“Middle class” is the new “working Ontario families.” Every second speech and press release here contains it now. – Adrian Morrow, Globe and Mail reporter, Queen’s Park, Twitter, March 20, 2014. With election fever mounting in Ontario, the political field is quickly crowding around the middle of the income spectrum…
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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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Canadians who value their deep history of universal postal service are reeling from the latest round of cuts to Canada Post: the end of door-to-door delivery service accompanied by a hike in postage stamp costs. In other words, higher prices for less service – and it’s all part of “an…
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For the first time in Canadian history, an election is being waged on this question: Which political candidate do you trust to reduce income inequality? Welcome to the Toronto-Centre by-election, where voters go to the polls on November 25. Two Toronto-Centre political candidates are stealing the show in this by-election…
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A leaked Ontario Progressive Conservative document reveals a deep disconnect between ideologically driven wedge politics and the realpolitik of Ontario’s struggling middle class. The document lays out a provincial election plan for the party that is premised on an explicit attack on workers and a promise to bring in American-style…
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The right-wing Fraser Institute has released a paper that, if implemented, would dramatically lower our standards for worker pay, workers’ rights and workplace protections. It urges governments in Ontario and B.C. to adopt American-style “right-to-work” (RTW) laws which violate a core principle upheld in Canadian law: if a majority of…
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By Hugh Mackenzie and Trish Hennessy All budgets are political in nature, but Ontario’s 2013 budget – tabled by a minority government with a new leader – stands out as a case in point: it is carefully designed to survive a non-confidence vote. It extends a few olive branches to…
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The Fraser Institute has a new report warning Ontario could become the next Greece or California because of the size of its debt. Of course we know Ontario is not Greece or California, and such comparisons are disingenuous. But it is possible that Ontario could find itself in a similar…
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Imagine if Ontario’s incoming Premier – lauded for breaking the inequality barrier on two counts – decided to parlay her victory into a post-austerity focus on solutions to income inequality. Now that would be truly groundbreaking. And it couldn’t come at a better time. Brand new data from Statistics Canada…
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Increasingly, leadership for policy change comes from outside of government, not from within. It’s why many Ontarians who are focused on reducing and eliminating poverty in this province have engaged in a broadening conversation about how to end working poverty through decent jobs, a better minimum wage, and a concept…
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