Six years after the global recession plunged governments the world over into fiscal deficit mode, Ontario remains mired in deficit scare tactics engineered by the previous McGuinty government. In its waning years, the McGuinty government invested heavily in creating an atmosphere of fiscal crisis in Ontario. The objective was to…
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Six months ago, when Ontario Premier Kathleen Wynne struck a panel to review the province’s minimum wage, the debate was still stuck in a 20-year-old business frame. The business frame is predicated on fear. It projects a worse-case scenario response to even the slightest of minimum wage increases: job displacement,…
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Everybody knows that we change jobs more often than we used to. Better still, in the Golden Age of employment, there were way more lifelong positions than there are now. Yet if you ask someone who is making that assessment when was this blessed era for all workers (though it’s…
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Co-authored by Kayle Hatt and Trish Hennessy Ontario Progressive Conservative Leader Tim Hudak has a new jobs plan to create a million new jobs over the next eight years. ONE MILLION (cue Austin Powers reference). There are a few known details of his so-called plan – like cutting corporate taxes…
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When it comes to parenting, everyone’s an expert. And society loves to jump all over the latest media-feted example of overly indulgent parenting of kids of all ages—from toddlers to millennials. Sure, all parents make mistakes, and all kids have meltdowns (some of which might have, admittedly, been handled better)….
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Has anyone else noticed the explosive rise of fact-checking in the Canadian media as of late? This is certainly a welcome development. Instead of the usual “He said, she said,” muddle in the name of balance, we are in the throes of a renewed quest for pure facts and unadulterated…
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Guest Post by Michal Rozworski The demands to substantially increase the minimum wage are growing louder south of the border. Workers across the most poorly-paid industries are finding creative ways to raise the issue with strikes by fast-food workers and Walmart employees making waves across the country. What’s more, many of these workers are…
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The long-overdue depreciation of Canada’s currency is gathering steam. The dollar lost 8 cents against its U.S. counterpart, in fits and starts, over 2013. It’s lost another 2 cents since the start of 2014, and negative sentiment about the currency is accumulating among financial analysts and traders. Indeed, once the…
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It was a blue Christmas for many Canadian workers and job-seekers. Statistics Canada reported today that employment fell by 46,000 in December. As a result, Canada’s unemployment rate jumped to 7.2%. Also today, the US Department of Labor reported that the American unemployment rate fell to 6.7% in December. Taking…
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The Institut de recherche et d’informations socio-économiques (IRIS) has released its third Alternative Person of the Year Award. In 2011, rating agencies had been its recipients whilst last year Chinese labour camps rose to the top. This year, competition was rough. After lengthy discussions, our jury did come to a…
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