Officially Ontario ended its recession in 2009, but the effects still linger in 2013. The Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives estimates the “great recession” of 2008-09 and the slow recovery has taken the Ontario economy $70 billion off course. That … Continue reading →
Continue readingTag: jim stanford
Accidental Deliberations: Wednesday Morning Links
Miscellaneous material for your mid-week reading. – Paul Adams highlights how the Cons and their anti-social allies have spent decades trying to convince Canadians that it’s not worth trying to pursue the goals we value – and how the main challenge for progressives is to make the case that a
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Tuesday Morning Links
This and that for your Tuesday reading. – Jim Stanford points out that any “bitumen bubble” will only get worse if the Cons and their provincial cousins get their way in shifting the Canadian economy even further toward immediate tar sands extraction: (I)f the problem exists because we’re pumping out
Continue readingAlex's Blog: The Age of Austerity
Notes: Keynote talk, CCPA Post-Austerity session, Toronto, January 9, 2013 We are living in the “Age of Austerity” or at least so says David Cameron, the UK’s Prime Minister. He made this announcement in 2009 at the Conservative convention just before becoming prime minister. This meant, he explained, that he
Continue readingAlex's Blog: The Age of Austerity
Notes: Keynote talk, CCPA Post-Austerity session, Toronto, January 9, 2013 We are living in the “Age of Austerity” or at least so says David Cameron, the UK’s Prime Minister. He made this announcement in 2009 at the Conservative convention just before becoming prime minister. This meant, he explained, that he
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Sunday Morning Links
Assorted content for your Sunday reading. – Pam Palmater explains the historical background to Idle No More: (M)ost Canadians are not used to the kind of sustained, co-ordinated, national effort that we have seen in the last few weeks — at least not since 1969. 1969 was the last time
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Friday Morning Links
Assorted content to end your week. – Jim Stanford is the latest to point out that the Cons see accountability and transparency solely as punishments to be inflicted on their perceived enemies, not as values to be applied to their own decision-making: Following Mr. Hiebert’s logic, any organization in society
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Sunday Afternoon Links
This and that for your Sunday reading. – Jim Stanford responds to the claim that we should be eager to import whatever capital we can for lack of other means of developing our own resources: Measured by foreign direct investment, Canada has been exporting capital, not importing it. During the
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Saturday Afternoon Links
Miscellaneous material to end your Saturday. – Jim Stanford looks in detail at the aftereffects of free trade with the U.S., and finds rather little to cheer: In sum, the promise that free trade would induce more trade, productivity growth, and higher incomes (following traditional Heckscher-Ohlin mechanisms) is not remotely
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Monday Morning Links
Miscellaneous material for your Monday reading. – Jim Stanford reviews the effect of NAFTA (and associated corporatist policy choices) on Canada’s economy: Quantity of exports: In the mid-1980s, before Brian Mulroney and Ronald Reagan inked their deal, Canada’s exports to the United States accounted for 19 per cent of Canadian
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Monday Morning Links
Miscellaneous material to start your week. – Alice interviews Allan Gregg about his sharp criticism of anti-evidence politics, and finds some optimism on Gregg’s part that clear falsehoods will eventually be treated with due disdain: Q. So, one of your early mentors, [US pollster] Richard Wirthlin, he’s arguing that values
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Wednesday Morning Links
Miscellaneous material for your mid-week reading. – Kady points out that despite the Cons’ best efforts to stonewall, the Robocon investigation in Guelph looks to have locked in on the source of their fraudulent robocalls. And while it’s indeed somewhat concerning that Elections Canada hasn’t reached anywhere near the same
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Monday Morning Links
Miscellaneous material for your Monday reading. – Pratap Chatterjee discusses our new age of robber barons – and how the wealthiest CEOs get out of paying any tax at all on massive sums of money: The Institute for Policy Studies, a Washington DC thinktank, says that a chunk of the
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Friday Morning Links
Assorted content to end your week. – Eric Liu and Nick Hanauer theorize that we should discuss the economy as a garden rather than a machine: A well-designed tax system — in which everyone contributes and benefits — ensures that nutrients are circulated widely to fertilize and foster growth. Reducing
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Saturday Morning Links
Assorted content for your weekend reading. – Lori Wallach discusses the corporate coup underlying the Trans-Pacific Partnership which the Cons are so eager to force on Canada: (T)rade is the least of it. Only two of TPP’s 26 chapters actually have to do with trade. The rest is about new
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Thursday Afternoon Links
Assorted content to end your day. – For those wondering what might become of Nathan Cullen’s leadership campaign plan to work with progressives of all party stripes, we now have part of the answer: in advance of the Calgary Centre by-election, Cullen will be reaching out to discuss how to
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Thursday Morning Links
This and that for your Thursday reading. – Jim Stanford discusses how Canadian right-wing parties are picking up on the most extreme anti-labour stances of the U.S. Republicans. But I do have to wonder whether the comparison between union dues and taxes is one that they’d particularly shy away from:
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Saturday Morning Links
Assorted content for your long weekend reading. – Jim Stanford highlights how anti-labour “right to work” policy is spreading from the U.S. into multiple Canadian provinces: It’s clear we’re going to have to gear up our arguments on right-to-work laws, dues check-off, the Rand Formula, etc. In the last year
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: New column day
Here, on how CETA and especially the TPP are serving as ever more glaring examples of the Cons’ willingness to give away everything Canadians value as part of ideologically-driven trade negotiations for no real economic gain. For further reading…– Scott Sinclair and Michael Geist have recently commented on the TPP
Continue readingOPSEU Diablogue: Coalition forums wrap up this week in Sudbury and Windsor
CAW economist Jim Stanford and Algoma University professor Dr. Gayle Broad speak at the last two Ontario Health Coalition forums this week. Broad speaks tonight in Sudbury as part of a panel with SEIU VP Cathy Carroll and OHC Director Natalie Mehra at … Continue reading →
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