in 2018. Local public health officers, mayors, opposition parties and the government’s science table of advisers have long urged paid sick days for workers whose employers don’t provide them. That has led to many essential workers going to their jobs with COVID-19 symptoms, spreading the virus.
Tags: budget, economy, Health, ideology, jurisdiction, standard of living
Posted in Health Policy Context | No Comments »
As med students, we’ve seen how Ontario’s lack of paid sick days has hurt low-income, racialized workers. More than 600 of us demand change
Thursday, April 15th, 2021
Without suitable paid sick leave, essential workers who are symptomatic or have been exposed are faced with an impossible decision: follow public health measures by staying home or go to work to put food on the table and bring the virus into their homes and communities… Ontario needs a robust and comprehensive provincial paid sick leave program that is universal to all workers in Ontario, proactive, and easily accessible.
Tags: budget, economy, Health, ideology, standard of living
Posted in Debates | No Comments »
The Ford government needs to press pause on plans to permanently expand online education
Wednesday, April 14th, 2021
Ontario has needed remote learning in the pandemic but it’s a long way to go from saying online education is better than no education to deciding that it’s so good it should be permanently expanded. Most especially if doing so risks destabilizing or further underfunding the school-based system that the vast majority of students will continue to need… the province needs to review what worked well with online learning and figure out how to address the shortcomings…
Tags: budget, ideology, participation, youth
Posted in Education Delivery System | No Comments »
If you don’t have $20 million, relax. A wealth tax won’t touch you
Tuesday, April 13th, 2021
Canada’s wealthiest 87 families had wealth of $259 billion in 2016; our top 44 billionaires increased their wealth by more than $50 billion during the pandemic… 79 per cent of Canadians favour a wealth tax… In fact, a wealth tax would be the simplest, fairest and most effective way to collect billions of extra dollars of revenue a year, and to limit the power and political influence of the billionaire class… Here are some of the facile arguments being trotted out against a wealth tax.
Tags: budget, economy, ideology, participation, standard of living, tax
Posted in Policy Context | No Comments »
Laurentian University is in peril, and it’s not alone. Governments have systematically underfunded universities and colleges across the country for decades
Sunday, April 11th, 2021
It is not due to faculty salaries, as the number of full-time faculty has actually declined over the last decade. Nor is it due to enrolment which has remained stable over the last decade… In addition to the government funding drought… campus modernization has left Laurentian with big mortgages on still half-empty buildings… [Laurentian] provides jobs for around 1,000 people, educates over 9,000 students and undertakes world-class research.
Tags: budget, featured, jurisdiction, multiculturalism, participation, youth
Posted in Education Debates | No Comments »
How the Canada Child Benefit is Performing
Friday, April 9th, 2021
The CCB had a larger effect than the enhanced UCCB, primarily because the amounts available to lower income families are greater, but both reduced poverty. Interestingly, neither had visible labour supply effects for our sample population, despite concerns that enhancing benefits would discourage work. Our work provides further evidence of the efficacy of these types of targeted cash transfers as an effective tool for redistribution and poverty reduction.
Tags: budget, child care, participation, poverty, standard of living, tax, women
Posted in Child & Family Policy Context | No Comments »
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