The big-ticket item in the Nova Scotia budget is the two percent corporate tax cut (from 16%) at $70.5 million, plus a decrease in the small business tax (from 3% to 2.5%) at a cost of $10.5 million. These tax cuts will cost $81 million, but the Premier says he is…
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“No one is happy with the property tax. It is expensive to administer. The property tax is regressive – it puts a heavier burden on people with low incomes than on everyone else. Property tax rates are divisive, varying between classes of property owners – such as residential, commercial, and…
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It has been 30 years since the all-party resolution in the House of Commons to eliminate poverty among Canadian children by the year 2000. It is also almost 30 years since Canada ratified the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child in 1991. Article 27 of the Convention directs…
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My paternal grandmother has a great saying that she likes to remind me of. Drawing from a well of old Jamaican wisdom, she says: “Don’t watch the noise in the market, just watch your correct change.” On September 18, Time magazine released a photo showing Prime Minister Justin Trudeau in…
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When we talk about housing affordability the focus is usually on home ownership and high housing costs. Less discussed is the affordability crisis faced by the third of Canadian households (4.7 million families) who rent their homes. This paper looks at the extent of the problem by determining the hourly…
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The urgency of the global climate crisis could not be more obvious than in India right now, where a 50ºC heatwave is causing “heavy casualties” both directly through heat-related deaths and indirectly through water and food shortages. Canadians have been spared that kind of heat so far, but it’s little…
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A wise person once said to me, as we watched a local organization slowly spiral out of existence, “You know it’s over when they’re counting the pencils in the drawers.” That stuck with me. So did the next piece of wisdom: “That’s why you don’t let accountants run everything.” (For…
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That 55-cent increase to the minimum wage on April 1st undoubtedly felt like an April fools’ joke to some of the province’s lowest paid workers. Nova Scotia still has the lowest minimum wage in the country for inexperienced workers, and for experienced workers it has only just slightly surpassed its…
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The performance of the Nova Scotia economy is a mixed bag. After years of little or no employment growth, the labour market improved marginally in 2018. Overall employment increased by 2.1%, and the unemployment rate decreased from 8.2% to 6.9%, still significantly higher than the national rate of 5.8%. These…
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A cross-country scan of the state of public primary and secondary education in Canada for November 2018. View the story Menu British Columbia Alberta Saskatchewan Manitoba Ontario Nova Scotia Our Schools | Our Selves November 2018 Edited by Erika Shaker As part of its new digital format, Our Schools /…
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