Our experts at the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives have long analyzed entrenched income inequality in Canada. We make a special focus of it in this issue of the Monitor.
As Bruce Campbell, the CCPA’s former executive director, lays out in his comprehensive essay, How the CCPA sparked a national conversation about income inequality,”the CCPA grew out of a fight for greater equality and protection of Canada’s democracy.
Inequality and poverty
Click to enlarge (files open in a new window). You can also download maps (PDF) via the links below.
We generally take for granted that everyone has the right to a say—and certainly a vote—in what our governments do. But in the workplaces that rule many of our waking hours, these democratic rights are largely absent.
In a time of extreme inequality, deteriorating social cohesion and reduced trust in our institutions, why shouldn’t workers have more control over the firms they work in? Enabling employees to take more ownership and control in their working lives is a promising antidote.
The cost of poverty in Manitoba includes three areas of cost: remedial costs, opportunity costs, and intergenerational costs:
Remedial costs: the direct cost of poverty arising from treating the damage poverty causes people.
a. Health: The health cost of poverty is calculated by the cost of increased usage of the health care system by those struggling with poverty as compared with the second income quintile.
Previously published in the Winnipeg Free Press Saturday October 21, 2023.
Manitoba elected Premier Kinew based on a message of unity and rejected politics of division. While this message of unity is primarily contrasted against the dog whistle attacks during the campaign against Indigenous and LGBTTQ+ communities, economic polarization is an important factor that makes people vulnerable to these tactics. For Kinew and his government to create unity, they must focus on reversing income inequality and promoting economic mobility.
As the Winnipeg Free Press reported on June 27, 2023, the Manitoba government has recently earmarked $3.4 million to add 19 Crown prosecutors and six additional staff to Prosecution Services.
Click here to read the full report online.
Ontario’s labour market went through a period of rapid changes between 2019 and 2022. The global pandemic that shut down much of the province’s economy drove the unemployment rate to 14 per cent by May 2020. Not long after, in 2021 and 2022, a rapid recovery pushed the unemployment rate back down to 5.3 per cent in December 2022. Rising wages and increased job vacancy rates were clear signs of tight labour markets as 2022 came to a close.
OTTAWA—A national survey of Canadian workers who received the Canada Emergency Response Benefit (CERB) during the pandemic lockdown say the income support not only gave them peace of mind, it helped them springboard back into the job market when the lockdowns lifted.
The arrival of the COVID-19 pandemic in March 2020 triggered the introduction of public health measures that would close large sectors of the economy and send millions of workers home. In two short months, the unemployment rate reached 14.1 per cent—the highest level since 1936, in the midst of the Great Depression. In all, 2.7 million workers lost their job outright, while another 2.2 million lost all or half of their working hours. Many more would be affected in the months ahead as the economy recovered in fits and starts.