The Ontario government’s long awaited and much discussed report of the Commission on the Reform of Ontario’s Public Services (aka, the Drummond report) was finally publicly released this afternoon. As was rumoured, the report says Ontario would need to increase program spending by no more than 0.8% per year for the government to reach balance by 2017/18.  Drummond has adopted […]
Read moreI have an opinion piece out on the City of Ottawa’s universal, student transit pass–also known as “the U-Pass.” Points raised in the op-ed include the following: -U-Pass programs exist for roughly 30 universities and colleges across Canada. -For a U-Pass program to be introduced, students typically must vote in favour of the program in student referenda. -When there is a […]
Read moreNow that the government is planning for an $8 billion cut,  the potential job losses could drive job losses to between 99,000 and 108,000 full time positions across Canada. At this much higher level, the federal government could be single-handedly responsible for pushing national unemployment from its current 7.5% to 8.0%. About half of those losses would be federal public […]
Read moreToday’s IMF economic update further downgrades growth projections, including here in Canada where growth in 2012 is forecast to be just 1.7%, down from the IMF’s September forecast of 1.9%. That is well below the just released Bank of Canada forecast of 2.0%, and clearly implies rising unemployment. On fiscal policy they say: Countries should let automatic stabilizers operate freely […]
Read moreFollowing recent dismal reports on rising unemployment, stagnant GDP growth, and a deteriorating economic outlook, we can only hope federal Finance minister Jim Flaherty will provide some Christmas cheer with changes “to better promote job creation and economic growth†(as he’s  asked for advice on through his pre-budget consultations). Unfortunately, Santa Flaherty seems to have got his Christmas list all […]
Read moreOver a year ago, I posted “What are the Game Changers?“, an attempt at sparking some strategic thinking for the broader left. Now that we’ve had a month of Occupation, building on the original Occupy Wall Street action, I’ve been wanting to put these ideas back on the table, so below I recycle much of that post and update it, […]
Read moreLast weekend, I spoke on a panel at the Annual Conference of the Ontario Non-Profit Housing Association. The panel was inspired in large part by the recent debate in Toronto over Mayor Rob Ford’s attempt to sell social housing units to private buyers. The panel, entitled “To Privatize or Not to Privatize? That is the question,” included myself, Vince Brescia […]
Read moreIt’s often said that there aren’t enough rich people in Canada to make a real difference to fiscal policy and, in consequence, the rest of us. Yesterday Canadian Business’s annual special edition devoted to Canada’s richest 100 people hit the stands, where it will stay until Christmas. As a regular contributor I was invited to submit a column. I chose […]
Read moreToday, the Ontario NDP presented its comprehensive platform costing, including all policies announced during the election campaign. A popular theme among commentators has been that platform costings are unrealistic given the deteriorating economic outlook. As Andrea Horwath noted, her platform includes significant contingency funds. It is also cautiously built on the fiscal framework set out in the 2011 provincial budget. […]
Read morePollsters tell us that Ontario’s New Democrats may double their seat total in next month’s provincial election. It’s also entirely conceivable that they could be part of a coalition government at Queen’s Park. But what’s actually in the party’s election platform? One central feature of the NDP’s proposals is to implement a tax credit for companies that hire new workers. The tax credits would be valued at […]
Read moreBesides the carbon tax, one of the most important BC government climate action initiatives has been the adoption of Carbon Neutral Government. That is, count emissions from public buildings and travel, reduce them as much as possible and pay for carbon offsets to negate the rest. As of the 2010 calendar year, the BC government announced mission accomplished, at the […]
Read moreDown south, the Obama administration is in a dangerous game of chicken with Republican congressional leaders, who are cynically holding the US economy hostage in order to impose a radical agenda of spending cuts. Obama has seemingly bought into the rhetoric of cutting debt, rather than focusing on the real US problem of unemployment. Yet, even his foolish offer to […]
Read moreWas it worth the wait? Hardly.  Today’s federal budget is about as appetizing as two month-old pizza warmed up in the microwave. I guess they deserve high marks for consistency, though not for economic policy or a long list of other things. The Harper government’s June Budget is almost entirely a reprinted version of the budget they tabled two and […]
Read moreDoug Saunders, of the Globe and Mail, has gamely launched a real and meaningful discussion about corporate tax cuts on these pages. See the comments section of this post. Since that forum was getting unwieldly, I’m starting a new post. Doug’s stated pursuit (and mine, and I wager most readers’) – how to harness growth to maximize social welfare – […]
Read moreBack in 1995 Finance Minister Paul Martin introduced a budget that reshaped fiscal federalism and retrenched the scope of the welfare state in Canada. It envisioned a dramatically smaller role for the federal government, a role that was permanently in question through the process of ongoing program review. It was Paul Martin’s permanent revolution, for the federal public service. Today’s […]
Read moreMy recent post on public sector pay elicited a lot of comments, including a fair few based on the right-wing premise that the public sector is an unproductive burden on the private sector. I have always found this ascription of productivity to the public and private sectors to be deeply misleading in that it conceals the profound interdependence and interpenetration […]
Read more(Here’s a piece that will be in the next quarterly Economic Climate for Bargaining publication I produce, also posted on the CUPE website in pdf format.) There’s a widely held myth now accepted by many people—that public spending in Canada has increased steeply and is growing at unaffordable and unsustainable rates. In fact, the opposite is true. The latest figures […]
Read moreAnother reason for that intolerably high public sector compensation premium — Further to my earlier post showing that the public/private sector pay gap is mainly due to more equal pay for women in service jobs, a recent piece from Canadian Public Policy by Hou and Coulombe shows that the pay gap between Canadian born racialized workers and non racialized workers […]
Read moreToday’s Globe has a long article by Konrad Yakabuski on the potential for a Wisconsin style attack on Canadian public sector workers. It’s hard to challenge his argument that this is very much in prospect, and indeed we seem set for a debate – or a series of national, provincial and municipal debates – on the allegedly large superiority of pay and […]
Read moreToday’s National Post gave front page coverage to a “study” from the Frontier Centre claiming that wages of public servants have far outstripped those of private sector workers over the past decade. “Wage increases doled out to federal and provincial public servants have nearly doubled those given to private-sector employees in the past decade, according to a new report that […]
Read moreToronto’s new mayor Rob Ford and his brother/advisor Doug just announced they are planning to contract-out garbage collection for half of the City of Toronto as soon as possible as the first step to outsourcing everything we can by next year. According to Doug Ford, this will save the city millions and millions of dollars and ensure that they never […]
Read moreThe December 2010 issue of the quarterly Economic Climate for Bargaining publication that I produce is now on CUPE’s website in both English and French. In each issue I summarize developments and trends for the economy, labour markets, inflation and wages, and also include short pieces of 1-2 pages on related topical issues. In this issue, the focus is very much on pre-budget […]
Read moreDavid Hall at the University of Greenwich in the U.K. recently produced a really good report on Why we need public spending. It’s over 70 pages in length, is well-written, has a great deal of really useful material from around the world (including charts and graphics and extensive references) making the argument for why public spending is so important from an […]
Read moreIt turns out — surprise! — that it’s really hard to measure quality in complex social systems and that employing simplistic quantitative measures can backfire. That’s the take-home message from a recent talk by UC Berkley economist and public policy professor Jesse Rothstein who came to SFU to present his latest research on using standardized test scores to measure teacher […]
Read moreIf there was truth in news reporting, the Globe’s “report” on private schools (Sept. 14) would be labeled a “special advertising supplement”. It is essentially a cheerleading exercise for private schools, funded by advertising from private schools, so you’ll find no news in this report. Which is too bad because the topic of private schools merits some real journalism about […]
Read moreLinda McQuaig puts the heat on Ontario’s public-sector compensation freeze in today’s Toronto Star. Her excellent column begins by noting that the federal government has fended off proposed financial-sector taxes on the grounds that Canadian banks did not cause the global financial crisis. But Canadian public-sector workers, who are even less responsible for the crisis, are expected to make a […]
Read moreThis summer, the Ontario government has been attempting to implement its proposed public-sector compensation freeze. The provincial Finance Minister has essentially promised that he can convince organized labour to comply. But as recent news reports confirm, unions have not been volunteering for a pay freeze, especially since the government apparently has enough spare cash to implement multi-billion-dollar corporate tax cuts. […]
Read moreToday’s Toronto Star features an op-ed by John Cartwright, President of the Toronto and York Region Labour Council. (I once had the chance to hear John speak at a press conference in Toronto and found him to be an oustanding public speaker. But I digress…) In the piece, he argues that “we” (I think he means both the Harper government and the […]
Read moreIt’s tax season and people are looking more closely at their incomes and the amount of taxes they pay. The Fraser Institute released their annual Consumer Tax Index report yesterday, claiming that the total tax bill of the average Canadian family now takes up 41.7% of their income. This seems like a big number, which they use to suggest that […]
Read moreEarlier this month the Economist ran a leader (editorial) and longer article asking and then largely answering who should for the costs of the economic crisis (public services and workers of course!). That’s when I wrote the piece that leads the March 2010 issue of the Economic Climate for Bargaining publication that I produce quarterly. (I was in a bit of […]
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