While the Childcare Access and Relief from Expenses (CARE) tax credit from Budget 2019 is very similar in design to what was in the Brown platform (which means the main points from my analysis a few days ago have been reinforced), with the provincial budget now in hand I can…
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The Ontario Conservatives’ first budget is being delivered on Thursday. Normally this is the first opportunity for the public to compare the government’s plan with any promises the governing party made trying to get elected. In this case, since there was no Conservative campaign platform, and the Ford government has…
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On February 5, Minister of Children, Community and Social Services, Lisa MacLeod, held a press conference with her Parliamentary Secretary, Amy Fee, to announce sweeping changes to the Ontario Autism Program. I sat glued to my screen at my office and then following the announcement, closed my door and cried….
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Last year, the BC government made a landmark investment to begin addressing the affordability crisis in child care. A new report released by CCPA this week shows just how urgently needed those measures were (and continue to be). The report, Developmental Milestones: Child care fees in Canada’s big cities 2018, shares…
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Premier Scott Moe tweeted this graphic on equalization yesterday. The tweet continues the Saskatchewan government’s long record of misrepresenting how equalization works in the hopes of ginning up anti-Quebec and anti-Ottawa sentiment among the Saskatchewan electorate. However, this time the misrepresentation goes one further, as it implies the graph is…
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Take a deep breath, Ontario: we have reached the conclusion of this bizarre and dramatic election period. We wade now into unchartered territory. Sure, there have been PC governments before. But there has never been a PC government quite like the one we are about to experience under Premier-designate Doug…
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Back in March, the Ontario Liberals put all of their chips on the table with their election-style provincial budget. They promised free child care, more support for dental care and drugs, and a reinvestment in health care—bankrolling it by deficit spending for the next six years. That left the opposition…
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In its waning days before a June election, with the opposition breathing down its neck, the Ontario government threw down the gauntlet with what is unquestionably a pull out all the stops election budget. The marquee item was announced yesterday after weeks of big announcements: if re-elected, the government would…
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Sixty-two times. That’s how many times the Government of Ontario drew upon the word “care” in a throne speech designed to claim its stake in a pre-election period that has so far seen its share of ups and downs. The Liberals aren’t the only ones focused on improving care. With…
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Am I happy with the 2018 federal budget? Well, many of the items in it can be found in this year’s and past Alternative Federal Budgets (AFB), which of course is a good thing. But in general I’d say this is an ambition constrained budget. The government had the fiscal…
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