Assorted content for your weekend reading. – The Star’s editorial board calls for an end to regressive federal tax breaks. And Dennis Howlett asks why the tax evaders who used KPMG’s illegal offshoring schemes are being offered secrecy and amnesty for their attempts to siphon revenue away from the Canadian
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Accidental Deliberations: Saturday Morning Links
Assorted content for your weekend reading. – The Star’s editorial board calls for an end to regressive federal tax breaks. And Dennis Howlett asks why the tax evaders who used KPMG’s illegal offshoring schemes are being offered secrecy and amnesty for their attempts to siphon revenue away from the Canadian
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Saturday Morning Links
Assorted content for your weekend reading. – Lana Payne questions whether Justin Trudeau’s brief nod to precarious work and burgeoning inequality will be reflected in any action. But Sheila Malcolmson notes that Trudeau’s say-anything approach includes turning himself into a human shield for Donald Trump, while PressProgress reports on the
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Saturday Morning Links
Assorted content for your weekend reading. – Lana Payne questions whether Justin Trudeau’s brief nod to precarious work and burgeoning inequality will be reflected in any action. But Sheila Malcolmson notes that Trudeau’s say-anything approach includes turning himself into a human shield for Donald Trump, while PressProgress reports on the
Continue readingThe Progressive Economics Forum: Poverty Reduction in Alberta
Over at the web site of the Calgary Homeless Foundation, I’m co-author of a blog post titled “Poverty Reduction in Alberta.” Points raised in the blog post include the following: -The NDP government of Premier Rachel Notley has undertaken important poverty-reduction initiatives since forming a government in 2015. -Alberta (relative
Continue readingThe Progressive Economics Forum: The Federal Role in Poverty Reduction
Over at the web site of the Calgary Homeless Foundation, I’m co-author of a blog post titled “The Federal Role in Poverty Reduction.” Points raised in the blog post include the following: -Canada’s Minister of Families, Children and Social Development has been tasked to lead the development of a Canada
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Wednesday Morning Links
Miscellaneous material for your mid-week reading. – The Star argues that a crackdown on tax evasion and avoidance is a crucial first step in reining in inequality. Susan Delacourt wonders when, if ever, Chrystia Freeland’s apparent interest in inequality will show up in her role in government. And Vanmala Subramaniam
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Thursday Evening Links
This and that for your Thursday reading. – Anis Chowdhury refutes the theory that top-heavy tax cuts have anything to do with economic development: Cross-country research has found no relationship between changes in top marginal tax rates and growth between 1960 and 2010. For example, during this period, the US
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Saturday Morning Links
Assorted content for your weekend reading. – Murray Dobbin highlights how our political and economic discussions are poorer for the dominance of neoliberalism: That’s it? That’s the best the economics profession can come up with to explain Canadians’ indebtedness catastrophe? It’s all about human behaviour, written in stone, so I
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Friday Morning Links
Assorted content to end your week. – Alex Hemingway reviews the evidence on two-tiered medicine from around the developed world, and concludes that a constitutional attack on universal health care would only result in our paying more for less. – Marc Lee takes a look at the national climate change
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Tuesday Afternoon Links
This and that for your Tuesday reading. – Dennis Pilon highlights how the stubborn defence of disproportional electoral systems can only be explained by a fear of voters’ preferences being given effect: The issue is not whether it’s better to have a few or a lot of parties in Parliament
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Sunday Morning Links
This and that for your Sunday reading. – Dani Rodrik writes that today’s brand of trade agreement has little to do with economic theory as opposed to political power: What purpose do trade agreements really serve? The answer would seem obvious: countries negotiate trade agreements to achieve freer trade. But
Continue readingThe Progressive Economics Forum: Parental and Caregiving Leaves
The very narrow and brief on-line consultations around parental and caregiving leaves finishes today. As we’ve done in the past, a coalition of community and labour organizations worked together to develop a common list of policy asks. Even though the official consultation is finished, we encourage concerned individuals and groups
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Tuesday Morning Links
This and that for your Tuesday reading. – Toby Sanger offers some important background to the federal government’s expected plan for privatized infrastructure by noting that the anticipated result would be to double the costs. And Luke Kawa notes that the Libs are already having trouble spending the money they’ve
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Sunday Morning Links
This and that for your Sunday reading. – Jake Kivanc points out that what little job growth Canada can claim primarily involves precarious work. And Nora Loreto discusses the crucial link between labour and social change: (T)o confront climate change, we must imagine the role of workers in the transition
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Wednesday Morning Links
Miscellaneous material for your mid-week reading. – Peter Fleming writes that the promise of entrepreneurial self-employment has given way to the nightmare of systematic precarious work: (T)he move to reclassify people as self-employed follows a very simple formula: it helps reduce labour costs and maximise profits for businesses that would
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Saturday Afternoon Links
This and that for your weekend reading.
– Naomi Klein discusses how Canada’s longstanding – if far from inevitable – identity as a resource economy is standing in the way of both needed action on climate change and reconciliation with First Nations:
In Canada, cultivation and industrialization were secondary. First and foremost, this country was built on voraciously devouring wildness. Canada was an extractive company – the Hudson’s Bay Company – before it was a country. And that has shaped us in ways we have yet to begin to confront.Because such enormous fortunes have been built purely on the extraction of wild animals, intact forest and interred metals and fossil fuels, our economic elites have grown accustomed to seeing the natural world as their God-given larder.When someone or something – like climate science – comes along and says: Actually, there are limits, we have to take less from the Earth and keep more profit for the public good, it doesn’t feel like a difficult truth. It feels like an existential attack.…The trouble isn’t just the commodity roller coaster. It’s that the stakes grow larger with each boom-bust cycle. The frenzy for cod crashed a species; the frenzy for bitumen and fracked gas is helping to crash the planet.…Today, we have federal and provincial governments that talk a lot about reconciliation. But this will remain a cruel joke if non-Indigenous Canadians do not confront the why behind those human-rights abuses. And the why, as the Truth and Reconciliation report states, is simple enough: “The Canadian government pursued this policy of cultural genocide because it wished to divest itself of its legal and financial obligations to Aboriginal people and gain control over their land and resources.”The goal, in other words, was to remove all barriers to unrestrained resource extraction. This is not ancient history. Across the country, Indigenous land rights remain the single greatest barrier to planet-destabilizing resource extraction, from pipelines to clear-cut logging.
– Meanwhile, Marc Lee signals what we might expect from a federal climate change action plan based on the working groups currently reviewing the options.
– Laurie Monsebraaten reports on a needed push to ensure that child care funding is used to create not-for-profit spaces. And Ashifa Kassam points to Wellington’s loss of water rights to Nestle as a prime example of what happens when corporate dollars trump public needs.
– Finally, Alon Weinberg discusses why now is the time to implement a proportional electoral system in Canada. And Craig Scott makes the case for mixed-member proportional over the other options under consideration.
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Thursday Morning Links
This and that for your Thursday reading.- Chris Hamby’s brilliant series on the effects of investor-state dispute settlement continues with articles on the shift in power from governments to corporations, as well as the developing market in settlement …
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Thursday Morning Links
This and that for your Thursday reading.- Chris Hamby’s brilliant series on the effects of investor-state dispute settlement continues with articles on the shift in power from governments to corporations, as well as the developing market in settlement …
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Friday Morning Links
Assorted content to end your week.- Sara Mojtehedzadeh reports on a new Ontario study recommending a strong investment in child care to reduce the gender wage gap. – Allan Moscovitch, Nick Falvo and David Macdonald offer a useful primer on social suppo…
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