Behind the Numbers

Entries Tagged as 'Poverty and Income Inequality'

Canadians Aren’t Buying the Banksplaining

April 15th, 2013 · · Economy & Economic Indicators, Employment and Labour, Income Inequality, Satire

So, am I the only parent of small children struck by the familiar tone of RBC’s Temporary Foreign Worker damage control message fiasco? In a CBC interview that was basically a clinic for how not to do PR, Chief Human Resources Officer Zabeen Hirji’s attempt at banksplaining sounded suspiciously like a Sharon, Lois and Bram singalong: “Who, me? Yes, you. Couldn’t be! Then who? iGate hired temporary foreign workers from the global labour market cookie jar!”

(Although kudos to CBC for reminding those of us who haven’t seen one in a while what a tough interview—of a Corporate Canada spokesperson, anyway—actually looks like.) ...Read more

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Seeing inequality through rose-coloured classes

January 22nd, 2013 · · Aboriginal Issues, Income Inequality, Media, Poverty and Income Inequality, Satire

Amidst the reluctant media coverage of Idle No More exists a particularly irritating contradiction that centres on how wealth and inequality are examined.

The Occupy movement was roundly criticized by the elite’s media handmaids for going after the 1%. “Why are you punishing ingenuity and hard work,” the 99%ers were asked. “Why are you jealous of people who have ‘made it’?”

After all, success is to be emulated, not vilified. Right?

But tweak the situation—and the target—and the elites (and their mouthpieces) turn into veritable class warriors. In an “eat the rich” kind of way. ...Read more

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The Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples — Take 2

January 14th, 2013 · · Aboriginal Issues, Democracy, Human Rights, Poverty and Income Inequality

“As an ordinary Canadian I feel deeply that this wonderful country is at a crucial, and very fragile, juncture in its history. One of the major reasons for this fragility is the deep sense of alienation and frustration felt by, I believe, the vast majority of Canadian Indians, Inuit and Métis. Accordingly, any process of change or reform in Canada — whether constitutional, economic or social — should not proceed, and cannot succeed, without aboriginal issues being an important part of the agenda.”

The Right Honourable Brian Dickson
Report of the Special Representative
respecting the Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples (1991) ...Read more

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Dangerous Cavities: Kids need preventative oral care

January 14th, 2013 · · Health Care, Poverty and Income Inequality, Youth

Oral health coverage for kids, particularly kids from lower-income families, is something that the CCPA and others have been advocating for.  It is an area just outside of the present universal provincial health care coverage. However, when things go wrong it rapidly becomes something that health care folks and not dentists are tasked with dealing with.

A paediatrician here in Ottawa has just come out with a great overview and case for better publicly funded preventive oral care in Canada, particularly for children from low-income families. ...Read more

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Why the Income Inequality Deniers are Wrong

December 21st, 2012 · · Income Inequality

This article was published in an abridged form in the National Post. I like this opening better, so I posted it here.

You couldn’t have made it through 2012 without running into a story about income inequality.  Chances are, it made you think about how you fit into the story.  That’s “entirely constructive”, as Bank of Canada Governor Mark Carney called the awakening triggered by the global Occupy movement.

A year later, some people think it’s time you go back to sleep.  A new debate is emerging in Canada: is inequality worth discussing at all?  On the “no” side are four main arguments, all deeply flawed: ...Read more

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The Rich Stay Rich: Fraser Institute

November 20th, 2012 · · Economy & Economic Indicators, Employment and Labour, Poverty and Income Inequality

A new report came out from the Fraser Institute today looking at income mobility.  It certainly doesn’t intend to make this conclusion, but a thorough look at their data shows that the rich stay rich as everyone else fights for entrance to this exclusive club.

Plenty has already been written about growing income inequality in Canada from CCPA’s own Armine Yalnizyan and Hugh Mackenzie, among others.  Their examinations show how the top 10% and top 1% of Canadians are running away with all income gains. Each year when we calculate who got a raise and by how much, most Canadians’ raises only barely match inflation with the top 10% and the top 1% giving themselves much more substantial raises. ...Read more

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Getting at the root causes of hunger in Atlantic Canada

November 1st, 2012 · · Employment and Labour, Maritime Provinces, Nova Scotia, Poverty and Income Inequality

Food Banks Canada released its latest statistics on national food bank usage this week.  The data are assembled in a document titled HungerCount 2012.  Not only has food bank usage continued to increase, more and more users are working and more are families with children.  According to the report’s authors, “In March of this year, 882,188 people received food from a food bank in Canada. This is an increase of 2.4% over 2011, and is 31% higher than in 2008, before the recession began.” ...Read more

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Right-to-Work: The (Ayn?) Rand Formula

October 16th, 2012 · · Economy & Economic Indicators, Employment and Labour, Ontario, Poverty and Income Inequality, Satire

There’s reluctance among Canadian proponents to call for it by name. But Right-to-Work (longer, harder, without representation or recourse, for less money and fewer sick days or pee breaks) seems to be the flavour du jour amongst…ahem…politicians of a certain age.

(By which I mean the Age of Dickens. Pip-pip, cheerio, y’all.)

There are some folks who think we hit the high-water mark for social progress in the workplace somewhere between Cro-magnon Man and Ward Cleaver. So to bring things back into balance, a few individuals and their well-connected friends are hell-bent on dragging unionized workers—for their own good, of course—behind the woodshed to administer a free market thrashing. ...Read more

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Happy Crashiversary! Are you better off now than you were four years ago?

September 14th, 2012 · · Democracy, Economy & Economic Indicators, Federal Budget, Ontario, Poverty and Income Inequality

Four years after Lehman Brothers collapsed, it’s time to take stock of things by asking a stock political question: Are you better off now than you were four years ago?

Where you stand on the answer depends on where you sit. Many people, businesses and communities are still struggling to regain the ground they lost after September 15, 2008, the day the giant investment banker filed for bankruptcy and triggered the biggest global financial and economic crisis since the 1930s. But for others, things have never been better.

For Canada as a whole, the top line numbers are good, as we’ve heard repeatedly from Ottawa.

Gross domestic product is higher than during the fall of 2008, and more people are employed. But take a look under the hood, and you’ll see how that has been driven by commodities and their rising prices. That’s because globally there has been more demand than supply as the supply chain expanded, and Canada has what the world wants when it’s growing. But emerging economies are slowing down, and that puts Canada’s better-than-most growth at risk.

The head count on employment may be up, but four out of five of the new positions added to job market since the crisis began are temporary. We now have fewer young people (aged 15-24) working than at the worst point of the recession (summer of 2009), though there are more people now in that age cohort. Both trends do not bode well for the future.

In addition to the performance of the market is the performance of government. Taken together, the policy measures undertaken by government net out to accentuate – rather than mitigate – the widening gap between the haves and the have-nots over the past four years.

Without question Canada has done much better than the U.S., which is burdened by higher jobless rates; falling middle class incomes ; andpoverty rates stuck at record highs even though more people are working now than two years ago. High and still rising levels of income inequality seem irreversible, with the top 1 per cent having accounted for 93 per cent of all income gains since the recovery began.

So, yes, Canada is doing better than the U.S., four years on. But the comparison is not apt. In the fall of 2008 we were in a very different place when it came to overleveraged consumers and businesses — and government deficits. ...Read more

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Canada’s Mean Test: Myths behind neo-con madness

June 29th, 2012 · · Democracy, Economy & Economic Indicators, Education, Employment and Labour, Taxes and Tax Cuts, Uncategorized

It’s difficult to overstate the significance of the Quebec student strike (the longest in North American history) and resultant public backlash against the provincial government’s Orwellian response.

Not that you’d know it. According to mainstream (predominantly) English media, Montreal is being held hostage by a handful of scruffy, possibly naked, hooky-playing slack-tivists who got distracted on the way to a door-crasher sale at the Apple store and decided to stop traffic while demanding their constitutional right to free lattes. Or something. ...Read more

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