Toronto’s Workers’ Action Centre released a new report today, Still Living on the Edge: Building Decent Jobs from the Ground Up, which addresses cultural, legal, and social issues facing Ontario’s workers. Using a combination of policy analysis, data collection, and first-hand accounts of workers’ lives, the report paints a full…
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On March 19th, we released the 2015 Alternative Federal Budget (AFB) and also marked the publication’s 20th anniversary. Like every year, the AFB includes practical measures to improve Canadian’s lives. For the past two years, we’ve been running our AFB through a sophisticated income inequality simulation to see how our budget would…
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Like university students cramming for an exam, last night the parliamentary public security committee (SECU) finished the last of nine hearings (over only six days) into the government’s anti-terrorism bill (C-51). It’s now up to the committee to perform a clause-by-clause review of the omnibus legislation and draft recommendations to the…
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The Charlottetown Guardian reports today the RCMP has arrested a Prince Edward Island man they suspect might carry out a terrorist offence. It’s somewhat awkward for the government: it could be a good news story (depending on what the case looks like), but it could also undermine the Conservative’s position that Canada’s security…
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The government has stacked the public safety committee’s schedule this week, hoping to get through all remaining witnesses and approve Bill C-51 before Easter. Meetings resumed last night (see CBC’s good summary here) and continue today with morning and evening sessions. As the public mood shifts against the legislation (support…
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Canada’s federal government ran a deficit for nearly thirty years – from the late 1960s to the late 1990s. Successive Conservative and Liberal governments delivered programs, implemented economic and fiscal policies, and ran the country, without balancing the budget. The sky did not fall. The fabric of Canadian society did…
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The following remarks are excerpted from the 2015 Alternative Federal Budget press conference on March 19, 2015 on Parliament Hill, featuring David Macdonald and Kate McInturff. This year is the 20th anniversary of the Alternative Federal Budget. Our first was in 1995. Over the years, we’ve proposed policies that have…
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The last elections have ushered in a fresh input of creativity and imagination in Quebec’s political life. Not content with exaggerating the budget deficit by cooking the books, Couillard’s government invented a so-called “structural deficit” between the state’s expenditures and revenues. The logic is quite simple: spending growth is greater…
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If you love the feeling of cruising down a brand-new stretch of highway, the last few years have been full of good news for you. And if you’re in the business of designing and overseeing the construction work on those highways, well, these are banner years indeed. If you’re a…
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To paraphrase Leader-Post columnist Murray Mandryk, the government’s Liquor Retailing consultation process is looking more and more like manipulation and less and less like consultation. University of Regina Business Administration professor Dr. Sean Tucker recently released an open letter he sent to Minister Don McMorris regarding the quality of the public liquor retailing…
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