Posts Tagged ‘ideology’

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Convenient access to alcohol is going to cost us

Wednesday, June 12th, 2024

… while alcohol sales in 2020 put $3.2 billion into Ontario’s coffers, they came at a cost of $7.1 billion. That left the province with an alcohol deficit of $3.9 billion. Health care accounted for $2.3 billion. The rest went to servicing alcohol-related criminal-justice and lost production costs. These figures reflect a deficit capped by the limited number of LCBO and Beer Stores, a limit that will soon cease to exist.

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Posted in Health Debates | No Comments »


Inside the Campaign to Kill a Step Toward Tax Fairness

Monday, June 10th, 2024

… interest groups don’t have to offer an alternative and can just snipe at proposals that they dislike. The capital gains change is expected to bring in more than $19 billion over the next five years. Anti-tax groups don’t need to explain where that money should come from, or what services should be cut if the tax is axed… But the process is a warning about the powerful forces that will battle any move to increase tax fairness, if it means the rich will pay more.

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Posted in Equality Debates | No Comments »


Ontario’s health-care system is in crisis. More privatization isn’t the answer

Thursday, June 6th, 2024

We know that private, for-profit chains will come to dominate our health-care system if we let them. It’s already happening. That’s a recipe for poorer services, higher costs, and worse outcomes. We could achieve better results for less by removing the profit motive and focusing on community clinics run on a not-for-profit basis… instead of headed and run from a distance by some faceless, profit-maximizing firm.

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Posted in Health Delivery System | No Comments »


With disability benefits, governments cannot get lost in complexity

Friday, May 31st, 2024

The purpose of the CDB is to protect people with disabilities from poverty. The application process should strive to make it easy to identify the people who need this protection… Developing this new benefit will no doubt raise difficult questions about definitions of disability, jurisdiction, and how different programs interact with each other… But they are not impossible. They are not an excuse for doing nothing.

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Posted in Inclusion Policy Context | No Comments »


Nigmendra Narain speaks truth about Ontario’s manufactured university crisis

Thursday, May 30th, 2024

ON funding $6000 below national average… this scarcity of university funding… has been completely manufactured by a provincial government bent on ‘saving tax-payer dollars’ by downloading costs onto individuals while encouraging public-private partnerships… Ontario’s ratio is currently 34 students : 1 professor. Contrast that with the rest of Canada averaging 23 students : 1 faculty.

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Posted in Education Debates | No Comments »


Mark Carney had a chance to weigh in one of the defining issues facing Canada. The answer he gave suggests he isn’t ready for public life

Tuesday, May 14th, 2024

Around the world, almost no serious person continues to believe that cutting taxes on the wealthy will unlock growth for working and middle-income people. Most advanced industrial democracies are dealing with inequality and challenges to economic growth by rejecting market fundamentalism and investing in things like public transit, child care, affordable housing and ensuring that low- and middle-income people have money to spend in the local economy.

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Debunking myths about community housing: What governments and the public should know

Thursday, May 9th, 2024

Canada’s Housing Plan… includes noteworthy new funding programs and policies to preserve and expand community housing, including social, non-profit and co-operative housing… Canada’s ongoing housing crisis extends beyond affordability and supply challenges. It also involves homelessness, risks to tenancy, shortage of accessible units, financialization and the lack of culturally adequate housing. Community housing is poised to effectively tackle these insidious problems in ways the market cannot.

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Posted in Inclusion Debates | No Comments »


Canada’s shift to a more regressive tax system, 2004 to 2022

Thursday, May 9th, 2024

Taxation of the wealthiest is a central means to reduce inequality, provide adequate shared public infrastructure and services that benefit all, and create opportunities for all to live a decent life… Despite the progressive personal income tax system, when we look at all taxes and income, the tax system is only moderately progressive at the bottom, flat through the middle and regressive at the top.

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Posted in Equality History | No Comments »


Ontario has lost 5,000 classroom educators since 2018

Wednesday, May 8th, 2024

In 2024-2025, Ontario will have 4,990 fewer classroom educators than it would have had if the funding formula hadn’t changed since 2018-19. Under the new formula, kindergarten will have to make do with 1,600 fewer staff. Grades 4 to 8 will have almost 1,000 fewer staff. Grades 9 to 12 will lose almost 2,600 positions… Depriving Ontario’s children of educators is the worst thing this government can do for the future of this province.

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Basic Income for a New Model of Canadian Social Democracy

Wednesday, May 1st, 2024

Basic income is a paradigm-shifting idea on how to ensure economic security for everyone… Now is the time for the democratic left in Canada to develop a workable and comprehensive version of basic income as a key policy instrument, and not a sideline consideration. Canadian social democrats should incorporate the principle of guaranteed, unconditional and universal economic security as a fundamental program for its vision a better society.

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Posted in Social Security Debates | No Comments »


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