How big is your deficit? This Ontario election, no one seems to care—and that’s a decisive positive to emerge from a campaign that’s too often been submerged in the politics of personality. There is more and more light sneaking through the widening cracks in Canada’s austerity consensus. Hopefully, it will
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CuriosityCat: Election 2015: The Shift to the Liberal Party starts
The Second King of Austerity? With the dog days of summer ending, and only 6 or so weeks left in the interminable campaign, one of the most interesting sites to check on every now and then is the CBC Poll Tracker, run by Éric Grenier, the founder of ThreeHundredEight.com, a
Continue readingPolitical Eh-conomy: Is Canada the Sweden of anything?
There was an odd article last week on the explainer site Vox that argued Sweden doesn’t achieve its relative equality with very progressive, “soak the rich” taxation. While Matt Bruenig and Mike Konczal have already provided excellent, US-centred rebuttals to this argument, I thought this would be a good occasion
Continue readingAlex's Blog: Without a Debate on Taxes, We Risk Sleepwalking into the Future (by Alex and Jordan Himelfarb)
Some months ago, we published a collection of essays designed to promote a discussion of taxes in Canada. The book’s premise is that the current tax conversation is distorted. While we rightly ask of any new policy or program proposal, “what will it cost and how will we pay,” we
Continue readingAlex's Blog: Without a Debate on Taxes, We Risk Sleepwalking into the Future (by Alex and Jordan Himelfarb)
“La Sonnambula”, illustration of a Bellini opera Some months ago, we published a collection of essays designed to promote a discussion of taxes in Canada. The book’s premise is that the current tax conversation is distorted. While we rightly ask of any new policy or program proposal, “what will it
Continue readingPolitical Eh-conomy: Economic history in the present: Potlatch and tax
This post inaugurates an occasional series I’m calling, “Economic history in the present”. This series will look at vignettes from global economic history with an eye to current phenomena or particular events. Some will be more speculative, drawing on anthropology and philosophy; some will be more rigorous. Hopefully, both aspects
Continue readingCuriosityCat: The Battle for the Soul of Canada’s NDP
Tony Blair wrested control of the British Labour Party away from the hardliners who had successfully run that party into the ditch in election after election, by concentrating on a small core of voters, and offering policies that were outmoded, anti-capitalistic and unappetizing to most British voters. Thomas Mulcair faces
Continue readingCuriosityCat: Harper’s Permanent Majority through Redistribution & FPTP
A Confederation denied legitimacy Here is a startling analysis of the impact of the recent redistribution, the probability of a permanent Conservative majority in the House because of our archaic First Past the Post system. A must read for everyone interested in politics in Canada. Please pass on this post
Continue readingThe Scott Ross: Why Liberals Should Fear Gerrymandering
Recently Saskatchewan MP Ralph Goodale wrote a post echoing a sentiment surprisingly popular among what’s left of the Liberal Party membership, and that is, this Conservative government is going to use its influence to gerrymander ridings to maximize support to guarantee future victories. But Liberals shouldn’t be worried that
Continue readingSong of the Watermelon: The Point of Taxes
What follows is my submission to BC’s Select Standing Committee on Finance and Government Services. Any other British Columbians interested in influencing next year’s budget have until October 18 to do so by clicking here. Taxation has three major purposes: raising government revenue, redistributing wealth, and discouraging “bads.” The first
Continue readingBlunt Objects: New Sask Ridings Give NDP a Leg Up
The folks doing the federal redistribution for the province of Saskatchewan has come out with their proposed boundaries today, finally putting to rest those horrible eight ridings that broke up the cities of Regina and Saskatoon into four parts each, combining urban and suburban parts of the cities with huge
Continue readingCalgary Grit: Riding Talk
The electoral commission could have saved us a lot of time by painting this map blue The new riding maps are out! The new riding maps are out! It’s Christmas in July for political geeks! As you may be aware, new riding boundaries will be in place for the 2015
Continue readingPample the Moose: Partisan dreck: Seat Redistribution Edition
The new seat redistribution bill recently passed the House of Commons, awarding new seats to Ontario, Quebec, BC and Alberta. Rarely have I seen commentary about legislation so thoroughly skewed by short-term partisan and regional interests, and it makes me ill. I’ll get my principles on the table. I favour
Continue readingBlunt Objects: Liberal seat proposal, by the numbers
A follow up on an earlier post by Volkov. There is a new CBC News story outlining the number of seats in the Liberal proposal for seat redistribution. In short, this proposal would remove 1 seat from Newfoundland and Nova Scotia, and 2 seats each from Manitoba and Saskatchewan. Quebec
Continue readingCalgaryGrit: Opposition for the Sake of Opposition
The Liberals have come out against an expanded House of Commons, arguing we have enough MPs as it is. I personally feel the problem is one of quality rather than quantity, but most Canadians would likely agree with the Liberal position and it makes a certain amount of sense when
Continue readingCalgaryGrit: Redistribution Update
Just what we need – 30 more MPs!Ontario will get 15 new seats, British Columbia and Alberta six each and Quebec three in the latest and probably final attempt by the Harper government to rejig the House of Commons in favour of the fast-growing province…
Continue readingCalgaryGrit: Redistribution Winners and Losers
Even though it was the right decision, the Harper government likely didn’t do itself any electoral favours by shutting Quebec out of the new ship building contract and the 15,000 jobs that go with it. However, they did announce two new jobs they will b…
Continue readingBlunt Objects: New seat distribution formula to look a lot like the old one.
I’ve taken a close look at the proposed numbers in Harper’s new plan for seat redistribution.This is a difficult to understand issue, so I will begin by explaining the history a little bit. Canada has had a number of different formulas to distribute se…
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