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Harper’s shadow public service
Monday, March 14th, 2011
Mar 14 2011
Economist David Macdonald decided to find out how many consultants, contractors and temporary workers the federal government was hiring and how much Canadians were paying for them. It took him about a year. What he discovered was a burgeoning “shadow public service.” Last year it cost taxpayers $1.2 billion. That was 79 per cent higher than when Prime Minister Stephen Harper took power in 2006. Despite a spending freeze in the federal bureaucracy, it is still growing by leaps and bounds… the government is building a parallel hiring system to replace workers who leave or retire.
Tags: budget, ideology, participation, privatization, rights
Posted in Governance Delivery System | No Comments »
Poverty: PM’s policy is to do nothing
Saturday, March 12th, 2011
Mar 12 2011
More than 3 million Canadians live in poverty but it’s not a problem that requires urgent federal action or, really, any new action at all… he Conservatives’ response to the Senate report was to sum up what programs the government already has and confidently state that the best solution is “sustained employment.” … what this government refuses to see is that too many Canadians face barriers to getting those jobs and that it is in everyone’s best interests that Ottawa, working with the provinces, helps change that.
Tags: budget, disabilities, economy, homelessness, ideology, Indigenous, poverty
Posted in Inclusion Debates | No Comments »
Prisoners of the web
Friday, March 11th, 2011
Mar 10 2011
Jesse Hirsh… began by saying we’re all F.U.C.T., which he said stood for, Fully Under the Control of Technology. Meaning above all the Internet. He said it amounts to their religion; it surrounds their lives with meanings, as Catholicism did in the Middle Ages. It is their spiritual reality, which is a virtual one. Yet nothing in the adult world, especially politically, reflects this as their source of connection and identity… No wonder politics makes little sense to many of them, he said. They know other issues matter but the central reality of their own lives goes unrecognized.
Tags: economy, globalization, participation, standard of living, youth
Posted in Inclusion History | 1 Comment »
Where the Tory axe will fall
Friday, March 11th, 2011
Mar 11 2011
Most of the savings will come from the expiry of the government’s fiscal stimulus program… a reduction in debt charges… [and] an anticipated drop in employment insurance payouts… Two sectors — prisons and border security — will get a substantial increase in funding. Five sectors will face cuts… Environment Canada… cultural programs… regional economic development agencies… Funding for scientific research and technological support… What is emerging is not trim, muscular government; it is tough, punitive government.
Tags: budget, economy, ideology, standard of living
Posted in Governance Debates | No Comments »
Liberals urged to ‘put food in the budget’
Thursday, March 10th, 2011
Mar 10 2011
Back in 1995, the opposition Liberals scorned the Mike Harris government’s so-called “welfare diet,” which purported to show that a single person on social assistance could eat for $90 a month. Today that meagre Tory shopping list — which included pasta but no sauce and bread but no butter — costs $48 more. And yet since the Liberals took office in 2003, a single able-bodied person on welfare gets just $29 more in their monthly cheque for food. “It’s no wonder food bank use in Ontario is soaring,”
Tags: budget, disabilities, Health, ideology, participation, poverty, standard of living
Posted in Social Security Debates | No Comments »
A different sort of tax revolt
Thursday, March 10th, 2011
Mar 09 2011
These protesters are not anti-tax. Rather, they are insisting that everyone, including rich individuals and corporations, pay their fair share of taxes… A public debate about taxes is urgently needed because it is fundamentally a discussion about the kind of society we want to live in. Tax policy no longer plays a role in redistributing income and wealth, and economic inequality in Canada has reached levels previously seen only in 1929. The Uncut movement appears to be the beginning of a public discussion…
Tags: featured, ideology, participation, rights, standard of living, tax
Posted in Equality Policy Context | 2 Comments »
Lower taxes a windfall for the rich
Wednesday, March 9th, 2011
Mar 09 2011
Nobody likes taxes, but they are a particular aggravation for the rich. For them, lower taxes are a huge windfall, and even if that results in service cuts at daycares and public schools, it won’t hurt those who have nannies and private schools for their kids. Similarly, our country club set has little interest in preserving the Canada Pension Plan, which only working stiffs rely on. Of course right-wing “populists” are obsessed with lowering taxes, because they and their wealthy backers gain the most and lose the least. Unfortunately, the rest of us have the least to gain and the most to lose.
Tags: economy, ideology, participation, standard of living, tax
Posted in Equality Debates | No Comments »
Economic dreams and reality
Wednesday, March 9th, 2011
Mar 08 2011
The budget of my dream explains that education cannot again be collateral damage in a war on the deficit. So the 3 per cent annual growth in the Canada Social Transfer will be maintained after 2013-14. It would put a clear emphasis on giving access to post-secondary education to students who do not typically attend. The budget acknowledges the deplorable state of education on First Nations reserves and commits to thorough reforms backed by necessary funding.
Tags: budget, economy, housing, Indigenous, pensions, standard of living
Posted in Governance Debates | No Comments »
Why do Ontarians have to beg for food?
Wednesday, March 9th, 2011
Mar 09 2011
… the Interfaith Social Assistance Reform Coalition… includes Muslims, Jews, Hindus, Buddhists, Evangelical Christians, Mennonites, Quakers, Roman Catholics, [Anglicans], Lutherans, Presbyterians and the United Church. Its central message is: “When anyone is hungry while others have too much to eat, when anyone has no shelter while others enjoy affluence, the quality of all our lives and communities disappears.”… If Duncan disregards its call to conscience, the church will mobilize its members in more communities and enlist other Ontarians who care about hunger but haven’t spoken out.
Tags: featured, ideology, poverty, rights, standard of living
Posted in Social Security Debates | No Comments »
A century of women’s rights: A struggle that continues
Tuesday, March 8th, 2011
Mar 08 2011
The struggle for women’s political and economic rights was big news in Old Toronto, 100 years ago. British suffragist Emmeline Pankhurst and her daughter Sylvia were drawing sizable crowds… editors at the Toronto Daily Star devoted much of the front page to eldest daughter Christabel Pankhurst’s stunning declaration in London that the suffragists had embarked on a “real war” to claim women’s rights.
Tags: ideology, participation, rights, standard of living, women
Posted in Equality History | 3 Comments »
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