It’s only been a few days since Premier Doug Ford invoked the notwithstanding clause of the Charter of Rights to try to prevent a strike by education workers. Even so, much ink has been spilled over what a terrible idea it is. How it undermines a fundamental right. How it damages the rule of law. How it weakens democracy. How it punishes the lowest-paid education workers even though the government is running a substantial surplus.

Even craft and construction unions who have previously aligned with Ford, such as the Labourers International Union of North America (LiUNA), have voiced their opposition to this move, and their support for the rights of education workers who are CUPE members.

All of these things are true. But here’s another thing that’s true: undermining collective bargaining rights is bad for business. And in a year characterized by inflation and volatility, Ford has injected even more economic uncertainty into every single unionized sector.

The reason is very simple. By attacking collective bargaining, Ford has undermined the foundation of the employer-union relationship. It damages the system through which unions interact with employers and through which labour peace is maintained. And although our system could do with some improvement, it works.

Strong labour unions are good for business. When union density is high, labour and capital alike benefit from what economist Andrew Jackson calls a “virtuous economic circle.” In the immediate post-war period, following the legalization of collective bargaining, businesses invested in equipment and innovation, generating strong productivity gains. Strong unions, meanwhile, translated this economic growth into rising real wages. These high incomes, in turn, sustained high levels of demand — generating new rounds of business investment.

Strong unions also create certainty — for workers, but also for management and for investors. In countries where union density is high, such as Germany, we see many fewer work-days lost to labour disputes compared to Canada, and a much more predictable collective bargaining process.

The reason is simple. In Germany, workers are at the table in every large firm, through policies such as codetermination — recently advocated by then-Conservative leader Erin O’Toole — or works councils. Workers’ rights are not only secured through the legal system, but through power in the organization itself. In turn, workers begin to see themselves as a partner to management in maintaining the success and competitiveness of the business — because that is exactly what they are. Management and labour alike have their incentives pointed towards coordination, cooperation and success.

Canada suffers from low economic growth. Our national productivity lags the OECD average and our workers are suffering from a decline in real wages. This model — where strong unions create economic certainty and growth, strong and sustainable demand and a prosperous working class — should be exactly what we strive to emulate.

We could be a highly competitive, highly productive, democratic country whose workers are the best-paid and the best-treated in the world, and have an actual voice in their workplace — a recipe for economic growth and shared prosperity.

But we cannot become that country when the foundation of the employer-union relationship is undermined. Ford’s move does more than punish the custodians, early childhood educators and other support staff who keep schools running efficiently. It signals to every union that the system upon which their relationship with management is built is not safe.

It suggests that nothing — not even the Charter of Rights and Freedoms — secures the collective bargaining process against interference. It points unions’ incentives away from working within that system and towards working outside it, through disruptive tactics such as wildcat strikes and direct action.

Ontario’s wildcat strike is the first in a long time. Unions in all sectors will be looking closely and considering what they must do to secure a better deal for their members and protect all workers’ rights.

In a highly uncertain and volatile economic environment, Doug Ford — who has bragged about Ontario being “open for business” — should ask himself: Does business need this?

In mature, world-class economies, workers are properly understood as the foundation of economic success and unions are seen as critical partners in that success. Ford has proven that Ontario, at least, has some growing up to do.

Jen Hassum is the Executive Director of the Broadbent Institute.

This article originally appeared in the Ottawa Citizen on November 7, 2022.

Given that we know that the planet is rapidly heading towards ecological disaster, and given our knowledge of the causes and solutions, why is it that so little real progress has been made? Why have we still not bent the curve in terms of reducing the emissions and economic practices which lie behind the climate crisis? Why are mainstream economists so keen on costing out the value of nature, climate-induced disasters, and planetary survival?

These are central questions Adrienne Buller asks in The Value of a Whale, a well-argued and highly relevant critique of “green capitalism” and its attempts at putting a price on planetary survival. Buller is a Canadian based in the UK as Director of Research for Common Wealth, a think tank that looks at public ownership for a democratic and sustainable economy.

Her answer to these questions is that policymakers at all levels of governance have, almost without exception, accepted the ideological framework of neoliberal economics to inform policy and deferred public decisions to the power of capital.

Hence, the rise of so-called green capitalism. Green capitalism, despite the climate denialism associated with inaction, does not necessarily deny the reality of the climate crisis, but privileges market-friendly policies and sets the stage for financial and corporate interests to dominate a future “green economy.”

“Fredric Jameson famously contended that it was easier to imagine the of the end of the world than the end of capitalism. The discipline and profession of mainstream economics and market centric forms of governance have been essential to this decline in imagination, compressing the horizon for alternatives onto the head of a pin and rendering as natural, inevitable and inescapable a world dominated by market dynamics and governed by the price mechanism,” argues Buller on the lack of imaginative thinking outside of green capitalism.

“Green capitalism is the project guiding much of the global response to ecological crisis and the unprecedented threat to capitalist systems it presents.”

According to Buller, there are two defining pillars of the green capitalist paradigm: “first, the effort to preserve existing capitalist systems and relations in response to this unprecedented threat, and second, ensuring new domains for accumulation in the transition to a decarbonized and ecologically sustainable economy.”

Case in point, consider electric cars. They are certainly making some contribution to the goal of decarbonization of passenger vehicles, and are driving major new investments in new areas like charging station infrastructure, battery technology and manufacturing, and resource extraction for raw materials such as lithium which are in higher demand for electrification and energy storage.

But the growth of the electric vehicle market presupposes the sustainability of simply switching energy inputs (from oil to clean electricity) as opposed to reducing the large environmental burden of personal vehicle ownership. Real decarbonization of the transport sector would require comprehensive planning and investment in public goods such as mass transit, passenger rail and in creating high density urban environments with access to high volume infrastructure. Expanding these public goods does not fit the template of green capitalism.

Another major argument in The Value of a Whale critiques carbon pricing, put forward by liberal economists and embraced by Canadian governments and other advanced capitalist economies as the cheapest and most efficient way to drive the transition to renewable energy and energy efficiency.

Setting a price on planetary survival is certainly a market mechanism that green capitalists would be sure to embrace. In practice, however, there is scant evidence of how effective these pricing schemes have actually been in reducing emissions, given political opposition from both companies and working-class households concerned about rising costs, and uncertainty about what level of carbon price is necessary to force significant changes in economic behaviour.

Governments do not necessarily consider the distributional implications of change, and focus instead on the cost efficiency of manipulating prices. Under the green capitalist regime, carbon pricing is often seen as the major lever for change when it should be secondary to regulation and economic planning. It is far more effective and fairer, for instance, to raise the carbon price after investments in energy efficiency have been put in place to limit inefficiencies later, than to deem everything as inefficient without investment in the green alternative.

Another chapter considers the concept of carbon offsets, often purchased by consumers and businesses to supposedly even out the balance sheet on increased carbon emissions. For example, an effort to balance their emissions expenditures, oil companies have invested in re-forestation to absorb carbon from the atmosphere. But on the ground, there are many dubious practices and a good deal of wishful thinking regarding the impact of re-forestation efforts vis-à-vis continued oil production. Many newly planted forests have been destroyed by wildfires and droughts, induced by climate change caused by the same increased emissions they were supposed to offset.

Buller is also highly suspicious of claims for the positive impacts of ethical and environment, social, governance (ESG) investing, widely touted by the green capitalist corporate sector as a meaningful path to real change. Companies can commit to voluntary reductions in carbon emissions, but almost always restrict monitoring and implementations to their own operations, rather than looking at the broader externalities and global implications of their policies.

In Canada, the major oil and gas companies, supported by government subsidies, have pledged to reduce their domestic emissions according to a timetable that includes the use carbon capture and storage technology. But this approach does not count the emissions from exported oil and gas in other countries, while counting the emissions reductions from clean tech that is still in development.

Buller shows how ESG commitments by corporations and investment funds usually amount to vague and unenforceable “greenwashing.” Even where there is some substance to promises made, there is only a weak and tenuous link between financial investments and what really counts, namely real investments in renewable energy, energy efficiency, and the just transformation of economies built on unsustainable practices.

Buller also provides an excellent overview of the geopolitics of climate justice, demonstrating that many less developed counties lack the means and political power needed to confront the challenges of the ecological crisis.

Though thorough in its critique of green capitalism, Value of a Whale feels short on solutions. However, Buller goes on to articulate policy ideas for a better future further in another recently published work, called Owning the Future: Power and Property in an Age of Crisis (Verso, 2022). With co-author Mathew Lawrence, Buller sets the case for democratic economic planning through the state and multiple forms of social ownership—certainly a requirement for the just transformation and decarbonization of a capitalist economy.

Adrienne Buller is Director of Research at Common Wealth. Adrienne’s writing and work has appeared in The Guardian, Jacobin, the New Statesman, New Left Review, and Financial Times, among others.

The Value of a Whale: On the Illusions of Green Capitalism by Adrienne Buller is now available from Manchester University Press.

Andrew Jackson is senior policy adviser at the Broadbent Institute.

Sunset over London’s financial district. Photo by Andrea De Santis on Unsplash

The response of global financial markets to the UK’s latest tax-cut giveaway “mini-budget” has been nothing short of spectacular. The economic reaction to the new low-tax regime, set by newly selected UK Prime Minister Liz Truss and her (short-lived) Chancellor of the Exchequer in charge of fiscal policy, Kwasi Kwarteng, demonstrates again why going back to the prescribed solutions of tax cuts cannot fight inflation, nor sustain an economy under pressure.

In the immediate aftermath of the new policy announcement, the exchange rate of the UK pound plunged, interest rates on long-term government debt (as bonds issued by the UK Government known colloquially as “gilts”) rose sharply, and the Bank of England was temporarily forced to reverse planned interest rate hikes to avert a collapse of much of the UK pension system in response to the government’s policy misstep.

The political turmoil was and remains equally dramatic. Almost immediately after its announcement, Truss ditched key elements of the mini budget, fired Kwarteng and has now effectively surrendered control of economic policy to her new Chancellor, Jeremy Hunt. The Conservatives are a distant second to the Labour Party in the polls and Truss may very shortly be forced to resign, despite her weeks-long tenure as Prime Minister.

At first glance, this is a massive defeat for the radical “free market” right. Truss and Kwarteng’s mini-budget gave pride of place to tax cuts, including a cut to the top personal income tax rate, easier tax treatment of bankers bonuses, an across-the-board income tax cut, and an end to a planned cut to the corporate income tax rate.

This toxic tax cut for the wealthy was justified by old-school supply-side economics: the Margaret Thatcher-esque argument that tax cuts would stimulate new business investment and economic growth. It is striking that this argument was rejected by most mainstream financial sector experts and commentators, including the International Monetary Fund, which explicitly argued that the tax package would worsen inequality.

This is a significant blow to the credibility of right-wing economics.

However, this is not necessarily a left turn or even a Keynesian turn to economic thinking among the capitalist institutions. The central argument of the mainstream and the IMF and central bankers, including the Trudeau government and the Bank of Canada, is that governments should not at this juncture be increasing deficits.

The central message from last week's annual meetings of the IMF and the World Bank was that fighting inflation through tough monetary policy is the priority of the hour and that fiscal austerity should prevail.

Following these dictates, the latest UK Chancellor offers a similarly austere agenda. While likely to maintain the current tax base, he may also resort to spending cuts elsewhere to finance the mini-budget’s enormously expensive cap on soaring consumer energy prices, instead of funding this measure with new taxes on wealth and profits.

Within the context of capitalist orthodoxy, there are no good options; only bad choices which will lead to a recession, rising unemployment and deepening poverty and inequality.

While the Conservatives have now likely lost their economic competency branding and are, as noted, plummeting in the polls, the temptation for the Labour Party to occupy the presumed centre-ground that has been opened by the Tory free market radicals. 

This would be a mistake. At a minimum, UK Labour should (as it has done to a degree) promise new taxes on wealth and excess profits to expand income supports and public services, perhaps accompanied by price controls and an expansion of public ownership.

The UK’s latest political crisis has opened up the wider question of, in the absence of capital controls, how much policy latitude national governments have left given the globalization of finance and the power of the bond markets to dictate interest rates that may limit fiscal policy. 

It is tempting, but not altogether convincing, to suggest that markets could distinguish between deficits incurred to finance productive public investments, and deficits used to finance ineffective tax cuts. While the former helps to expand the fiscal base and investment, the latter has led to poorer social outcomes. For some, it may be of comfort to believe that markets made the right call in rejecting the initial version of the mini-budget, but a reformed austerity program that maintains the balance sheet may still be acceptable to the invisible hand.

The crisis certainly poses a challenge to those on the left who argue that deficits do not matter. Certainly, a progressive program will depend to a significant degree on taxing wealth and corporate profits.

Andrew Jackson is senior policy adviser at the Broadbent Institute.

The Cambie Case is an important policy decision with massive impact on our cherished public healthcare systems that many Canadians are not familiar with. Adjudicated in British Columbia, this four-year-long trial began in 2016 and ended in 2020. Fortunately, the Provincial Court of BC recently made the decision to rule against privatizing health care financing. 

Why is this case a concern to us? This case essentially challenged the rights of patients, putting fair and equitable access to healthcare in jeopardy. Briefly, the plaintiffs of the case wanted to overturn three key aspects of BC’s Medicare Protection Act (MPA): 

• Extra billing and user fees, allowing doctors to charge patients more than what was listed under the public insurance plan. 
• Private duplicate insurance, where doctors would be allowed to bill private insurers for patients who want faster access to hospital and physician care. 
• Dual practice, giving doctors enrolled in the public plan the opportunity to choose whether to bill only the public plan, patient (or private insurer), or both for any service covered by the public plan. 

These three changes would be a reversal of the progress made by the 1985 Canada Health Act which was put in place to stop doctors' extra billing. These changes would also create huge inequities in access to healthcare services, as only those who could afford it would be able to access adequate care. This would also mean doctors would have more of a financial incentive to provide access to those who have private insurance, or those who could afford to pay out of pocket, over those who cannot afford either private option. 

Evidence from Australia demonstrates that shifting towards privatization actually worsens the health system. Australia introduced private duplicative health insurance with the claim that it would help to reduce wait times. However, those changes had the opposite effect. Wait times grew longer, especially for those who could not afford private insurance.  

The Cambie Case not only put the healthcare system in BC at risk but health systems across Canada as a whole. Without a doubt, if the plaintiffs had won their case, the door would have been open for other provinces to follow suit and move toward privatization. Canadian Doctors for Medicare saw this push to change the BC MPA as a danger to the Canada Health Act, essentially causing it to be unenforceable among other provinces. 

Recently in Ontario, private health companies have been found lobbying for the privatization of some aspects of healthcare delivery. The province’s current Progressive Conservative government has a history of working with private companies to further encroach on the health sector, rather than investing in the public healthcare system. This should be of concern for Ontarians, as a BC decision for the Cambie Case plaintiffs would have given the Ontario Government leverage to continue down this privatization agenda and endanger the province’s already resource-limited healthcare services.

The ruling against the Cambie case was a win for the medicare system, however as we see in the example of Ontario the work is far from over, according to Dr. Danyaal Raza, a Toronto-based family doctor, assistant professor at the University of Toronto, and past chair of Canadian Doctors for Medicare. Not only is there concern for the push for privatization but there is also the fear that the ruling of the Cambie Case will be challenged in BC and an appeal will be made to the Supreme Court of Canada. “The decision made at this level could have national implications, particularly if the court rules in favor of the plaintiffs,” said Dr. Raza.

The public healthcare system obviously needs improvement and protection against privatization efforts. Expansion in the delivery of services and investment in system efficiencies, rather than introducing parallel private payment, will improve access for all Canadians. 

Dr. Raza also shared his insights on the benefits and drawbacks of virtual care. He explains virtual care is beneficial in connecting with patients; however, there are some concerns regarding the operationalization of this type of care, in particular, if clinics deliver virtual care only. 

For instance, walk-in clinics that are virtual only raise concerns about the type of services these clinics can offer, especially services that do require an in-person visit. “If the clinics can’t offer that, then patients are directed to the emergency department, which does nothing to alleviate emergency departments and creates waste. Now the patient requires two visits when one would have only been needed,” said Dr. Raza.

An evaluated mix of virtual and in-person primary care delivery is the best way to utilize this tech tool. Giving patients the option of either type of appointment would give patients the flexibility Dr. Raza explains: “Virtual care can be a powerful tool for health equity if used properly. But then it can also be a powerful tool for profit if regulations are not enforced.”

Virtual consultations such as RACE would bridge the barrier for some patients in accessing specialists, and would also help in reducing in-person wait times. The pandemic demonstrated the efficiency of some virtual care doctor appointments. It’s possible to move some healthcare online resources to ease the burden on the healthcare system, and would be a good way for patients in rural or remote communities to access health services. However, this must be a public investment in virtual care, not a private for-profit enterprise.

We must be vigilant and continue to ensure healthcare stays public. Encroachment towards privatization is not the answer, but innovation in the healthcare system can happen through public ownership that ensures access for all.

Amal Abdulrahman is a fellow of the Diversity Youth Fellowship hosted by the Urban Alliance on Race Relations, and graduate student in International Health at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.

Header photo by Greg Rosenke on Unsplash