Getting the facts straight: EI changes hurt unemployed workers
In the last federal budget (Chapter 3.3), the federal government tried to sell its changes to Employment Insurance by describing how some hypothetical workers would benefit. Unfortunately, the scenarios they...
How more tax on the super-rich will help ease income inequality
Congratulations to Statistics Canada for providing an update on top incomes in Canada, and for launching two new CANSIM tables allowing researchers to dig into the details. While the income...
David McNally: Addressing Inequality by Rebuilding the Labour Movement
While growing social inequality is the product of a multi-pronged economic, political and cultural offensive by corporate power across the neoliberal era, the systematic weakening of trade unions looms especially...
Andrew Jackson: The Distribution of Wealth: Implications for the Neo Liberal Justification for Economic Inequality
Nobel Prize winning economist and political theorist Amartya Sen points out that “every normative theory of social arrangements that has at all stood the test of time seems to demand...
Why there is little satisfaction to be found in Canadian manufacturing
On January 16, the Macdonald-Laurier Institute published a study by former Statistics Canada analyst Philip Cross, entitled “Dutch Disease, Canadian Cure.” It argues that “after 10 years of a muscular...
Martha Friendly: Why high-quality universal child care is part of a more equal Canada for all of us
If anything positive has emerged from Canada's rising inequality, it is that a bona fide discussion about "the Canada we want" is becoming a mainstream staple of political dialogue. Not...
John Stapleton: A Ball Player, a Cop, a Janitor, and a Welfare Recipient
To whom do we compare ourselves when we think about reducing inequality? On June 6, 2012, former Toronto mayor John Sewell and conservative MPP Peter Shurman had the following exchange...
Why taxing pollution deserves serious discussion
Prime Minister Stephen Harper and his party have recently attempted to demonize Opposition Leader Tom Mulcair for his alleged advocacy of a “job-killing carbon tax.” As has been widely noted,...
Colleen Davison: Adding Nuance to our Discussions of Inequalities in Canada: Urban-Rural Health Differences
If you woke up this morning and put your feet on the floor in Moosenee, Iona, Bella Coola or Longlac, then the chances are that your health is poorer than...
Peter Graefe: Fitting Federal Equality into a More Equal Canada
Any project for social and economic equality in Canada faces a challenge: our primary collective lever for change, the state, is a confusing and complicated machine of federal-provincial relationships. Most...
