Posts Tagged ‘privatization’
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Sour taste in ‘sweet’ Tory pension plan
Friday, July 22nd, 2011
Jul 21 2011
…Menzies is now promoting is a voluntary, privately administered scheme for companies without a pension plan, their employees and self-employed workers… Sixty per cent of Canadian workers — 75 per cent in the private sector — have no pension. But it won’t protect workers’ savings from market turbulence nor will it provide post-retirement security. There is no guarantee that any of these pooled pension plans will be large enough to be sustainable…. It is certainly better than nothing. But it is a second-best solution and a poor substitute for strengthening the Canada Pension Plan
Tags: ideology, pensions, privatization, standard of living
Posted in Social Security Debates | No Comments »
Union leader Sharleen Stewart is bent on making health care a top provincial election issue
Saturday, June 25th, 2011
Jun 24 2011
The SEIU plans to mount “the biggest ground campaign” ever seen in Canada. It intends to keep the focus on health care. And it intends to defeat candidates who threaten it. “Our candidate is health care,” Stewart said. “So when we go knocking on doors we’re going to talk to them about health care.” More than half of SEIU’s members work in health care — in hospitals, nursing homes and retirement homes, or providing in-home care and community services. These workers are predominantly female and often among the lowest paid in the system.
Tags: budget, Health, ideology, privatization, rights, women
Posted in Health Debates | No Comments »
Read this report before you slag Canada’s healthcare system
Wednesday, May 18th, 2011
May 18, 2011
… health involves more than doctors, hospitals and drugs… Japan’s high life expectancy is related more to diet than anything else… it points out that the countries with some of the worst health outcomes are often those with the most poverty… infant mortality among advanced nations may have little to do with our health care system and much to do with the fact that our poverty rate is almost as high as America’s… overall, the Conference Board report doesn’t concentrate on medicare. It says we should deal with poverty, eat more vegetables and be more active.
Tags: budget, featured, Health, ideology, mental Health, privatization
Posted in Health Delivery System | No Comments »
Shrinking Medicare, Expanding Poverty
Wednesday, April 27th, 2011
April 21, 2011
In 1975, spending on hospitals and doctors – the core medicare services – accounted for 60% of total health spending. In 2010 the figure was 41%. Governments fund only half of all other types of care and have deinsured medically necessary services such as optometric visits. But the biggest and growing gap in the system is in the care of seniors: prescription drugs, home care, and long-term residential care, known as LTC… the system is stingy with inexpensive home care and more generous in providing expensive institutional care. It’s a classic lose-lose: worse for the person, and more costly for the public.
Tags: budget, disabilities, featured, Health, ideology, poverty, privatization, standard of living
Posted in Health Delivery System | No Comments »
Ontario retaining right to veto sale of public housing
Friday, April 22nd, 2011
Apr 20 2011
The Liberal government’s new housing legislation requires all municipalities to have affordable housing plans with goals and timetables. And it gives municipalities more flexibility to meet those goals. But advocates said the law, introduced last December as part of the McGuinty government’s long-awaited affordable housing strategy, when too far when it eliminated the requirement of provincial consent for selling housing… The province’s decision to retain ministerial consent may thwart Ootes’ decision earlier this month to sell 22 single-family homes owned by the housing company.
Tags: homelessness, housing, ideology, poverty, privatization, standard of living
Posted in Social Security Delivery System | 1 Comment »
‘Harperizing’ our minds
Tuesday, April 19th, 2011
Apr 19 2011
It is a moot point whether the process of opinion formation from the top down is merely happenstance or the result of insidious scheming by parties in power. There is, however, no doubt that one widespread, consciously pursued governmental practice is meant to shape what we think: government advertising… Some public expenditures describing official programs are essential and legitimate. But all recent governments have spent substantial sums of money
Tags: budget, ideology, participation, privatization, rights
Posted in Governance Debates | No Comments »
After-school programs should be non-profit, critics say
Monday, April 11th, 2011
April 8, 2011
“Our government remains committed to ensuring parents have access to affordable, high-quality and on-site before- and after-school care for their children”… Queen’s Park had originally mandated school boards to provide the service by 2012 in schools where at least 15 families request it. But the government backed down last December after a massive lobbying effort from daycares, which feared losing business, and from school boards, which didn’t want the complications of implementing and operating the programs.
Tags: child care, ideology, participation, privatization, standard of living
Posted in Education Delivery System | No Comments »
Labour needs a new image
Sunday, April 10th, 2011
Apr 10 2011
… we have to do more than talk to ourselves and attribute our problems to others – right-wing politicians, the corporate media, globalization… We are at our most creative when we’re searching for others to blame… Business and government adapted far sooner to the new media… But the problem is even more profound than that. We do not have a narrative relevant to the 21st century… We should tell employers – and our members – that the union label indicates dependable, hard-working employees committed to the success of the enterprise.
Tags: economy, globalization, ideology, privatization, standard of living
Posted in Policy Context | No Comments »
We need two-tiered medicine
Thursday, April 7th, 2011
Apr 6, 2011
…the Canada Health Act must be modernized to allow patients to pay for care if they wish in entirely separate, privately funded facilities. Individuals who go to these centres would be paying for care out of their own pockets or through privately purchased insurance. By doing this, patients will be leaving the public queues and thus shortening them. Physicians would work in both systems. Patients choosing to access private facilities would also be free to use the public system that their taxes pay for. Private facilities would act as a release valve, removing demand from the public system…
Tags: budget, Health, ideology, privatization, standard of living
Posted in Health Debates | No Comments »
The crisis no leader is talking about
Thursday, April 7th, 2011
Apr 6, 2011
One key element of the Dodge analysis is that the looming cost increases for health care are not insurmountable. The emphasis — rightly — is on the idea that increasing total Canadian spending on health care from 12% to as much as 18.5% of GDP, or $42,000 per family, is “not undesirable or unsustainable.”… Whatever the number, the point of Chronic Healthcare Spending Disease is that the spending projections cannot be met under current health care laws and funding arrangements. Something has to give in the hearts and minds of Canadians about how health care is paid for and provided.
Tags: budget, Health, ideology, privatization, tax
Posted in Health Debates | No Comments »
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