Posts Tagged ‘budget’

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Ottawa has the Tools to Replace the CERB

Friday, May 15th, 2020

Two groups of Canadians face particular difficulties – low-income Canadians and families with children. Low-income Canadians have been hit hardest, as they make up the largest proportion of a service-sector led shutdown… Extending the CCB and GSTC boosts will allow low-income Canadians and families with children face the post-CERB knowing that they would have the income security they need to face the likelihood of a slow and uncertain recovery.

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Posted in Social Security Policy Context | No Comments »


Burden of the crisis must be shared fairly

Thursday, May 14th, 2020

The new LEEFF (for Large Employer Emergency Financing Facility) program is… designed to provide loans to big companies that are having trouble getting credit from private lenders… it comes with what the government calls “strict conditions.” … to maintain jobs and investment; uphold existing labour contracts and pension obligations; abide by federal goals on the environment and sustainability; and limit executive compensation, dividend payouts, and share buy-back schemes.

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Posted in Equality Policy Context | No Comments »


Stephen Harper still favours business over big government. So how did that work out after 2008?

Thursday, May 14th, 2020

Day by day, week by week, Trudeau’s government is increasingly making clear that its approach to bailouts will not follow the path taken more than a decade ago, when much of the aid to corporate giants never did filter down as promised to economically devastated citizens. The Occupy movement and its cries against the “one per cent” were a direct result of the frustration and fallout of the 2008 crash and the income inequality it exposed.

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Posted in History | No Comments »


The case for putting seniors’ care under the Canada Health Act

Sunday, May 10th, 2020

One of the most critical undertakings by governments across the country over the past five to 10 years has been reining in runaway health care budgets. And most governments have been successful in doing so. Adding long-term care to health budgets would be a serious blow to those efforts. Then again, maybe Canadians can agree that this is something that needs to be financed… “It would be the first big expansion of our medicare system that has happened in decades…”

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Posted in Health Policy Context | No Comments »


COVID-19 has exposed ugly failings of our politics. Here’s how Ottawa can build on the lessons of the pandemic

Saturday, May 9th, 2020

COVID-19. It has proved that the Employment Insurance system is out of step with today’s workforce. It has stirred questions about globalization and whether international supply networks are truly a virtue in times of desperate need. It has spurred plodding bureaucracies, known for their cautious approach to issues, into impossibly speedy policy decisions to rush aid to Canadians. And it’s left Canadians with a deficit hangover… the pandemic has laid bare problems and blown up old ways of doing things.

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Posted in Governance Debates | No Comments »


Pandemic proves value of guaranteed incomes

Saturday, May 9th, 2020

We know that we will emerge from this crisis with higher levels of unemployment than we have seen in two generations. We should be prepared for a winter ahead into which millions of Canadians will be headed broke, unemployed and close to despair… It might lead to the most transformational changes in today’s rich but increasingly divided and unequal economies since Bismarck invented the public pension system, nearly 140 years ago.

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Posted in Debates | No Comments »


Neo-liberalism may be another COVID-19 victim

Friday, May 8th, 2020

Overall, neo-liberalism seemed to be working. The developed world got its foreign-made goods at bargain basement prices. The workers of the developing world were usually exploited. But at least they had jobs… Now we have a pandemic that strikes right at the heart of globalization… Global supply chains may work in neo-liberal theory. But in the real world of disease, fear and sharp practices, these supply chains are strikingly vulnerable.

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Posted in Policy Context | No Comments »


This is the model for long-term care we need and deserve

Friday, May 8th, 2020

… all organizations need adequately paid and trained staff to accomplish their mission… Another prerequisite is non-profit personal care… we want to minimize the incentives for underservicing… There are two major strategies for LTC reform. The first is a different LTC institution. The second is to move LTC to the community… the Program for All-inclusive Care for the Elderly… PACE provides all needed health services at home 24/7… let’s save billions of dollars in bricks and mortar with a Canadian version PACE.

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Posted in Child & Family Debates, Equality Debates | No Comments »


Don’t grandfather machine guns, eliminate them

Wednesday, May 6th, 2020

Trudeau’s subsequent reference to “grandfathering” rules after a post-ban two-year transition period is alarming… A ban means no guns; it doesn’t mean keep the ones you have. It shouldn’t mean large payouts to gun owners…

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Posted in Child & Family Policy Context | No Comments »


It took a deadly pandemic to get Toronto to embrace a faster way to build affordable housing

Wednesday, May 6th, 2020

Toronto council endorsed a plan to build 250 units of housing for people in the shelter system. The units, funded by a combination of municipal and federal cash, will be built using a modular process, constructed off-site then shipped to Toronto where they can be hoisted up by cranes and snapped together like Lego pieces.

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Posted in Equality Debates, Inclusion Delivery System | No Comments »


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