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By Greg Fingas, on May 14, 2013, at 9:48 am This and that for your Tuesday reading.
- Karl Nerenberg reports on the House Finance Committee’s hearings into income inequality in Canada, featuring a few familiar themes which we should hear far more often from our policy-makers: “I would make all tax credits refundable, including the current non-refundable ones,” Boadway recommended, and then went further, “I would condition many of them to income, the way we condition the GST credit. I would enhance disability tax credits and make them available to all provincial disability recipients.”
On tax breaks for upper income Canadians and corporations, Boadway prescribed tough medicine: “I (Read more…)
By Greg Fingas, on April 10, 2013, at 10:28 pm Not surprisingly, the social policy resolutions up for discussion this weekend include a wide range of issues – and I’ll avoid highlighting the resolutions dealing with either familiar topics of discussion like gun control, marijuana decriminalization/legalization and housing.
Instead, I’ll point out three resolutions which look to deserve particular attention: 3-39-13Resolution on the Impact of Economic, Social, and Environmental Factors on Individual Health Care Submitted by the Quebec SectionBE IT RESOLVED that the following clauses be added to Subsection 3.1(r) of the Policy Book:• Acknowledging that economic, social, and environmental factors impact individual, public, and community
. . . → Read More: Accidental Deliberations: #mtlqc13 Priority Resolutions – Social Policy
By Greg Fingas, on December 24, 2012, at 10:44 am Miscellaneous material for your Monday reading.
- Michael Harris asks why Stephen Harper is afraid to look Theresa Spence in the eye: (Harper) believes that the government’s lying about all these things is far less important than the fact that it is the government. Incumbency is a magic potion. Under its influence, people are supposed to swoon. All too often, they do. That’s the way oligarchs think. Richard Nixon put it in a nutshell when he famously said that if the president did it, then it wasn’t a crime.
Stephen Harper has arrived at the exalted position of Tricky Dick.
. . . → Read More: Accidental Deliberations: Monday Morning Links
By Greg Fingas, on October 1, 2012, at 11:39 am Ryan Meili started the 2009 Saskatchewan NDP leadership campaign at a distinct disadvantage against his opponents in terms of both time and name recognition. But he nonetheless came within just over five hundred votes of emerging as the party’s leader. For the 2013 campaign, Meili starts out as much more of a known quantity. But this doesn’t look to be the type of contest where the previous runner-up is anointed as a favourite. So will he end up doing as well in a radically different race?
Strengths
Once again, there’s plenty of upside to Meili’s candidacy. In the previous campaign,
. . . → Read More: Accidental Deliberations: Leadership 2013 Candidate Profile: Ryan Meili
By Greg Fingas, on September 27, 2012, at 11:05 pm It looks like the federal NDP is starting to highlight some of its priorities as an alternative government in order to better frame Canada’s political debate. And while its first offering on health care includes some relatively low-hanging fruit (it’s truly sad that “not gratuitously boosting drug costs by billions” makes for a genuine point of contrast rather than an obvious consensus view), a focus on the social determinants of health looks like a major step forward in tying the public’s concerns about health to broader social issues: What the federal government should do: Promote living conditions that support good
. . . → Read More: Accidental Deliberations: On healthy choices
By Greg Fingas, on August 17, 2012, at 11:28 am Assorted content to end your week.
- Andrew Jackson thoroughly demolishes the argument that after three decades of wage stagnation and soaring corporate profits, Canada’s economy somehow needs to see workers suffer even more: The reality is that the pay of most workers has stagnated in real terms over the past thirty years as the profit share of GDP has increased at the expense of wages, and as wages have become much more unequal with more and more of the total wage and salary bill going to the top 1% made up mainly of senior executives. As the OECD recently
. . . → Read More: Accidental Deliberations: Friday Morning Links
By Greg Fingas, on August 16, 2012, at 10:04 am Here, on how the Canadian Medical Association’s new focus on inequality and the social determinants of health may be nicely timed to shape Canada’s political future.
For further reading…- Some of the CMA’s history of advocating for increased privatization can be found here, here and here.- By way of comparison, more recent documents like the CMA’s principles for health-care transformation and its federal budget consultation submission (PDF) take a rather more productive position. And new president Anna Reid looks to be continuing that trend.- And as an added contrast, compare the issues voted on by
By Greg Fingas, on August 14, 2012, at 10:01 am This and that for your Tuesday reading.
- While a misleading “wealth equals health” headline seems to have been the main take-away from the CMA’s health polling, Iglika Ivanova frames the issue more accurately in pointing out that the non-wealth determinants of health are the areas where Canada has far more room for improvement: (L)ifestyle choices are a relatively small factor in shaping health outcomes, much less important than our living and working conditions. In fact, living and working conditions often constrain our choices to a very large extent. The health research is very clear (p. ix): “Chronic disease
. . . → Read More: Accidental Deliberations: Tuesday Morning Links
By Greg Fingas, on July 20, 2012, at 9:54 am Assorted content to end your week.
- Sid Ryan takes on the Harper/Hudak double-team effort to prevent workers from having any voice in our political direction: (T)here can be little doubt that what really offends Hudak is the fact that union members pool their resources to participate in municipal, provincial and federal elections. When voters pulled the rug out from under Hudak’s 2011 electoral campaign, he blamed Harris-weary union members for campaigning against him and running television ads to expose his agenda.
It is no coincidence that Hudak released his 20 page attack on basic workers’ rights immediately after an
. . . → Read More: Accidental Deliberations: Friday Morning Links
By Greg Fingas, on July 19, 2012, at 10:50 am This and that for your Thursday reading.
- Vaughn Palmer discusses the unfortunate gap between the outrages that may lead to a government being pushed out of power, and a new government’s ability to actually reverse what’s been done. Which, a propos of nothing, makes it rather important to push lame-duck incumbents to respect the democratic will of citizens rather than pushing through controversial plans without even the bare pretense of public consultation.
- I don’t have any problem with the idea of “hardheaded socialism” as a successful economic and political model, particularly as it fits the NDP’s
. . . → Read More: Accidental Deliberations: Thursday Morning Links
By Greg Fingas, on July 16, 2012, at 10:21 am Miscellaneous material to start your week.
- Lana Payne sees reason for hope in the sheer breadth of citizens who are protesting against the Harper Cons: Scientists. Doctors. Nuclear engineers. Academics. Researchers. Stephen Harper has a big problem.
He has ticked them all off. And they are not suffering their grievances or concerns for informed, fact-based public policy and decision-making, the environment, the health of Canada’s most vulnerable citizens and the safety of all of us in silence.
No. Instead they are protesting, marching, disrupting government news conferences. They are mobilizing.…(T)his is a prime minister and a government who
. . . → Read More: Accidental Deliberations: Monday Morning Links
By Greg Fingas, on June 1, 2012, at 11:06 am Assorted content to end your week.
- Since the Cons don’t seem to have much else in their quiver at the moment, I’m sure they’ll keep trying to pretend that it’s monstrous of Thomas Mulcair to suggest that all industries (including those in Alberta) pay the cost of their real environmental impact. But the sales pitch isn’t getting any easier when the people who meet Mulcair without a partisan agenda react like this: (L)ocal leaders and businesses have been more measured in replying to Mr. Mulcair than rival politicians, and avoided any inflammatory language after Thursday’s visit.
“In my
. . . → Read More: Accidental Deliberations: Friday Morning Links
By Greg Fingas, on May 31, 2012, at 9:51 am This and that for your Thursday reading.
- Thomas Walkom makes the point that the hysterical response from Brad Wall and others can’t mask the fact that Thomas Mulcair is right in his analysis of the effect of a high, resource-driven dollar: Mulcair’s solution is hardly radical. He argues that the petroleum industry currently does not have to cover the full environmental cost of extracting heavy oil. If it were forced to cover these costs, he says, oilsands development would slow and the dollar would come down.
An expert panel of the Royal Society of Canada came to much the
. . . → Read More: Accidental Deliberations: Thursday Morning Links
By Greg Fingas, on May 24, 2012, at 9:26 am Here, on how we know better in our personal lives than to think money is everything – and how we should expect public policy to follow the same principle.
For further reading, see my earlier posts on the subject. And the best-developed Canadian means of measuring is the Canadian Index of Wellbeing.
By Greg Fingas, on May 15, 2012, at 9:50 am This and that for your Tuesday reading.
- I’ll very much hope Chantal Hebert is wrong in her conclusion that Canadians are getting ever more doubtful as to whether change is possible through the ballot box. But one can’t much argue with her take on why that perception might be developing: In the national capital, a government elected with barely four in every 10 votes a year ago has since been going out of its way to disenfranchise the majority that did not support it.
Over the opening year of their majority mandate, Stephen Harper’s Conservatives have moved to discourage
. . . → Read More: Accidental Deliberations: Tuesday Morning Links
By Greg Fingas, on May 13, 2012, at 12:28 pm Assorted content for your Sunday reading.
- Joan Bryden reports on the Cons’ latest abuses of majority government power, this time in allocating and shuffling around the few opposition days already available in Parliament for their own purposes. But it’s worth noting the difference between the responses of the affected parties.
On the one hand, Marc Garneau’s answer falls into the familiar trap of hoping that the public will rally around the Libs’ sense of grievance at being mistreated by the Cons: Liberals say government House leader Peter Van Loan told his Liberal counterpart, Marc Garneau, that the less-than-optimal timing
. . . → Read More: Accidental Deliberations: Sunday Morning Links
By Greg Fingas, on May 12, 2012, at 5:20 pm In his conclusion to A Healthy Society, Ryan Meili sums up his overall message about how health can serve as the central theme for political organization, and notes that the message holds plenty of public appeal already (with further room to grow as people learn about the impact of policy on the broad definition of health): The core idea of this book is not just that health should guide our policy decisions; it should also be the language of our politics. Because people care about health, they are more likely to respond to political messages that reflect that concern.
. . . → Read More: Accidental Deliberations: A Healthy Society – Chapter 9 Discussion
By Greg Fingas, on May 10, 2012, at 11:13 am In chapter 8 of A Healthy Society, Ryan Meili discusses how to improve our democratic system, distinguishing between the participatory action research model which is helping to drive development work in Mozambique and the top-down structures and cynical views of the political system that have all too often been the norm in Canada. And Meili suggests that treating the public as having an ongoing interest in politics rather than being simply a source of votes every four years may benefit both our political system as a whole, and the parties who best address the public interest: From big picture issues
. . . → Read More: Accidental Deliberations: A Healthy Society – Chapter 8 Discussion
By Greg Fingas, on May 7, 2012, at 11:19 am Chapter 7 of Ryan Meili’s A Healthy Society focuses on health care – with a heavy emphasis on ideas such as improved rural access and a Crown pharmaceutical manufacturer which should sound familiar to those who have followed Meili’s previous political involvement. But I’ll highlight Meili’s link between health care and the general policy themes of redistribution and compassion: Medicare is an active and effective form of redistributing wealth. Those who have benefited most from our nation’s wealth, and who in general have the good health to show for it, contribute to improving the health of those who have not.
. . . → Read More: Accidental Deliberations: A Healthy Society – Chapter 7 Discussion
By Greg Fingas, on May 5, 2012, at 10:44 pm Chapter 5 of Ryan Meili’s A Healthy Society deals with our justice system. And once again while there’s little to dispute in Meili’s broader point, it’s worth noting just how much distance there is between Canada’s current governing philosophy, and anything which could possible be expected to produce healthy outcomes.
Here’s Meili: (Our prison system) is analogous to a medical system that is curative rather than preventive. The results are the same: more expense, less effect. The people who need help are met late in the progression of their illness, or their criminal behaviour, too late to make real change.
. . . → Read More: Accidental Deliberations: A Healthy Society – Chapter 5 Discussion
By Greg Fingas, on May 4, 2012, at 10:42 am In my discussion of Chapter 3 of Ryan Meili’s A Healthy Society, I mused that social housing might be an area where public-sector purchasing power could be put to its best possible use in securing better value than individuals can afford in a purely market-based system. And in his discussion of housing and environmental factors in Chapter 4, Meili expands on that possibility while explaining why private-sector development doesn’t meet some of our most important housing needs: In Canada, despite reports from all levels of government on the need for comprehensive housing strategies, these same governments have been backing
. . . → Read More: Accidental Deliberations: A Healthy Society – Chapter 4 Discussion
By Greg Fingas, on May 2, 2012, at 1:48 pm Chapter 3 of Ryan Meili’s A Healthy Society focuses on the effect of income – both in total and in distribution – as a determinant of health. But while there’s plenty of material deserving of further discussion, I’ll point to his comments on the place of taxation and government spending as particularly worth some additional analysis: One example of a toolbox approach to economic management, one that reaches for the proper tool at the proper time rather than a one-size-fits-all approach, is the proper use of taxation policy. Taxation levels that impede economic development are unwise. That much is apparent.
. . . → Read More: Accidental Deliberations: A Healthy Society – Chapter 3 Discussion
By Greg Fingas, on April 30, 2012, at 10:47 am Chapter 2 of Ryan Meili’s A Healthy Society discusses the place of politics as “medicine on a larger scale”. Meili looks for lessons in our political discussion based on how medical knowledge has advanced in the past few decades, and points out a new definition of success that looks to be entirely transferable to our expectations of government: One interesting result of this approach is that the definition of success has changed. We now talk about meaningful outcomes. When we know what is meaningful to patients and their families, we can know whether to move ahead with a difficult treatment,
. . . → Read More: Accidental Deliberations: A Healthy Society – Chapter 2 Discussion
By Greg Fingas, on April 29, 2012, at 1:45 pm Erin has already excerpted part of Ryan Meili’s new book, A Healthy Society. And I’ll be providing a brief chapter-by-chapter discussion of A Healthy Society in advance of its formal launch – beginning with this post discussing the book’s introduction and first chapter.
In his introduction, Roy Romanow addresses a familiar theme: the need for a better means of measuring social progress than GDP alone, with a reference to the Canadian Index of Wellbeing. And Ryan Meili’s first chapter introduces his own central organizing principle focusing on health (consisting of physical, mental and social well-being) – then informing what goes
. . . → Read More: Accidental Deliberations: A Healthy Society – Chapter 1 Discussion
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