The federal government has announced it is prepared to pay wages subsidies of up to 75% of employee wages for ALL private businesses and other employers, including non-profits, partnerships and charities that expect a 30% drop in revenues, up to a maximum of $847/worker per week and $11,011 over the
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The Progressive Economics Forum: Making the COVID19 Wage Subsidy Program work better for workers
With the federal government is increasing its temporary wage subsidy to 75%, other reforms are needed to ensure the public funding goes to maintain workers, and not pad the profits of businesses. In the face of the COVID19 crisis, the Canadian government has done a good job of both limiting
Continue readingThe Progressive Economics Forum: CLC Senior Economist Job Opening
There’s an exceptional opportunity for a bright and critical-minded economist who is as passionate about social justice and working on behalf of unions and working people as they are about working with spreadsheets: CLC Senior Economist. Application deadline September 21st. More details and job posting here.
Continue readingThe Progressive Economics Forum: Ford Plan for Ontario – Potential Employment Impacts
Ontario Conservative leader Doug Ford finally released a partially costed version of his election promises in his Plan for Ontario in the last week before the election. This includes approximately $7.6 billion in tax cuts and revenue reductions and a net $500 million reduction in annual spending.[I] At the same
Continue readingCanadian Dimension: The Canada Infrastructure Bank and the perversities of predatory capital
Photo by Chris Wattie In their election platform and in ministerial mandate letters, the federal Liberals promised they would “establish the Canada Infrastructure Bank to provide low-cost financing (including loan guarantees) for new municipal infrastructure projects.” This had the potential to be a positive initiative. The federal government can borrow
Continue readingThe Progressive Economics Forum: Ontario’s Electricity Sector II: Political Economy Update
This is a third guest post by Edgardo Sepulveda, who is a Toronto-based expert in telecommunications and regulatory economics. Twitter: @E_R_Sepulveda By Edgardo Sepulveda In my previous post of January 29 I described how decisions by different Ontario governments gave rise to excess electricity generation with an inflated cost
Continue readingThe Progressive Economics Forum: Can Capitalists Afford a Trumped Recovery? Guest post by Jonathan Nitzan & Shimshon Bichler
This provocative guest post submitted by Jonathan Nitzan and Shimshon Bichler, was published earlier this year on their bnarchives website. Nitzan, professor of political economy at York University, and Bichler, who teaches political economy in Israel, are authors of Capital as Power, a Study of Order and Creorder and numerous related
Continue readingThe Progressive Economics Forum: Ontario’s Electricity Sector: Privatization and deregulation
We’re pleased to present this very topical post by Edgardo Sepulveda examining what has caused Ontario’s rising high electricity prices. This is Edgardo’s second guest post as a PEF member, following his, first, which was an analysis of the impact of fiscal policy changes on post-tax income distribution. Edgardo has
Continue readingThe Progressive Economics Forum: Banking on Privatization?
Finance Minister Bill Morneau tables his Fall Economic Statement on 1 November. We’ll likely find out then whether he has some has real treats, or if they’re planning more privatization tricks for provincial and municipal governments, as his business-dominated Advisory Council on Economic Growth proposed in the form of a public-private infrastructure
Continue readingThe Progressive Economics Forum: Fiscal and Economic Record of Political Parties
A version of this originally appeared in rabble. Conservative ads have focused on the NDP’s fiscal and economic record, claiming that the “NDP Can’t Manage Money”. These include another round of staged interviews with people who repeat “the NDP can’t manage money”, “the cost of their plans is huge”, that
Continue readingThe Progressive Economics Forum: Budget 2015: Robin Hood in Reverse
Here’s a link to the longer analysis I prepared of the federal budget, now on-line at CUPE’s website, to accompany the press release and notes we put out immediately following the budget. The entire document may be too long to post here, so here’s the 1st two paragraphs. The Big Picture:
Continue readingThe Progressive Economics Forum: Deficit Déjà Voodoo again in New Brunswick
The Fredericton Daily Gleaner published an op-ed I wrote about how the province doesn’t have a structural deficit, despite the government claiming it does. The commentary piece is behind a pay wall so I’ve copied it below. Last month, CUPE New Brunswick also published a paper I wrote on this issue,
Continue readingThe Progressive Economics Forum: Why are women leaving Canada’s workforce?
I started producing an e-weekly earlier this year, Eye on the Economy: making sense of recent economic events, as a more regularly complement to the quarterly Economy at Work I also produce. Each issue contains a main commentary/analysis piece on a topical issue and also a curated round up with about
Continue readingThe Progressive Economics Forum: The Ontario Auditor’s damning report on P3s
The Ontario Auditor General’s 2014 Report includes a chapter on Infrastructure Ontario’s P3 program that is particularly damning–and corresponds with many of the criticisms made on this blog and elsewhere by myself and others. While the headlines were that P3 projects cost the province an additional $8 billion than if
Continue readingThe Progressive Economics Forum: Why the economy sucks (in one chart)
(The following is something I’ve prepared for the next issue of CUPE’s Economy at Work, a popular economics quarterly publication I produce.) In his annual Economic and Fiscal Update (EFU), finance minister Joe Oliver told Canadians that while the federal government will finally record a surplus next year after seven
Continue readingThe Progressive Economics Forum: Is Harper right? Did corporate tax cuts really pay for themselves?
In a little noticed comment, Prime Minister Stephen Harper recently was reported to say: “Dropping our tax rate has not caused the government’s corporate income tax revenues to fall, which indicates that it does in fact attract business.” No one seems to have questioned his statement, even though it was
Continue readingThe Progressive Economics Forum: Hudak job cuts impact on communities
Today the Ontario Federation of Labour and CUPE Ontario published calculations I prepared of how Ontario Conservative leader Tim Hudak’s promise to eliminate 100,000 public sector jobs will be felt at the local level, on cities and communities across the province. The original OFL release provides info on the magnitude of these impacts for
Continue readingThe Progressive Economics Forum: Tim Hudak, job-killer
It’s a bit of a headscratcher. First, Ontario Conservative leader Tim Hudak builds his whole campaign around a promise to create one million new jobs in Ontario over eight years, then one of his first campaign commitments threats is to reduce the number of Ontario government employees by 100,000, together with
Continue readingThe Progressive Economics Forum: Missing In Action: Federal Budget 2014
Here’s the first section of the budget summary and analysis I’ve prepared for CUPE. The full version is on-line on CUPE’s website at http://cupe.ca/economics/missing-action-federal-budget-2014 together with CUPE’s press release at: http://cupe.ca/economics/federal-budget-2014-help-hurt-canadian Missing In Action: Federal Budget 2014 CUPE Federal Budget 2014 Summary and Response Conservatives ignore pressing economic needs with
Continue readingThe Progressive Economics Forum: The relentlessly hypocritical Gwyn Morgan
Another column by Gwyn Morgan in the Globe and Mail and another case of a 0.1 percenter telling the rest of us to “Do as I say, not as I do.” This time, it’s Gwyn recycling trash from the CFIB and Fraser Institute to claim defined benefit pensions for public
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