Posts Tagged ‘ideology’

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Ontario budget gets failing grade from university professors

Wednesday, March 27th, 2024

“Universities are in a crisis that the province manufactured through chronic underfunding.” … OCUFA was glad to see an extension of a freeze on tuition fees for postsecondary students, but the government did not invest in universities for this lost revenue, expecting universities to continue to do much more with much less… $1.3 billion for Ontario’s colleges and universities over the next three years… is eight times less than… OCUFA’s recommendation for university funding to reach just the Canadian funding average.

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Posted in Education Debates | No Comments »


How government penny-pinching makes life harder for unhoused Ontarians

Tuesday, March 26th, 2024

In Ontario, if you lose your home, you get less social assistance than someone who has a home. The government cuts your benefits in half. Why punish people when we can help them get back on their feet? If it’s simply about saving money, surely the government can find lots of other ways to do that without ruining people’s lives… Social assistance should help people, not make their lives even harder.

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Posted in Social Security Policy Context | 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.

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Our cost-of-living crisis: In just three years rent has doubled, groceries are up nearly 40 per cent. There are solutions

Sunday, March 24th, 2024

… a new model of economic governance… would… strengthen the social safety net with universal basic income (UBI) and “living wages,” which pay workers according to the cost of living in their localities… Bottom line: The cost-of-living crisis is real, will not go away on its own, and threatens to stoke social unrest… there are solutions to it

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Can new approaches to medical curriculum solve the family doctor shortage?

Friday, March 22nd, 2024

Three new medical schools and an innovative family medicine program look to alleviate a crisis in primary care… Team-based or multidisciplinary care is… an approach that the Canadian Medical Association (CMA) wants provinces to adopt, and soon… While the new medical programs hold a lot of promise for alleviating the family doctor shortage… solving it entirely is a collective responsibility that extends to and beyond all medical schools in Canada.

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Posted in Health Delivery System | No Comments »


Under Doug Ford, Ontario’s tribunals are under severe attack

Thursday, March 21st, 2024

When Premier Doug Ford announced he wanted to appoint “like-minded” judges, critics were quick to condemn the assault on judicial independence. In contrast, a similar assault on the independence of adjudicative tribunals has flown almost entirely under the radar… In fact, connections to the Ford government or the federal Conservatives seems a much more valuable asset than experience or expertise.

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So, what expenditures should Canada cut to meet its NATO obligations?

Thursday, March 21st, 2024

About a quarter of all spending is transferred directly to Canadians, either through elderly benefits (Old Age Security and Guaranteed Income Supplement), Employment Insurance benefits and the Canada Child Benefit… Another 20 per cent of Ottawa’s spending is transferred directly to the provincial governments… Equalization payments account for about $24-billion… Interest payments on the debt account for another $47-billion… while Ottawa’s total spending is $500-billion, only $96-billion in operating spending is discretionary

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Expanded prescribing powers for nurses makes sense

Tuesday, March 12th, 2024

Expanding prescribing powers to nurses will not present the same kinds of concerns as expanding to pharmacists did. Nurses work in clinics that have privacy, and they lack potential financial conflicts of interest. Plus, they’re currently limited to very routine prescriptions, so the danger of a blown diagnosis is minimal… the goal is not leaving any to suffer for lack of access to a safe, proven treatment. And that is absolutely the status quo that already exists today for millions.

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Ontario needs to pony up more cash for colleges and universities

Friday, March 8th, 2024

A short-term, piecemeal funding plan won’t work. The Ford PCs won’t be able to solve decades of chronic post-secondary underfunding in a year or two or three. But they can begin the process of instituting stable, predictable, and sufficient funding… It’s the smart thing to do. It’s the right thing to do. And in the long run, the money the government invests in education today will return more than it’s worth.

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Time to put the capita back in GDP per capita

Thursday, March 7th, 2024

The more societies set the stage to maximize their macroeconomic potential, the more they can make the impossible possible…the challenge isn’t about finding a better metric; it’s about putting the focus on the capita in GDP per capita. Because money doesn’t make an economy. People do. They — we! — are the true measure of an advanced economy.

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