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Supreme Court ruling gives Canadians with mental disabilities full equality in court
Wednesday, February 15th, 2012
Feb 14 2012
The law is finally fair. In a landmark judgment last week, the Supreme Court ruled that Canadians with mental disabilities have the same right to testify in court as everyone else… It also said adults with mental disabilities should be subjected to no higher test of truthfulness than any other witness: Can they tell their story coherently and do they swear to tell the truth?
Tags: disabilities, mental Health, rights
Posted in Equality Delivery System | No Comments »
Drummond Report: Higher hydro bills, more user fees urged in sweeping report
Wednesday, February 15th, 2012
Feb. 15, 2012
Ontarians could face higher hydro bills, bigger school classes, fewer hospitals, more expensive tuition and user fees to protect the future of provincial public services… “Reform must be pervasive and speedy. The government will need to implement all the reforms we recommend … to restrain the growth of program spending enough to achieve balance by 2017-18,”
Tags: budget, economy, Health, ideology, standard of living, tax
Posted in Governance Policy Context | No Comments »
Larger classrooms among sweeping changes suggested to education
Wednesday, February 15th, 2012
Feb.15, 2012
The economist advising Queen’s Park on how to wipe out the deficit suggests sweeping changes to the sector on which Premier Dalton McGuinty has staked his reputation, arguing the province has hiked per-pupil spending by 56 per cent in the past 10 years, while enrolment has plunged… He also suggests post-secondary spending grow by no more than 1.5 per cent until 2017.
Tags: budget, disabilities, economy, tax, youth
Posted in Education Debates | No Comments »
Caterpillar fiasco highlights failure of economic and social policy
Tuesday, February 14th, 2012
Feb 13 2012
The factory operated profitably and productively for decades. Then suddenly its workers and the whole community were confronted by an uninvited visitor — who barged in, demanded money, and then left, leaving a shuttered plant and immeasurable social despair in its wake… Caterpillar had no sooner digested its new subsidiary, than it began shifting production to Indiana (where new right-to-work laws effectively ban unions) and Mexico… moving jobs out of Canada won’t stop Caterpillar from raking in billions in revenue here… Yet nothing was demanded from Caterpillar in return for this largesse
Tags: economy, globalization, ideology, rights, standard of living, tax
Posted in Policy Context | No Comments »
Rich have succeeded in keeping tax hikes off the political agenda
Tuesday, February 14th, 2012
Feb 13 2012
Drummond’s long-awaited report… will lay out a deficit-shrinking program of austerity that is expected to have harsh implications for public employees from hospital cleaners to daycare workers, as well as delivering service cuts with devastating impacts on the poor, the sick, women in shelters and the disabled… But… he presents a friendly banker’s face to the affluent, who are to be spared paying any additional taxes as their contribution to the province’s deficit fight. Premier Dalton McGuinty made that clear when he declared tax increases off the table in Drummond’s search for ways to reduce Ontario’s $16-billion deficit.
Tags: budget, ideology, poverty, standard of living, tax
Posted in Equality Debates | No Comments »
Doubling teaching loads a bad idea
Monday, February 13th, 2012
Feb 11 2012
No decent academic, never mind a high-flyer, will take a job here to see his teaching load doubled and research time reduced to 10 per cent. Similarly, marketable faculty now teaching here will exit the province faster than a captain can desert a listing ship… The training of doctoral students is a highly labour-intensive activity, already poorly remunerated in many universities. Doubling the teaching load will make doctoral training impossible. Finally, research brings in huge sums from public and private sources…
Tags: budget, standard of living
Posted in Education Delivery System | No Comments »
Stephen Harper’s scary scenario about Old Age Security is wildly overblown, budget watchdog argues
Sunday, February 12th, 2012
Feb 11 2012
After parsing the numbers, Page concluded that the crisis is a manufactured one. “You cannot argue the government has a fiscal sustainability problem”… There’s talk of hiking the OAS eligibility age to, say, 67 from 65. Ottawa could also claw back more benefits from better-off retirees. Or partially de-index benefits that now rise to offset inflation… Making seniors wait until 67 for OAS could mean that the very poorest would have to wait longer to get the Guaranteed Income Supplement, a linked benefit. The cost of helping these neediest may then fall to the provinces.
Tags: budget, pensions
Posted in Social Security Debates | No Comments »
OAS not in crisis, no need to soak the seniors plan
Sunday, February 12th, 2012
Feb 10 2012
The affordability of a higher-quality health care system does merit debate. Also affordable housing, the cornerstone of poverty reduction. Also education reform that better matches students with a workplace that, as a business think tank complained last week, is suffering a “desperate shortage” of skilled workers despite 1.42 million Canadians out of work. The PM is wrong about the sustainability of Old Age Security and the Guaranteed Income Supplement, paid to the poorest Canadians. And Canadians have let him know it.
Tags: budget, economy, pensions, standard of living
Posted in Social Security Debates | No Comments »
America’s ‘Food Stamp Nation’ continues to grow
Saturday, February 11th, 2012
Feb 11 2012
In 2006, there were 26.7 million people on food stamps in America. By September 2011, that number had grown to a record 46.3 million, bigger by far than Canada’s population of 33 million, and equal to that of Spain. In fact, if the Americans using food stamps constituted a country, they would be the 27th largest nation in the world… Anyone in America can apply for food stamps, technically known as the federal Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), and millions do… To be eligible, an individual must not make more than $14,088 per year.
Tags: budget, ideology, poverty, standard of living
Posted in Social Security Policy Context | 2 Comments »
Help coming for those on home-care waiting list
Saturday, February 11th, 2012
Feb 10 2012
Facing continued criticisms about 10,000 people on waiting lists for home care, Health Minister Deb Matthews says changes are coming to get help to more people…. Money from home care filters down from the health ministry to local health integration networks and then community-care access centres that handle requests for care from the public before funding gets to agencies with nurses, personal support workers and other staff providing services to patients… administrative and case management costs totalled 30 per cent of the home-care budget…
Tags: budget, disabilities, Health, standard of living
Posted in Health Delivery System | No Comments »
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