Without redistributive policies, monetary policy alone can be detrimental to employment and wages. In addition to tackling profits through windfall and wealth taxes to fight price inflation everywhere else, we need to increase the price of labour. Governments must raise minimum wages to keep up with inflation, invest in decommodified housing, empower unions to defend…
When thinking about mental health care, one would expect medication coverage to be included. While mental health and pharmacare are parts of universal health care for many countries, Canada lags behind as the exception.
For far too long, Ontario’s municipalities have been subject to a roller-coaster of provincially-imposed policy and funding changes with unrealistic timelines. Our local governments – and the public they serve – deserve better this time.
Inequity is a scourge on society, independent of absolute living conditions. It is the cause and consequence of differences in power and resources throughout society, not only at the lowest socioeconomic rungs.
While the federal government is talking about the need for urgent and dramatic action, their spending and revenue plans have failed to match the rhetoric. Massive spending will require massive revenues far beyond carbon taxes.
The clear lesson from the past is that, once the sort of inequality that beset the Roman Empire – or that we are experiencing in Canada today – sets in, more often than not it has proven disastrous and in many cases spelled doom for entire societies.
While Canadians are rightly proud of the principles our health care system is based on, there should be little doubt that those principles do not apply broadly enough or lack adequate resourcing.
Canada has long suffered from a broken pricing regime for prescription drugs. Now is the time for a new regime, one that supports the scientific community, encourages economic development and job creation.
We can hardly tackle obscene and rising levels of economic inequality if we are not prepared to see a sustained rise in wages at the expense of the capital share of national income, and a sustained period of wages growing at least in line with growing productivity.
