Photo by Hugo Morales, Wikimedia Commons
Seniors issues and pensions
Canada’s income tax system has a lot going for it. On balance, its rate structure is progressive. While there are flaws in our system of self-assessment, such as underreporting of income or aggressive tax planning (to avoid taxes owing), most Canadians seem to be motivated to comply with tax rules.
You can’t assume that government budgets affect men and women the same way—or other groups for that matter—since men and women generally occupy different social and economic positions. Unfortunately, until very recently, governments have done exactly that—developing policies and assigning funding to them in a gender-blind fashion.
OTTAWA—Canada’s largest publicly-traded companies could have eliminated their defined benefit (DB) pension deficits five times over with the value of what they chose to pay out to shareholders instead in 2017 alone, according to a new report released today by the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives (CCPA).
Put another way, these companies could have easily eliminated their pension deficits and still continued shareholder payouts.
This report updates research published by the CCPA in 2017, and compares the pension deficits of the roughly 90 companies on the S&P/TSX Composite Index with defined benefit (DB) pension plans to shareholder payouts between 2011 and 2017. These company plans account for a large portion of all the country’s private DB assets.
Poverty and economic insecurity present a unique hardship for senior women, particularly when combined with the many overlapping challenges of aging: chronic disease, loss of mobility, declining health, loss of a spouse and other friends, ageism, and vulnerability to abuse and neglect. Given that Canada’s population is aging, the gaps in our system of public supports for seniors directly affect ever-widening circles of people.
OTTAWA—Budget 2019, tabled today in the House of Commons, takes steps forward on municipal infrastructure, support for seniors and capping the regressive stock option deduction, but missed the mark on delivering housing affordability and the significant cost-savings that can only be achieved through a universal, single-payer pharmacare system, according to experts from the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives.
Key Findings from the Transportation Townhall meeting
With the country facing significant and unpredictable headwinds going into another federal election year, the 2019 Alternative Federal Budget (AFB) shows that Canada can boost competitiveness and encourage innovation by investing in people, not by giving corporations more tax cuts.
This book is about the tensions in long-term residential care. By tensions, we mean ideas, approaches, practices, programs, interests and communities that have conflicting demands and/or consequences. There is often, for example, a tension between the need to give priority to the increasingly complex medical needs of residents and the plan to provide the kind of support that emphasizes social care and interpersonal relationships.