Over on the CCPA website, we’ve posted an excellent article by intern Maria Gergin on the Harper Government’s record of silencing dissent. The article includes a list of 79 community organizations, agencies, NGOs, research bodies and programs which have been cancelled, or whose funding has been cut or dramatically decreased…
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Today the CCPA released a study that I authored which examines and debunks one of the biggest contentions of this campaign, that corporate tax cuts create jobs.? One of the key reasons cited by the Conservatives for continued corporate tax cuts is that they are needed to encourage job growth….
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Canadian Medicare faces growing threats across the country. Many patients using private, for-profit clinics find themselves paying out of pocket for services covered by Medicare. Murial Schoof was required to pay more than $6,000 for sinus surgery at B.C.’s for-profit False Creek Surgery Centre. Court documents state that her physician…
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Canada’s economic context at the time of Election 2011 is one of “precarious recovery”, and overall demand conditions are weakened by a few major factors. Unemployment is still just under 8%, which is good compared to the double-digit unemployment of the early 1990s, but not great compared to the expansions…
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It’s hard to walk down Ottawa’s Sparks Street these days without tripping over some lobbyist or public relations consultant for the arms industry. Strategically located only a block from Parliament Hill, the street is a beachhead for firms vying for a larger piece of the military budget. Year after year…
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I did my taxes yesterday and once again was surprised to see how low my family’s income taxes have gone. In 2010, my wife and I paid a combined 13.7% of our income in federal and provincial income tax. Canadian modesty does not permit me to disclose the exact amount…
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Visiting Atlantic Canada? today, the Prime Minister? re-announced the modest EI measures from the Budget. By way of background, in February, there were 1,448,500 unemployed workers, up from 1,114,000 before the recession. (October, 2008.) The unemployment rate was 7.8% in February, compared to 6.1% before the recession. Strikingly, in the…
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On March 28th, Mr. Harper announced his party’s latest election plank: the “Family Tax Cut”, or income splitting for couples with children.? The program is supposed to “…make the income tax system fairer…” while recognizing that “…family budgets are stretched…” But an examination of the distributional impacts of the “Family…
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The media coverage of Jack Layton’s announcement yesterday was disappointingly thin, and the details (including on the NDP web site) are pretty hard to find. The NDP would go one better than the Liberals in raising the federal Corporate Income Tax rate from 16.5% today (and 15% next year) to…
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A list of sites and articles worth reading: CCPA Senior Economist Armine Yalnizyan explains how “Income splitting won’t help families in need” in her latest Globe and Mail article. In his Globe and Mail article, “Not exactly an economic gold medal,” Jim Stanford looks at the Conservatives’ economic track record….
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