OTTAWA – Seizing on the first federal election in recent history where income inequality is a hot button issue, the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives (CCPA) has launched a platform to reduce the gap.
The user-friendly platform, available at GoodForCanada.ca, lays out a four-plank strategy to tackle income inequality, focusing on good jobs, a good safety net, good public programs, and progressive taxation.
“Our team of economists and research associates have been tracking the worsening of income inequality since we launched our Growing Gap research project in 2006,” says CCPA Executive Director Bruce Campbell. “Now we’re advancing a platform as an actionable blueprint for moving forward.”
The CCPA’s Good For Canada platform features a range of policy ideas to help create more good jobs, to take Canada’s social safety net into the 21st century, and to launch new public programs that would benefit everyone – such as universal affordable child care, a national pharmacare program, and access to affordable higher education.
“Canadians are going to cast their vote on October 19,” says CCPA-Ontario Director Trish Hennessy. “We’ve created a resource to help Canadians assess whether political candidates in this federal election are walking the talk on income inequality or merely blowing political smoke.
“The platform also raises the question: how can we pay for it? It outlines a tax plan that asks those who have more to contribute more, for the good of Canada. Spoiler alert: there’s not a single tax cut in our income inequality platform because that’s not how Canada will ever reduce the growing gap.”
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Visit the platform at http://GoodForCanada.ca
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