Posts Tagged ‘privatization’
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Ottawa will take a hard look at companies that paid dividends while accepting COVID-19 supports, Justin Trudeau says
Sunday, December 20th, 2020
The program was meant to help companies avoid layoffs and keep employees on the payroll… 30 companies that paid out a combined total of $2 billion to shareholders between April and September while receiving the wage subsidy… Extendicare, the largest operator of private nursing homes in Canada, had paid nearly $10.5 million in dividends since April, while its home-care subsidiary was receiving millions of dollars from the wage subsidy.
Tags: budget, economy, privatization, tax
Posted in Debates | No Comments »
With a little help for his friends, Ford steals Christmas
Saturday, December 12th, 2020
The owners and directors of long-term-care (LTC) home corporations (including Mike Harris) are off the hook for liability for their well-documented shoddy operations during COVID-19. Ford’s friend and funder Charles McVety will, somewhat magically, likely get his Christian College turned into a university. His developer buddies will like Ford’s new rules for Conservation Authorities whose authority is now much diminished… Every one of these treats was snuck into omnibus bills designed to deal with the pandemic.
Tags: Health, ideology, jurisdiction, privatization
Posted in Governance Debates | No Comments »
Spare some pity for right-wing premiers in the time of COVI
Friday, December 11th, 2020
… a global pandemic isn’t the best circumstance for invoking libertarian individualism and the all-purpose value of the private sector, then standing aside. Active government has its problems, but someone has to do something right now, not just wait for the invisible hand to generate profitable solutions… Doug Ford… more a right-wing populist than an ideological conservative… is about “the little guy,” by which he means small business owners, never their employees.
Tags: economy, ideology, privatization, rights
Posted in Governance Debates | No Comments »
When Canada was a world leader in vaccine research and production
Thursday, December 3rd, 2020
… scientists are permitted to take out patents on the products they develop (with our money), and then sell them to pharmaceutical manufacturers, who sell the products to the public — often at great profit. Even though our public investment paid for the original research, Canadians have no say over the products nor the price at which they are sold to us as consumers. Canada also has no share in the profits. We’ve ventured a long way, unfortunately, from the days when we had a publicly owned and medically innovative enterprise that dazzled on the world stage and kept Canadians at the front of the line for vaccines.
Tags: Health, ideology, pharmaceutical, privatization, standard of living
Posted in Health History | No Comments »
Understanding Ontario’s long-term care tragedy
Tuesday, November 24th, 2020
The problem is not the ownership model of LTC homes. The major oversights that led to this tragedy were a failure to proactively test asymptomatic LTC workers and a failure of successive governments to approve redevelopment in homes with multi-residential rooms. Blaming other causes is specious and does not honour the memories of the Ontarians whose lives have been lost to this terrible pandemic.
Tags: budget, disabilities, Health, housing, ideology, jurisdiction, privatization, standard of living
Posted in Child & Family Policy Context | No Comments »
Long-term care fiasco a warning about private ownership
Thursday, November 19th, 2020
Over the past decade, Chartwell paid its executives $47.3 million and distributed $798 million to shareholders. Meanwhile, in the 28 nursing homes Chartwell owns or operates in Ontario, the COVID-19 infection rate has been 47 per cent higher and the fatality rate 68 per cent higher than the provincial average… Contrary to business mythology, the private sector doesn’t always do things better. Rather, it always does things to make a profit
Tags: disabilities, Health, ideology, privatization, standard of living
Posted in Child & Family Policy Context | No Comments »
Canada needs a robust Digital New Deal to ensure data is used effectively for a public good
Wednesday, November 18th, 2020
The Digital New Deal would introduce Canadian data protocols so that data generated from public infrastructure investments can be shared and accessed effectively, for the public interest… With real data governance, Canadian municipalities, innovators and problem solvers would no longer be working in isolation, without common guideposts or clear, shared goals… we can… be a country that uses technology to its advantage, and doesn’t just let it use us.
Tags: economy, ideology, privatization, rights, standard of living
Posted in Governance Policy Context | No Comments »
Care, not profit, must come first in long-term-care homes
Tuesday, November 17th, 2020
It’s up to the government to set long-term-care standards that are high enough to ensure quality and dignified care for seniors and back it up with an enforcement system tough enough to ensure those standards are met… Ontario’s requirements for long-term-care homes, which are too lax already, aren’t even always followed… It’s time government held up its end of the bargain and ensured quality care in long-term care, no matter who owns the homes.
Tags: disabilities, housing, ideology, privatization, standard of living
Posted in Child & Family Policy Context | No Comments »
How to Take on the Tech Barons
Sunday, November 8th, 2020
The pandemic has laid bare both the promise of technology — softening the blow of months at home — and its rougher edges, which include the consolidation of power and ever-greater personal data collection… to confront, among other things, the exposed gaps in the nation’s broadband network; the urgent need for broad online privacy protections; the rollout of 5G; growing consumer resentment of technologists; and the pitfalls of nascent technologies like self-driving cars, artificial intelligence and facial recognition.
Tags: economy, globalization, ideology, jurisdiction, privatization, rights
Posted in Policy Context | No Comments »
British Columbia Supreme Court Rules Against Expansion of Private Health Care
Tuesday, September 29th, 2020
“in the context of complex social programs such as healthcare where there is a need to balance conflicting interests and claims over limited resources, a high degree of deference is owed to the government… even if I had found a violation of ss. 7 or 15 of the Charter, I would nonetheless have concluded the impugned provisions are a reasonable limit on those rights and are demonstrably justified in a free and democratic society under s. 1”.
Tags: Health, ideology, jurisdiction, privatization, rights
Posted in Equality Policy Context | No Comments »
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