This week on CBC’s Metro Morning, Ontario Treasury Board President Peter Bethlanfalvy defended cuts in transfers to the City of Toronto by saying that the Ontario government had to “do something immediately” because of the province’s debt. His government had inherited a “staggering amount of debt,” he said. Hours later,…
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Last week’s budget left many Ontarians confused. The Minister of Finance had warned that dealing with the provincial deficit would require spending cuts and “sacrifice” from all of us, yet the budget actually increased investment in both dental health for low-income seniors and child care for families (analysis of the…
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It is a ritual in Canadian politics: a new government comes into power, it reviews the books, and then expresses outrage at how badly the finances were managed and how the public was misled. Conservative governments then use these shocking “discoveries” to double down on privatizing and reducing public services….
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This winter, a bad flu season that resulted in overcrowded emergency rooms shone a light on the need for a reinvestment in Ontario’s health care system. There were crushing workloads for nurses and health care workers, whose jobs are becoming increasingly precarious—thanks to austerity measures. Starting in 2012-13, the…
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A month ago, PC Leader Doug Ford floated a trial balloon: he would freeze Ontario’s minimum wage at $14 but take everyone making less than $30,000 a year off of the income tax rolls. At that time, I checked the math and concluded that a $15 minimum wage would leave…
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In the lead up to the June 7th election in Ontario, the minimum wage continues to be a hot button issue. Both the provincial Liberals and the NDP have committed to increase the minimum wage from $14 this year to $15 an hour on January 1, 2019. But the…
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Census data released by Statistics Canada today show us that racialized Canadians are more than willing to work but the barriers to finding employment that existed in 2005 remain firmly in place. The labour force participation rate for racialized workers in 2016 was 66.5 per cent — almost two percentage…
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New 2016 Census data shows an increasing share of the population comprises racialized, immigrant, and Indigenous people in Canada but the income gap between them and the rest of Canadians remains stubbornly high. The gap between Indigenous and non-Indigenous people is high There were 1.7 million Indigenous people in Canada…
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By Sheila Block and Michal Rozworski Each week, it seems, we see a new report that exaggerates the potential negative impact of Ontario’s plan to get to a $15 minimum wage by 2019. Using a selective reading of the economic research and ignoring the more recent consensus in the profession,…
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While much of the conversation on Canada’s new Census income numbers focuses on the sustained nature of income inequality, little attention has been paid to what’s been happening to the richest 1% compared to the rest of us. This is the first time that a Canadian Census includes information about…
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