Hundreds of activists and organizers traveled to Ottawa last week to discuss the future of Canadian climate to counter climate change and climate injustice. Over four days, they converged to discuss advocacy strategies and the need to create a just and livable future. The event, PowerShift: Young and Rising, wrapped…
Read more
The recent renegotiation of the North American Free Trade Agreement presented a unique opportunity to rethink the dominant model for governing international trade and investment. At the outset of the “New NAFTA” talks in August 2017, Foreign Affairs Minister Chrystia Freeland outlined the government’s priorities under the umbrella of a…
Read more
Earlier this year, the Chamber of Commerce released yet another report on how public protections and other regulatory requirements are undermining Canadian competitiveness—and how the government should go about deregulating to make life easier for businesses big and small. Though it wasn’t directly tied to the Trump administration’s massive gutting…
Read more
The CCPA continues to carefully read through the nearly 2,000-page USMCA text. This blog, the third in a series on how the agreement differs from NAFTA, examines the agreement’s chapter on Good Regulatory Practices, a relatively new addition to so-called next generation trade deals. Stay tuned to this space for continued analysis…
Read more
Not even three full months into his reign as Ontario premier, the battle lines between Doug Ford and the City of Toronto have been drawn and democracy is on trial. Premier Ford threw Toronto’s October 22nd municipal election campaign into chaos this summer by arbitrarily cutting the number of seats…
Read more
Strong-arm tactics have always been an ugly feature of Canada-U.S. trade negotiations. But in the current NAFTA renegotiation the Trump administration has taken bullying and brinkmanship to a whole new level. The Canadian government was thrown off balance by the U.S.-Mexico deal announced in late August and has been playing…
Read more
The Ontario Superior Court of Justice has confirmed that the Canada Revenue Agency’s (CRA) crackdown on charitable political activity has been an arbitrary and unjustified infringement upon freedom of expression. It’s time for the federal government to act swiftly to close the book on a dark time in Canada’s democratic…
Read more
The Supreme Court gave Canadians cause to celebrate this April in its R v Comeau decision. However, because of the way the ruling was covered in the media, most people will not know how much was at stake and what we might have lost had things gone the other way….
Read more
Heading into Ontario’s June 7 election, the three major political parties have made distinct expenditure promises and revenue announcements. Let’s look at these fiscal plans in historical and comparative context (see note 1). Ontario governments have traditionally supplied a comparatively low level of public services (e.g., health, education, etc.) and…
Read more
In Ontario’s first-past-the-post electoral system, it’s not just a matter of counting votes. Here are a few things to think about that may help determine who wins—and who loses—on June 7: Geography matters Governments change when the same people vote differently, or when different people vote the same—but in a…
Read more