Business in skewed economic assessments of Ontario’s move to a $15 per hour minimum wage has been brisk this week. Only a day before the Chamber of Commerce released its full (of holes) study, the economics department of TD Bank published its own dire predictions about job losses. The gloomy…
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It’s no secret that university and college revenues are shifting, with the public component of funding largely in decline. It’s also no secret—or coincidence—that the tuition and other fees charged to students are up. In most cases, way up. After all, the money has to come from somewhere. And as…
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Earlier this year, the Liberal government passed legislation in the House of Commons that paved the way for the full ratification of the Canada–EU Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement (CETA). Today, it is celebrating the provisional coming into force of that agreement, stealing some thunder from the Conservatives who negotiated…
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When MPs head back to the Hill next week, we can expect an already heated debate about tax fairness to go up a few more degrees. At the heart of the matter is a decade-old tax loophole accessible to very few people and with very few spinoff benefits to the…
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Keep Ontario Working (KOW), a coalition of business groups, has released its analysis of Bill 148, the legislation that will increase the minimum wage in Ontario to $15 per hour and introduce important improvements to working conditions. With the legislative window to make any changes to the Bill closing, KOW…
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PM Trudeau and Foreign Affairs Minister Freeland meet with U.S. President Donald Trump in May (PMO photo by Adam Scotti). In a series of speeches on Monday morning, Foreign Affairs Minister Chrystia Freeland outlined six broad priorities for Canada in the impending renegotiation of the North American Free Trade Agreement…
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The Trump administration’s long-running NAFTA drama took centre stage this week as the U.S. Trade Representative (USTR) released its objectives for the impending renegotiation—and it looks more like a summer rerun than the transformative spectacle we were promised. In short, the U.S. is pushing for an updated NAFTA modelled on…
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One of Trump’s first acts as President was to pull the United States out of the 12-country Trans-Pacific Partnership, which he called “a potential disaster” for America. Six months later he wants NAFTA to become the TPP that U.S. corporate lobbyists were dreaming of all along. The about-face will surely…
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We all want to feel good about what Canada stands for. From progress on LGBTQ rights, to communities coming together to support new immigrants, to modest steps toward reconciliation, there are reasons to be proud of how far we’ve come in 2017. But are we prepared to move beyond pride—to…
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When the Ontario government rolled out its five-year child care action plan for children under 4 years earlier this month, the child care movement applauded—perhaps for the first time, and more or less enthusiastically, since the Paul Martin Liberals introduced their Canada-wide “QUAD” plan in 2004, which advanced quality, universal inclusivity…
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