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Ontario abandons property ownership as source of jurors
Saturday, April 20th, 2019
Ontario is making a fundamental change to the province’s justice system by vastly expanding the pool of potential jurors to better reflect economic and racial diversity… “Serving on a jury effectively means giving up income in a large number of cases… That barrier still exists. Hopefully this (change) indicates the government is open to making other changes that will help our juries better reflect our communities that they sit in judgement of.”
Tags: ideology, participation
Posted in Inclusion Policy Context | No Comments »
Provincial legal aid cuts are senseless economic and social policy
Friday, April 19th, 2019
Defending the cuts, the attorney general states “there are two stakeholders that must always be front-of-mind: the clients LAO serves and the taxpayers who pay the bills.” But neither stakeholder is served by the cuts. The cuts certainly do not serve legal aid clients… The cuts also do not serve taxpayers… The court system will be further weighed down with subsequent appeals in these matters to fix the damage caused by initial subpar representation.
Tags: budget, featured, ideology, jurisdiction, participation, poverty, rights, standard of living
Posted in Equality Debates | No Comments »
Province pledges $1 billion for social housing, plans to restrict access to wait-lists
Wednesday, April 17th, 2019
Ontario has pledged to invest $1 billion to help repair social housing and reduce homelessness and plans to propose new rules restricting access to housing wait-lists, including a cap on how much potential tenants can be worth financially… Housing providers will also be empowered to “turn away tenants” who have been evicted for criminal activity… to reduce crime and gang-related violence in community housing so that all residents feel safer in their home,”
Tags: budget, housing, ideology, poverty
Posted in Inclusion Delivery System | No Comments »
NDP revives Tory bill curbing taxpayer-funded partisan ads in bid to embarrass Ford’s government
Wednesday, April 17th, 2019
NDP MPP Taras Natyshak is tabling private member’s legislation identical to a bill introduced by Tory MPP Sylvia Jones two years ago that would revive the auditor general’s powers to veto commercials deemed to be politically partisan… “Voting against this bill would be the height of hypocrisy,” he said, noting Jones and much of Ford’s cabinet strongly endorsed the measures in 2017.
Tags: budget, globalization, Health, ideology, jurisdiction, tax
Posted in Governance Debates | No Comments »
The Ford government is trying to make itself less accountable
Tuesday, April 16th, 2019
… this is the government that made itself less accountable to the public by firing the independent watchdogs for children, francophones and the environment. Now it appears to be cutting off another avenue of accountability by introducing legislation that critics say would make it harder to take legal action against the government by increasing the threshold necessary to proceed with litigation… there’s one legal challenge the government can’t avoid. That’s the one coming from the Canadian Civil Liberties Association if the legislation is passed.
Tags: budget, ideology, rights, standard of living
Posted in Governance Debates | No Comments »
The crushing impact of social media freeloaders
Monday, April 15th, 2019
Here are two breathtaking stats: 65 per cent share and 80 per cent margin. Those are market experts’ estimates of share of ad revenues and the profit margins of the social media duopoly in Canada. No other ad business in the world has that stranglehold, no other media business earns one quarter of those stratospheric profit margins. Unlike them, their Canadian television, newspaper and magazine competitors pay taxes.
Tags: economy, globalization, ideology, participation, standard of living, tax
Posted in Debates | No Comments »
Time to reveal individual MD’s OHIP billings
Sunday, April 14th, 2019
The fact is, releasing physician-identified billings is hardly groundbreaking. It already occurs in British Columbia, Manitoba and New Brunswick and in the United States. But in Ontario, taxpayers have been left in the dark, wondering what to make of a health ministry audit conducted five years ago that raised some troubling questions… Allowing questionable billings to go unchallenged only serves to unfairly tarnish the reputations of all doctors.
Tags: budget, Health, ideology, mental Health, rights
Posted in Health Debates | No Comments »
A forensic accountant’s take on the Ontario budget
Saturday, April 13th, 2019
Ontario taxes more and spends more, per capita, than Ottawa… Before annual debt costs, both Ontario and Ottawa are just treading water… Ontario has a $4.1 billion operating surplus ($280 per person). Ottawa’s operating surplus is $9.4 billion ($252 per Canadian)… Ontario — spending cuts for many, more money for a few… Among the 19 losing ministries are: … Children and Community Services… Environment… Indigenous Affairs… Training, Colleges and Universities
Tags: budget, child care, corrections, crime prevention, disabilities, featured, Health, ideology, immigration, Indigenous, jurisdiction, youth
Posted in Debates | No Comments »
The legal advice Wilson-Raybould should have taken
Saturday, April 13th, 2019
… the prime minister tried to persuade her to hire a lawyer to give her further legal advice in an attempt to find a solution to the standoff between them. He proposed the most distinguished lawyer in Canada, the former chief justice of the Supreme Court of Canada, the Honourable Beverley McLachlin. Not a bad offer. She refused… I think I know what advice she might have gotten from McLachlin. And that explains why she didn’t want, and never accepted, that offer of legal advice.
Tags: crime prevention, economy, ideology
Posted in Governance Debates | No Comments »
Omnibus bill shows it’s still politics as usual for Trudeau government
Wednesday, April 10th, 2019
… this year’s was less than half the length of last year’s 800-plus-page opus magnum. But, as has become the custom with both Liberal and Conservative governments, it rolls together numerous pieces of legislation touching a wide range of issues that have little to do with the spending of government money… With proper planning, the government could have dealt with… separate pieces of legislation well in advance of the budget bill coming out and steamrolling over informed debate.
Tags: budget, ideology, participation, standard of living
Posted in Governance Debates | No Comments »
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