Posts Tagged ‘privatization’
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Margaret Thatcher’s children have their hands full
… Thatcherites at heart. They see the state more as an impediment to growth and social progress than an asset, they think tax rates are too high and they believe the private sector can run most things most efficiently… cuts have been made to the civil service… So, too, the remuneration and pensions of public servants… “High Tories” with a sense of noblesse oblige about the less fortunate, weak-kneed worriers about social unrest, politicians who saw something called society instead of an agglomeration of individuals – have all but disappeared from today’s conservative parties.
Tags: budget, economy, globalization, ideology, privatization, tax
Posted in Governance Policy Context | No Comments »
Corporate Canada has lost the faith on capital investment
… some of the blame lies with government austerity, as finance ministers across the country wrestle their budgets toward balance… governments are stepping out of the game before companies are ready to step back in… Canadian companies are sitting, collectively, on an estimated $600-billion in cash… [but] look determined to wait for the economy to catch up to their capacity… before they ramp up investment in their buildings and equipment.
Tags: budget, economy, globalization, ideology, privatization
Posted in Delivery System | No Comments »
Kathleen Wynne must clean up home-care mess
Wynne should start by ordering an immediate wage freeze on top CCAC and LHIN executives, setting up a full audit and review of all CCAC operations, cancelling all planned cuts to current home-care services, especially rehab services, and demanding major funding increases for home care in the coming provincial budget.
Tags: budget, disabilities, Health, ideology, mental Health, participation, privatization, standard of living
Posted in Health Delivery System | 1 Comment »
NDP Needs Big Ideas to Win
… why not talk about the real causes of poverty and inequality in this country? … Over the past 15 years Liberal and Conservative governments have systematically disposed of well over $50 billion a year in revenue through tax cuts focused disproportionately on corporations and the wealthy… $40 billion in… recovered revenue from modest tax increases… could be sold to Canadians if the NDP actually had faith in the intelligence of the people they hope will vote for them.
Tags: budget, economy, ideology, participation, poverty, privatization, standard of living, tax
Posted in Governance Debates | No Comments »
Ottawa’s fight with provinces is about more than job grants
It will provide companies with subsidies to train reasonably skilled workers who need training upgrades to take up positions in their firms. This is unlikely to have any effect on broad-based skills shortages (if they exist) and it is unclear why companies supposedly facing dire labour shortages need public money to subsidize their internal training budgets.
Tags: budget, economy, jurisdiction, privatization, tax
Posted in Debates | No Comments »
Jim Flaherty needs credible jobs plan
Since the early days of the recovery, Canada’s job creation record has gone from modest to moribund. Last year, the nation eked out just 102,000 jobs — its worst performance since the recession… Since 2012 the federal Conservatives have cut roughly 15,000 public service jobs. This year they plan to eliminate another 5,000. Following Ottawa’s example, the provinces have reduced their payrolls… Corporate leaders have turned a deaf ear to his entreaties to use their multibillion-dollar stockpile of retained earnings to hire unemployed workers.
Tags: budget, economy, globalization, ideology, privatization, standard of living
Posted in Debates | No Comments »
Ottawa’s venture capital plan: Picking winners and distorting markets
Canada needs a pro-market agenda that eliminates corporate subsidies, liberalizes ownership restrictions in protected sectors such as telecommunications and airlines, and enacts a neutral and competitive tax regime for all businesses and individuals. These policies would reduce the scope for government interference in the functioning of markets, and eliminate preferences for certain industries or businesses at the expense of their competitors or consumers.
Tags: budget, economy, globalization, ideology, privatization
Posted in Governance Policy Context | No Comments »
What’s the true size of government? Tax expenditures cloud the picture
Adding tax expenditures in the three tax bases of personal and corporate income and sales tax – for which data are available – to direct expenditures increases the size of total government (provincial, federal, territorial and local) by 10.1 per cent of GDP, from 44 to 54 per cent, or about a quarter. Furthermore, when program spending has been cut, there has been no downward trend in the tax-expenditure-inclusive size of government. These estimates still understate the real size of government since no information is available on a significant portion of tax expenditures.
Tags: budget, featured, ideology, privatization, standard of living, tax
Posted in Governance Debates | No Comments »
The Undeserving Rich
Since the late 1970s real wages for the bottom half of the work force have stagnated or fallen, while the incomes of the top 1 percent have nearly quadrupled (and the incomes of the top 0.1 percent have risen even more)… You almost never see apologists for inequality willing to talk about the 1 percent, let alone the really big winners. Instead, they talk about the top 20 percent, or at best the top 5 percent. These may sound like innocent choices, but they’re not…
Tags: economy, ideology, privatization, standard of living
Posted in Equality Debates | No Comments »
Public sector pay promotes equality
With the passage of Bill C-4, the Conservative government not only “stacked the deck” in terms of collective bargaining process, but it will also eliminate the only independent federal organization that provides comparative information on the compensation of federal public service workers… In fact, pay comparisons are not straightforward and how public sector workers are paid affects all workers, but in different ways than most might immediately think.
Tags: budget, ideology, privatization, standard of living
Posted in Debates | No Comments »
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