It is time to confront Canada’s staple trap
Perversely, governments get captured by the staple industry and lock the country in. Our currency becomes a petro-dollar, our state a petro-state.
Perversely, governments get captured by the staple industry and lock the country in. Our currency becomes a petro-dollar, our state a petro-state.
Harper’s fierce opposition to national child care is no fluke. Child care is but the latest battlefield in an ongoing war between social democratic and neoliberal proponents of the proper role of government.
It is hardly surprising, in view of all these retrograde developments in the job market, that inequality is increasing.
Canada is already seen as having Russia, Saudi Arabia and other similar states as its principal allies on climate change – any attempt to present itself as a more constructive country on this issue will be seen as the farce it is.
As to Coyne’s assertion that income splitting is as good a thing to spend the surplus on as anything else, I have a list of suggestions as long as the waitlist at my daughter’s child care provider.
What we need are strategies to improve access to diagnostic technologies that strengthen medicare rather than undermining it.
Retrofits are unique in that if their cost can be spread over a long enough period they can be paid for out on the savings that are achieved. What is needed therefore is a long term program of financing that would allow any homeowners across the country to retrofit their homes.
The federal role must therefore be to show leadership by bringing the provinces together to develop a national plan, leveraging investment, and supporting a long-term transition through targeted innovation, research, development and commercialization of new technologies.
The task for those wishing to move the issue forward, in Canada or internationally, is on the one hand to keep up the pressure from movements, and on the other hand to get creative in leveraging strategically astute national governments and their negotiators at the UN process.