Posts Tagged ‘ideology’
Toronto will host the world’s investors this fall. But will any investment end up in health care, education or transit?
Wednesday, May 6th, 2026
What’s most disappointing about the prevailing preoccupation with making Canada an industrial and energy superpower is that this vision of Canada’s future ignores necessary investments in social goods — namely, health care, education, affordable housing and public transit. All of those are essential to Canada’s future prosperity. And all are underfunded… Striving for greater industrial sovereignty is a worthwhile ambition. But it can’t come at the expense of social investments that underpin Canadians’ well-being.
Tags: budget, Education, Health, ideology, standard of living
Posted in Governance Debates | 2 Comments »
To improve literacy, Ontario should invest in students and educators
Friday, May 1st, 2026
Even when screening tools are efficient and well-designed, teachers often lack the time, class-size conditions and specialist support needed to respond meaningfully to the results… Ontario stands at a familiar crossroads: keep reaching for solutions that are quick to purchase and easy to measure, or do the harder work of building lasting public capacity… [through] smaller primary classes, restored specialist support, rich early language environments and teacher education grounded in deep literacy expertise.
Tags: budget, Education, ideology, participation, standard of living, youth
Posted in Education Debates | No Comments »
If you’re treading water on welfare in Doug Ford’s Ontario, you’re slowly sinking
Monday, April 27th, 2026
By the end of this budget’s 2026-27 fiscal year, the projected inflation rate of two per cent will have further eroded the purchasing power of Ontario Works payments by more than 22 per cent cumulatively, since 2018… it’s worth remembering that the high water mark for welfare was in 1993… If that figure were indexed to inflation today, it would be $1,303 a month, some $570 (78 per cent) more than the current rate of $733 under Ford’s Tories.
Tags: budget, featured, ideology, jurisdiction, poverty, standard of living
Posted in Social Security Debates | No Comments »
Coercion isn’t care, and new laws that enforce treatment and confinement are dangerous
Monday, April 27th, 2026
Coercion is articulated as care and involuntary treatment is presented not as a restriction of liberty but as a necessary response to incapacity and risk. This appeal to compassion functions as a unifying political language, enabling cross-partisan support despite differing ideological stances. By portraying these policies as pragmatic, humane and long overdue, policymakers limit opposition. They also reconfigure the boundaries of acceptable state intervention…
Tags: Health, ideology, mental Health, rights
Posted in Health Policy Context | No Comments »
What Pierre Poilievre Doesn’t Get About His Economic Hero
Monday, April 27th, 2026
Poilievre presents justice — fairness, poverty reduction, the well-being of those left behind — as something that markets produce incidentally when they are left alone. The claim is that free markets lifted billions out of poverty; therefore the path forward is more free markets, fewer regulations, lower taxes, more oil and gas. But this framing depends on a separation of efficiency and justice that doesn’t hold up under scrutiny.
Tags: economy, ideology, privatization, rights, standard of living
Posted in Debates | No Comments »
Doug Ford’s push for secrecy is putting the health of Ontarians at risk
Monday, April 13th, 2026
It’s Ontarians who bear the consequences when governments grant themselves the power to be unaccountable. It’s Ontarians who endure longer ER and surgical wait times. It’s Ontarians who are left wondering where their tax dollars have gone — as leaders secretly spend public funds… Here’s what Ontario should be doing: Legislate bans on FOI carve-outs so politicians cannot simply write themselves out of oversight… Secrecy breaks the basic social contract — not only of health care, but of democracy itself.
Tags: featured, Health, ideology, jurisdiction, participation, rights
Posted in Governance Debates | No Comments »
Every President Tries It. It Never Works.
Thursday, April 2nd, 2026
Efforts to revive manufacturing are rooted in nostalgia. Once upon a time, manufacturing jobs provided a reliable pathway to the middle class… Not anymore… A smarter economic strategy would stop measuring success by the number of assembly lines reopened and start focusing on what actually raises living standards: productivity, affordability and the growth of the whole economy.
Tags: economy, ideology, standard of living
Posted in Debates | No Comments »
Do trade deals put public health care up for sale?
Wednesday, April 1st, 2026
… the introduction of a parallel, private-pay system in Alberta based on private health insurance and out-of-pocket payment represents a fundamental change to Canada’s public health care system. Alberta would have a difficult time restricting the newly created market to Canadian firms, even if the government wanted to, and once foreign investors become entrenched, they will benefit from the full force of Canada’s international trade obligations.
Tags: Health, ideology, jurisdiction, privatization
Posted in Health Policy Context | No Comments »
Ontario is closing its supervised consumption sites, calling them a failure. So what counts as ‘success?’
Tuesday, March 31st, 2026
Supervised consumption sites are not beyond criticism: they can be better designed, better integrated and more responsive to the communities that host them. But improving them requires better policy, not selective evidence and site closures… Adding treatment capacity does not require removing the safety net beneath it.
Tags: Health, ideology, jurisdiction
Posted in Health Debates | No Comments »
The Trump era demands we rethink Canada’s constitutional ‘nuclear option’
Tuesday, March 31st, 2026
… everything that is happening in the United States, more or less, could happen here in a perfectly constitutional manner,” … thanks to the notwithstanding clause… The question is not whether Section 33 can be used, however, but when and how… In just the past six years, however, various governments have used it nine times… voters have proved generally disinclined to punish political parties who use and abuse the notwithstanding clause.
Tags: ideology, jurisdiction, rights
Posted in Governance Policy Context | No Comments »
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