Posts Tagged ‘economy’
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Trudeau would be wise to raise the GST to 7 per cent instead of reforming the capital gains tax
Tuesday, April 23rd, 2024
… the GST has underwritten Canada’s social safety net for more than 30 years. In 2006… the GST accounted for 30.6 per cent of all federal tax revenue… Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and finance minister Chrystia Freeland have sought refuge in progressive populism with their plan to expand the capital gains tax. But the sustainable policy choice would be to put those two points back on the GST.
Tags: budget, economy, tax
Posted in Governance Debates | No Comments »
Ottawa puts up $50M in federal budget to hedge against job-stealing AI
Sunday, April 21st, 2024
“There is a significant transformation of the economy and society on the horizon around artificial intelligence”… Some jobs will be lost, others will be created… AI is an issue “across sectors, but certainly clerical and customer service jobs are more vulnerable… two types of skills it makes sense to focus on in retraining — computational thinking, or understanding how computers operate and make decisions, and skills dealing with data.
Tags: budget, economy, participation
Posted in Debates | No Comments »
Liberal budget hits a home run on housing, but plays small ball on care economy
Wednesday, April 17th, 2024
Here are three ways federal small ball could deliver big results without big spends in the coming months: Child care Workforce Deals… with a focus on workforce attraction and retention… tracking trends in the investments occurring in our long-term care, child care and health-care sectors… examining ways of putting new guardrails on public funding… Care services such as child care, long-term care, medical or dental community clinics can be a built-in feature of new housing and infrastructure developments.
Tags: budget, economy, Health, housing, jurisdiction, standard of living, tax
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Fiscal folly in Ontario: New report reveals a cheapskate province
Tuesday, April 16th, 2024
In 2022-23, Ontario spent $3,251 less per person on public programs compared to the average of the other provinces… to reach the Canadian average, we would have to spend close to 27 per cent more on programs than we do now… On the revenue side, Ontario raises $4,033 a year less per person than the average of the other provinces… we would have to increase our total revenues this year by 32 per cent to be average.
Tags: budget, economy, featured, ideology, jurisdiction, standard of living
Posted in Governance Policy Context | No Comments »
Carbon pricing is good for the climate and affordability
Saturday, April 6th, 2024
To keep the planet livable for humans and most other life forms, we can’t keep burning fossil fuels, which are becoming scarce and costly… Climate-related damage to everything from agriculture to human health also drives up costs for everyone… This is no time to get rid of effective policies, or even water them down. Those attacking the carbon levy with false and misleading information offer no alternatives, especially ones as cost-effective as carbon pricing.
Tags: economy, Health, standard of living
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Canada is bad at studying wealth inequality and we explain why that matters
Thursday, April 4th, 2024
Canada’s top 1 per cent owns 26 per cent of all wealth in Canada, and our top .01 per cent owns 12.4 per cent of all wealth. This is somewhat lower than the U.S. numbers, but it is much higher than official Statistics Canada numbers report… But looking only at income paints an incomplete picture because it ignores intergenerational wealth that has been inherited… wealth — or its absence — can be more important to the lives of individuals, as well as to broader social cohesion.
Tags: economy, ideology, participation, tax
Posted in Equality Debates | No Comments »
Justin Trudeau offers provinces billions of dollars for housing — but with strings attached
Tuesday, April 2nd, 2024
… $5 billion — will be tied to provinces promising to meet certain conditions, among them to allow multiplex townhouses and multi-unit apartments…. “It’s off the table for us,” Ford said last month. “We’re going to build homes, single-dwelling homes, townhomes, that’s what we’re focused on.” … The remaining $1 billion of the $6-billion infusion for housing infrastructure is to be directed to municipalities to address “urgent” infrastructure needs that directly create new housing
Tags: budget, economy, featured, housing, jurisdiction
Posted in Governance Policy Context | No Comments »
With its 2024 budget, the Ford government is asking you to trust it. You shouldn’t
Thursday, March 28th, 2024
… it’s one thing to announce billions in new health-care spending… It’s another to admit that 1.3 per cent growth is below inflation and nowhere near enough to sustain public health care in the province, let alone sufficiently expand it. It’s another still to admit that all this program spending amounts, on balance, to real-dollar cuts… The government is going all-in on highways and roads — with a few nods to the poor suckers stuck taking inadequate, crumbling public transportation.
Tags: budget, economy, featured, Health, housing, ideology
Posted in Governance Debates | No Comments »
Ford government’s budget shortfall soars to $9.8 billion as tax revenues plunge
Wednesday, March 27th, 2024
“… We are going to follow through on a plan that is working — knowing that the higher deficits, compared to what we projected last year, will be time-limited while the return on investment will be felt for decades.” … settlements with public servants after the government’s Bill 124 wage-cap legislation was found to be unconstitutional have added billions in additional costs to the treasury. Under Ford, the provincial debt has soared by $116 billion to $462.9 billion, the largest debt of any subnational jurisdiction in the world.
Tags: budget, economy, ideology, jurisdiction, standard of living, tax
Posted in Governance Debates | No Comments »
Is starving Ontario’s hospitals and schools really something to brag about?
Tuesday, March 26th, 2024
In the last five years, the Ministry of Finance has brought in close to 30 measures to reduce its own revenues. All told, those changes drained no less than $7.7 billion from the provincial treasury in 2023-24… The overarching goal is not to use public dollars efficiently, it’s to drive economic activity into the private sector so investors can turn a profit. This is why the current Ontario government has no qualms about privatizing surgeries and diagnostic procedures — even though private procedures can cost more than double what they cost in a public hospital.
Tags: budget, economy, featured, Health, ideology, privatization, tax
Posted in Governance Debates | No Comments »
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