Illustration by Michael Haddad
Taxes and tax cuts
Taxes are the foundation of a healthy democracy. They fund the public services we depend on every day: roads, schools, community and social services, health care, justice, environmental protection and much more. But over two decades now, governments have undermined the progressivity of our tax system by cutting corporate and top income tax rates and letting tax loopholes proliferate. The top 1% of Canadians by income now pay a lower overall rate than all other income groups, including the poorest 10%.
In this issue:
If there is one issue that has been front and centre in the agenda of the governing Manitoba Progressive Conservatives (PCs), it has been “fiscal responsibility”. Of specific concern has been bringing down the government deficit, which was approaching $1 billion when the PCs assumed office. The Pallister government has consistently applied a variety of austerity measures to achieve this objective.
The pollster Nik Nanos claimed in June that climate change would be “one of the defining battle grounds” this election. “More important than jobs, more important than health care, more important than immigration.” In July, Abacus Data put climate change in third spot behind health care and cost of living, the latter an important issue (with the environment) for the two-thirds of voters from the millennial and gen-X cohorts.
Canada’s Employment Insurance (EI) program is failing to support low-wage and precariously-employed workers, who have considerably less access to benefits than workers with higher wages.
Among the study’s findings:
While 42 per cent of all unemployed workers qualified for EI in 2017, just 28 per cent of workers earning $15 or less per hour were eligible for benefits;
TORONTO—Canada’s Employment Insurance (EI) program is failing to support low-wage and precariously-employed workers, who have considerably less access to benefits than workers with higher wages, according to a new Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives (CCPA) report.
Photo from the U.S. Department of Agriculture
Canada is addicted to oil. Like all addictions, ours is debilitating. It has erased the line between state and private industry (thin as that line is in most countries), stifles our politics, and is holding back local, provincial and national preparations for a world without fossil fuels. Curing our addiction to oil and gas will take time and money, and historic levels of Indigenous–federal–provincial co-operation. But it absolutely has to happen—starting now.
TORONTO—Today’s Ontario budget will do serious damage to the public services Ontarians depend on, the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives Ontario office (CCPA) says.
“Cuts like these don’t make Ontario ‘a place to grow,’ they make it a place where people have to just try and survive,” says Sheila Block, CCPA Ontario Senior Economist. “This is a bad news budget.”