Posts Tagged ‘ideology’

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We need to revolutionize how we organize health care in Canada

Friday, April 19th, 2024

… “achieving high value for patients must become the overarching goal of health care delivery, with value defined as the health outcomes per dollar spent.” … Our government should focus less on who they are paying, and more on what they want to buy… This would facilitate innovations in care delivery across the system, and allow for more investment in integrated care programs that span the full continuum. Funding could focus on all-in coverage… including drugs, home care and virtual innovations.

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Posted in Health Delivery System | No Comments »


Liberals tax the rich, but not enough to be considered populist

Thursday, April 18th, 2024

… in recent decades, business interests have strong-armed governments into redesigning the marketplace to favour their own interests, through tax and regulatory changes, and the rewriting of labour laws to disempower workers. These “neo-liberal” changes haven’t brought us the productivity gains that were promised, but they have made us a much less equal society… We need to reverse the “neo-liberal” policies that are responsible for such extreme inequality.

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Posted in Equality Policy Context | No Comments »


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.

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Protecting public health care from private investors

Wednesday, April 10th, 2024

In Canada, a single private equity firm already owns the largest national network of independent surgical centres — 53 operating rooms spread across 14 centres — in Quebec, Ontario, Manitoba, Saskatchewan, Alberta, and B.C… Approximately 90 per cent are publicly funded through partnerships with provincial health systems… Should profit-driven investors own health care facilities?

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Democracy Is Under Siege Globally. Canada Is Being Tested

Monday, April 8th, 2024

Finkelstein preached that you didn’t need a vision to win in politics, just good polling that revealed what people were against. Once that was established, the goal became tying the unpopular thing — immigration, carbon tax, inflation — to a flesh and blood political “enemy.” … The idea was to avoid talking about your own positions and policies, the better to demonize your opponent. The objective was not to sell yourself but rather to destroy your opponent…  repeating simplistic slogans… “Axe the tax.” “Not worth the price.” “Everything is broken.” 

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To solve the housing crisis, we must get government building housing again

Saturday, April 6th, 2024

Following the end of the Second World War, the federal government built or funded hundreds of thousands of nonmarket homes. But in the 1980s and 1990s, Conservative and Liberal governments pulled back… Nonmarket housing is not something that we should pursue instead of an increase in private sector construction… But the private sector alone — even freed of zoning — can’t provide relief to Canadians crying out for help… We need the government to get back into building housing.

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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.

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Court strikes down most of Ontario’s Mike Harris-era anti-panhandling law

Wednesday, April 3rd, 2024

Most of Ontario’s bans on panhandling in public places… have been struck down by a Toronto judge as unconstitutional… While finding that the ban on squeegeeing and panhandling in roadways should be upheld, Centa struck down all other prohibitions on soliciting donations in public, including from people near public toilets, payphones, ATMs, taxi stands and public transit stops, as well as on transit vehicles and in parking lots. 

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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. 

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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.

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