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Currently viewing articles tagged with Privatization.
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Precarious Workers, Precarious Lives: Ontario’s Private Health Care Secret
With Ontario’s senior population projected to double in the next 16 years, senior care is big business and numerous companies are cashing in at the expense of both workers and clients.
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Wanted: Bright ideas for dark times
The far-Right capitalizes on the rage of a declining middle-class by offering “simplistic answers for exceedingly complex problems, and [developing] effective rhetorical strategies to motivate people to vote against their own long-term interests”; it appeals to “people’s sense of betrayal and victimization,” while avoiding “the real social and economic processes that left them vulnerable.”
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The Impact of Privatization on Women
Privatization is not gender-neutral. It threatens advances toward women’s equality in the labour market and in the home. In the labour market, privatization usually means lower wages for women workers, fewer workplace rights, reduced health and welfare benefits, no pension coverage, less predictable work hours, more precarious employment, a heavier workload and generally more exploitative working conditions.
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Privatizing Canada’s Public Universities
Perhaps the most obvious kind of privatization of the university is the growing reliance on individuals rather than the collective to finance university operations. As students are all too well aware, university tuition and other fees have been skyrocketing in recent years — as have student debts. Between 1990-91 and 2000-2001, tuition fees in Canada rose by 126 per cent, while average student debts rose from about $8,700 to $25,000. This is because students are paying a far larger share of the costs of postsecondary education, from an average of 17 per cent of operating costs in 1992 to 28 per cent of operating costs in 2002. As well, a growing number of university programs are slated to be, if they are not already, almost fully financed by students. Not long ago, for example, the University of Toronto announced its intention to increase its law school tuition to $25,000.
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Canada Needs a Real Public Health Care System
Many people like to think of Canada’s health care system as an example of “socialist” medicine. In reality, however, this label does not accurately reflect the true nature of the system.
Of course, it is certainly true that aspects of Canada’s health care system are publicly owned and/or publicly regulated. The public or social character of the health care system is most clearly seen in the principles of universality and distribution according to need (rather than according to wealth or social status). Not surprisingly, the principles of universality and needs-based distribution enjoy the broadest support amongst the Canadian people. They are what Canadians have indicated they are determined to fight to preserve.
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Health Care on the Mend?
Following hard negotiations at the government conference centre in Ottawa in September, representatives of the federal and provincial governments hammered out a new deal for health care. This new deal promises $18 billion in its first six years and $41 billion over ten, promising to create more homecare, shorter treatment waiting times and a national drug strategy. An additional feature of the accord is an escalator clause, which is due to take effect in 2006-07. This escalator clause aims to boost transfer payments to the provinces by six per cent annually to keep pace with the increasing costs of health care.
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The Americanization of CN
It is day 16 of the strike at Symington Yard, the Canadian National Railway’s main hump yard in Winnipeg. The workers have been on strike since February 20. Since a deal has by now been reached, the question is why CN rail workers from Winnipeg to Montréal felt it was time to send a message to CN’s corporate headquarters.
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