Rolling back equal pay, options for consolidating bargaining units, fairer rules for joining unions, and other basic rights represent a major step backwards in efforts to address precarious work across the province… Workers on university campuses and in communities across the province are counting on these modest but important labour law improvements to support themselves and their families
The six-page bill sets targets of reducing poverty to 20 per cent below 2015 levels by 2020 and 50 per cent below 2015 levels by 2030. The target is based on a measure that lists 4.2 million Canadians as low income in 2015. Until now, discussions of poverty reduction have focused on three different ways of measuring poverty. Tuesday’s bill selects one of those – the market-basket measure – as Canada’s official poverty line… A third element of the legislation creates a national advisory council on poverty.
Faculty, students, and staff across Ontario know first-hand how important existing labour laws are for the well-being of our families and communities. Ontario workers deserve fair wages and good jobs, including at our universities and colleges. If this government is truly for the people, it should do the right thing and withdraw Bill 47 immediately.
Windmill, formerly known as Immigrant Access Fund Canada, received a $1 million grant from TD Bank as one of 10 winners of a challenge for fresh ideas to increase income stability and give people the skills for the future economy… Since its inception, the charity has helped more than 4,000 immigrants and refugees restart their careers in Canada, and many have seen their earnings double or triple as a result. More than half of recipients are in health care, including doctors, nurses, dentists, pharmacists and medical technicians. The loan repayment rate is 97.5 per cent.
… the biggest rhetorical victory of the right has been its capture of the term “populist.” Historically in North America, populism has had both left and right variants. Some were anti-immigrant and racist. But the most successful, such as the People’s Party of the late 19th century or the Progressives of the early 20th were left-leaning… populism has been no stranger to either Canada or the U.S. So it seems odd that it has become, among left-liberals, a dirty word.
Women in Canada continue to earn 31 per cent less than men annually, a gap that has remained despite human rights laws and decades of efforts to eliminate it… some of the gap comes from persistent discrimination against “women’s work,” which results in women being paid less for work of equal value. That’s the gap the new legislation aims to tackle… The truth is pay equity isn’t a panacea for ending the wage gap; much more still needs to be done.
“We realized that people are turning toward extremist parties not because they believe their ideas, but because they feel that the government doesn’t have things under control,” Mr. Kretschmann said. “So we listened to them.”… Crime rates in his state, and across Germany, are at three-decade lows. But the Greens discovered that a lot of voters, in the wake of the 2015-16 migration crisis, were believing popular notions about immigrants and crime.
Already, 53 governments worldwide have put a price on GHG emissions. They include six Canadian provinces and all three territories; the European Union, world’s largest economy; Japan, third-largest economy; several of China’s largest manufacturing centres; and powerhouse economy California. That carbon pricing is an affordable remedy is evident in the mid-income countries that have adopted it, including Mexico, Slovenia, Latvia and Kazakhstan.
… research shows that visible minorities – the term Statscan uses – earn almost 20 per cent less, on average, than Canadians who are not visible minorities. That gap widens further for women of colour, who earned, on average, 70 per cent of what a man who is not a visible minority earned… research considered factors such as education, experience and hours worked. “After controlling for all characteristics that may drive earning gaps, we still see some gaps that then we can say that’s discrimination”…
After two years of public consultations, special advisors leading “the largest review of Ontario’s labour laws conducted in decades” concluded in the 400-page Changing Workplaces Review report “that there are too many people in too many workplaces who do not receive their basic rights.” … for business lobbies to now say there has been no input and that Bill 148 is “too much too soon” is disingenuous… In fact, some of the changes… were modified by the business community.”
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