Posts Tagged ‘standard of living’

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Missing teeth: Who’s left out of Canada’s dental care plan

Tuesday, January 30th, 2024

The choice is twofold: (1) Continue to create new medical care programs with a fill-in-the-gaps model and an income cap, like Canada is currently doing on dental care, or (2) Align new medical care programs with the principles of the Canada Health Act, which is based on the underlying principle of health care for all. The findings in this analysis of Canada’s nascent national dental care plan might also be relevant to the much anticipated announcement of a national pharmacare plan.

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Posted in Health Policy Context | No Comments »


For Ed Broadbent, socialism meant providing for average people — and fighting for the cause

Sunday, January 28th, 2024

For Ed, democratic socialism meant waging a constant battle against the inequality-producing tendencies of the market. It meant institutions that were democratically accountable shaping markets to serve the needs of people not private interests… The right to affordable housing and dental care, for example… ought to be guaranteed rights of citizenship. Being rights, not privileges, they should be available to everyone

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Bleeding the patient: tracking five years of Ontario revenue reductions

Sunday, January 28th, 2024

Since 2018, the Ministry of Finance has made close to 30 policy changes that have cut taxes, cut fees, and paid out large sums in the form of tax credits. As the table below shows, those changes are draining a minimum of $7.7 billion from the provincial treasury in 2023-24… it looks like it’s coming out of public services… successive governments have deliberately bled themselves dry and then pled poverty afterward.

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Ontario is dead last in program spending—again

Sunday, January 28th, 2024

In 2022, Ontario’s program spending per capita was $3,863 less than the average of the other provinces. This means that for every dollar per person spent on programs in other provinces, Ontario spent 75 cents… there is no evidence—and no one is claiming—that Ontario’s low spending is the result of some magical efficiency in program delivery here. There’s nothing efficient about having too few nurses.

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After the apologies: Churches give time and money to redress residential-school wrongs

Tuesday, January 23rd, 2024

Although public apologies occurred in the 1980s and 1990s, it wasn’t until 2006 that a class-action lawsuit – the largest in Canadian history – brought about the Indian Residential Schools Settlement Agreement, which recognized the damage done to Indigenous children placed in these schools… In addition to their responsibility to fulfil the 2006 agreement, churches have made efforts to fundraise for programs that don’t fall within the agreement’s mandates.

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Swelling CEO salaries highlight income inequality

Monday, January 22nd, 2024

The average worker received an average wage increase of three per cent in 2022 while prices rose by more than twice that amount… The financial disconnect between CEOs and the employees who work for them underscores broader issues of income inequality and affordability. We need quality research and robust debate on how to address income inequality and stagnating wages for those not privileged to work in the c-suites.

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Posted in Equality Debates | No Comments »


Canada unveils new restrictions on work permits for international students, spouses

Monday, January 22nd, 2024

Starting on Sept. 1, the federal government will stop issuing postgraduate work permits to international students who graduate from programs provided under so-called Public College-Private Partnerships, Immigration Minister Marc Miller said… “I’m not the minister of post-secondary education underfunding. I’m the minister of immigration. Clearly in the last decade or so or even longer, post-secondary institutions in Canada have been underfunded by provinces.”

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Canadian CEO pay breaks all records, reflecting a new Gilded Age for Canada’s rich: report

Wednesday, January 17th, 2024

In 2022, the average worker in Canada got an average pay raise of $1,800, or three per cent. But, prices went up by 6.8 per cent in 2022… This report proposes that governments address the rampant income inequality between the rich and the rest of us through four taxation measures that both disincentivize extreme CEO compensation and redistribute CEOs’ extreme income to Canadians on the lower end of the income spectrum.

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Could this project help address our housing crisis — and put a roof over refugees’ heads?

Wednesday, January 17th, 2024

Refugee Housing Canada’s home-sharing platform connects refugees in need of a safe and welcoming home with Canadian hosts who want to help and also earn some income… “It’s not unprecedented. After the Second World War, there was a big shortage of housing and people took in boarders. I know the world is a very, very different place today but it’s time to do that again.” 

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No end to the ER crisis without investments and addressing workers’ concerns

Wednesday, January 17th, 2024

We recently estimated that dealing with those pressures and bringing back the quality of care in our hospitals to an acceptable standard would require a $1.25 billion annual investment after offsetting costs of inflation. But so far, the Ford government is letting the hospitals deteriorate while it sits on $5.4 billion in contingency funding. If this government is serious about addressing the hospital crisis, it must commit to historic investments immediately.

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Posted in Health Delivery System | No Comments »


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