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Privatization threatens public health care, Romanow warns
Thursday, December 1st, 2011
Nov 30 2011
Romanow decried a “palpable momentum toward individualism, decentralization and privatization” in Canada. He gave the example of a “meanness of spirit . . . that somehow finds money to buy defibrillators for hockey arenas, but drags its feet about providing potable water to First Nations communities” — and said the government’s “so-called new thinking” misguidedly frames health care as a commodity rather than a right.
Tags: budget, Health, privatization
Posted in Health Debates | No Comments »
Paul Martin is making a difference
Thursday, December 1st, 2011
Nov 30 2011
In 2008, he launched the Martin Aboriginal Education Initiative, a national project that offers programs designed to help lower dropout rates for aboriginal students. He has also created a fund to help aboriginal entrepreneurs start new businesses. At the same time, Martin is co-chair of the Congo Basin Forest Fund, which addresses poverty issues in a 10-nation region in Africa… He’s also taken time out in recent days to speak in support of the Occupy movement, praising it for raising awareness of the income-inequality gap.
Tags: Indigenous, participation, philanthropy, rights, standard of living
Posted in Inclusion Debates | No Comments »
Third World conditions — First World ignorance
Thursday, December 1st, 2011
Nov 30 2011
When emergency situations occur, First Nations like Attawapiskat must either use the money provided for their basic needs or they must call upon the federal and provincial governments to provide financial assistance. Often they end up using their existing funding to address crisis situations in their communities, with no reimbursement from any level of government. As a result, they go into deficit… It’s not the time for finger pointing or attempting to convince the Canadian public that loads of money has already been spent on aboriginal peoples in Canada, and that accountability and transparency are the answer.
Tags: budget, housing, Indigenous, poverty, standard of living
Posted in Equality Delivery System | No Comments »
Minor adjustment a major problem for poor
Wednesday, November 30th, 2011
Nov 29 2011
In 2010, the Ontario government announced a change to the way it pays tax credits to the province’s poorest citizens. Instead of getting one lump-sum payment at the end of the year, they would get smaller amounts every three months. The objective was to produce a steadier income flow… But it did affect them in a way most didn’t realize…
Tags: budget, poverty, standard of living, tax
Posted in Social Security Delivery System | No Comments »
Canada’s never-ending medicare fight
Tuesday, November 29th, 2011
Nov 29 2011
… two-tier medicine… simply shifts costs. Private-pay medicine may save governments money. But it provides no net savings to citizens who end up paying out of pocket for the same or worse health care… the Quebec government spends less in proportional terms on health care [but] it spends more in absolute terms on everything else… other countries have two-tier systems. But they don’t necessarily do any better. The Germans, Dutch and French, all of whom are praised by two-tier fans, spend more of their gross domestic product on health care than we do.
Tags: budget, Health, ideology, privatization
Posted in Health Policy Context | No Comments »
Queen’s Park offers crumbs to Ontario’s poor
Sunday, November 27th, 2011
Nov 24 2011
On Dec. 1, the province’s 475,000 neediest people get a 1 per cent raise. For an individual, that amounts to an extra $7 a month. For a single parent raising two children, it is $9 more. Keep in mind that consumer prices are rising by 3 per cent, so the modest increase will be gobbled up by inflation… The poor won’t complain… Social activists won’t raise their voices. They now consider this a lost cause… This is not the scenario Ontarians envisaged when they elected McGuinty in 2003. They wanted relief from the slash-and-burn policies of former premier Mike Harris… The old Ontario — with its sturdy social conscience — is gone.
Tags: budget, featured, Health, housing, ideology, poverty, standard of living
Posted in Social Security Debates | No Comments »
New tactics in an old fight [child poverty]
Sunday, November 27th, 2011
Nov 26 2011
The child poverty rate has gone down — from 11.9 per cent in 1989 when Parliament passed an all-party resolution pledging to eliminate child poverty by the turn of the millennium, to 9.5 per cent in 2009. But most of the drop is due to economic growth… Policy improvements reinforced these gains. The National Child Benefit, the federal working income tax credit and Ontario’s child benefit helped to ease the plight of low-income parents. What’s still missing are the two things that struggling parents need most: Affordable housing… Affordable child care
Tags: child care, housing, poverty, standard of living
Posted in Inclusion Debates | No Comments »
How to revive Canada’s dream of social democracy
Sunday, November 27th, 2011
Nov 26 2011
Conservatives commonly claim that opinion has shifted to the right, that people want less government. The evidence is rather that they have lost faith in the capacity of our political system to deliver the kind of government most Canadians want. That is reflected both in the low turnout at elections and the recent strength, among those who did go to the polls, of the party that had long gathered little more than a protest vote. There will be no reforming government, however, until either the NDP or a revitalized Liberal party has developed, and taken to the electorate, a realistic agenda for social democracy.
Tags: budget, economy, ideology, standard of living, tax
Posted in Governance Policy Context | No Comments »
The dangerous myths about medicare
Friday, November 25th, 2011
Nov 25 2011
two pervasive health-care myths need be cleared up… First, medicare isn’t about to be bankrupted by the elderly… other things – such as wages paid doctors and overall population growth – are far more important in determining health-care costs. Second, medicare costs in general aren’t spinning out of control…. governments cut back health-care spending growth severely during the recession of the early 1990s, then… reversed themselves later on. As a result, provincial government health spending did accelerate. But by 2003 the growth rate had levelled off. In the last two years, it has slightly declined.
Tags: budget, Health
Posted in Health Policy Context | No Comments »
A winter of aboriginal agony must lead to action
Friday, November 25th, 2011
Nov 24 2011
Wednesday, more than two dozen aboriginal communities in Manitoba and Northern Ontario filed a multimillion dollar lawsuit accusing the federal government of underfunding aboriginal education. “At some point you have to say enough is enough, too many of our children are not reaching their potential,” said Grand Chief Diane Kelly, who represents the 28 Anishinaabe bands that filed the suit… The enormity of the problems with First Nations across this country is gaining widespread national attention. It’s time, says Shawn Atleo, the national chief of the Assembly of First Nations, to stop lurching from crisis to crisis.
Tags: budget, featured, Indigenous, poverty, rights, standard of living
Posted in Education Delivery System | 5 Comments »
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