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Putting Public Ownership Back on the Table
Canadian BusinessIf we are to build a just society, we require a just economy. And while that must include better social programs financed through redistributive taxation, the democratic socialist project is not encompassed by social programs alone; it must concern itself with the democratization of the economy. And while this shouldn’t be done solely through state ownership—worker, community, and consumer cooperatives all being viable mechanisms here—public control will nonetheless be a central plank.
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Bill C-27 pension reform: an unprecedented attack on all
Canadian BusinessOn October 19, 2016, federal Finance Minister Bill Morneau tabled Bill C-27, taking aim at the Pensions Benefits Standards Act governing pension plans in workplaces under federal jurisdiction: crown corporations, air and rail transportation, telecommunications and banks. The proposed new legislation allows employers under federal jurisdiction to convert defined-benefit pension plans to target-benefit plans, which essentially means dumping safe pension plans for risky ones.
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Canada’s Five Giant Banks Ought to Be Nationalized, Not Bailed Out
Canadian BusinessCanada’s banking system is on the edge of a crisis, once again, with a collective debt of $1.8 trillion — and the public will be on the hook for most of it, sooner than most think. Last week, the Bank for International Settlements said Canada, Hong Kong and China’s banking systems are the world’s most at-risk of a severe crisis. BIS joins the IMF, Moody’s and S&P Global Ratings in warning record-high consumer debt could tank Canada’s “five giants,” in the case of a downturn.
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The Bank of Canada Should Be Reinstated To Its Original Mandated Purposes
Canadian BusinessIf properly and fully pursued it could be of great help in getting support from the electorate. As it stands, it seems that the international banking cabal appears to have such a grip on Canada’s current capitalist government that it has refused to act in Canada’s best interests. As in the case of getting Medicare enacted in Canada, it may be up to a social democratic party to eventually get the Bank of Canada reinstated as the country’s bank.
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The Canada Infrastructure Bank and the perversities of predatory capital
Canadian BusinessWhile it might have a friendlier face, there isn’t much difference between the probable consequences of this infrastructure bank and the mass privatization of public infrastructure planned by President Trump’s administration and similar initiatives carried out in other countries. It is important to resist each privatization proposal and expose each project for who it will benefit and who it will hurt,
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Canada’s ongoing complicity with exploitive extraction schemes
Canadian BusinessOne hundred and seventy-six years on, the Canadian state today remains more committed to — and dependent upon — the mining business than any other government in the world. Three-quarters of the world’s mining companies today are headquartered in Canada. The bulk of this investment comes from outside of Canada, while the majority of the production it finances also occurs abroad.
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For the 150th, let’s also re-make our economic myths
Canadian BusinessEvery society needs its myths. But as much as myths and stories can empower, they can also be damaging. Here are three economic myths about Canada that could use re-writing. The first economic myth to remake is that we are “hewers of wood and drawers of water” — or, in more contemporary terms, extractors of some of the dirtiest fossil fuels known to humankind.
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Where One Canadian Mining Company Goes, Violence Follows
Canadian BusinessCanadians have heard almost nothing from the dominant media about Banro’s violent quest for billions of dollars in minerals. The little that has been reported is mostly the company justifying its operations. But where are the voices of ordinary Congolese? Don’t they deserve to be heard? Canadians need to know what this country’s mining companies are doing around the world.
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Corrupt Canadian Banking Practices
Canadian BusinessCIBC is not only the Canadian bank with operations in a Caribbean financial haven. In fact, Canadian institutions dominate the region’s unsavoury banking sector. In 2013 CIBC, RBC and Scotiabank accounted for more than 60 percent of regional banking assets. In 2008 The Economist reported Canadian banks controlled “the English-speaking Caribbean’s three largest banks, with $42 billion in assets, four times those commanded by its forty-odd remaining locally owned banks.”
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Toronto’s Buried History: The Dark Story of How Mining Built a City
Canadian BusinessToronto is a city built on mining. Nearly 75% of mining companies globally are headquartered in Canada and almost 60% are listed on the Toronto Stock Exchange (TSX). In 2015, more than half of all capital investment in the mining business travelled through the exchange. In fact, few, if any, other capital markets around the world are as specialised in a single industry as Toronto is in mining.
