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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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Rebuild Public Hospitals and Long-Term Care
Canadian PoliticsAfter touring Ontario in recent weeks, Ontario Health Coalition spokeswoman Natalie Mehra returned to Toronto on 16 May 2018 at a press conference outside the Emergency Department at Mount Sinai Hospital to talk about the crisis in access to healthcare. Noting that the Coalition’s mandate is to protect public healthcare in the public interest, she said that the group has chosen its words carefully and has not used the word “crisis” since the 1990s.
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Why Canada’s overdose crisis is getting worse
Canadian PoliticsEven as dozens of supervised injection sites open across the country, there are still massive holes in Canada’s drugs policy. It’s not enough to simply expand a medical system that sees and treats people who use drug as criminals. Instead of making it harder to get drugs, we need to make it easier — and cleaner and safer. The opioid overdose crisis in Canada is getting worse. Based on preliminary data, there were more than 4,000 opioid-related deaths across the country in 2017. In 2016, there were 2,861.
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New bill will give ultra-secret spy agency extensive powers
Canadian PoliticsBill C-59 would authorize the Communications Security Establishment to carry out offensive operations “to degrade, disrupt, influence, respond to or interfere with the capabilities, intentions or activities” of foreign actors. In effect, the Department of National Defence-run intelligence agency could seek to take a government offline, shutter a power plant, knock a drone out of the sky, or interfere in court proceedings and elections in countries Ottawa doesn’t deem “democratic.”
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NDP falls far short of needed leap to the left
Canadian PoliticsCanadians hoping to see bold ideas and a more radical orientation emerge from the federal New Democrats’ February convention in Ottawa are surely feeling disappointed. Four months after Jagmeet Singh’s fi rst ballot victory, a party still struggling to regain its balance following electoral demolition in 2015 again failed to capitalize on a historic opportunity to distance itself from and challenge the Liberals with a transformative left-wing vision.
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We’re all getting played by Kinder Morgan
Canadian PoliticsIt is entirely possible that Kinder Morgan has already decided to cut its losses and walk away from the Trans Mountain Pipeline Expansion (TMX) – and not for the reasons they are telling their shareholders or the public. It may well be that the May 31 deadline is merely for show, and the Texas-based corporation has already determined the project is not feasible both for economic reasons and due to profound Indigenous and popular opposition.
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Canada Moving to Exempt Majority of New Oilsands Projects From Federal Assessments
Canadian Politics“I would argue that the federal government has the constitutional power to deal with greenhouse gas emissions and they need to show some leadership if they’re going to purport to be acting in a way that’s consistent with their obligations under the Paris Agreement,” she said. “They need to exercise that jurisdiction to make sure that over the long term Canada’s greenhouse gases are not increasing but are decreasing and eventually reaching carbon neutrality.”
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Proposals to Reinvigorate the NDP Platform
Canadian PoliticsWhy can’t the present NDP have the intelligence and courage to explore more earnestly democratic socialism? Since it can no longer pretend to be the government-in-waiting, the NDP must rethink its role in parliament and indeed in the country. In the course of its soul-searching the NDP should acknowledge the fact that during the 2015 election it lost support from the public largely because of the failure of the party to present bold, progressive ideas.
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Trudeau on the wrong side of environmental history in B.C.
Canadian PoliticsMeanwhile, Justin Trudeau is in court against First Nations to oppose their efforts to stop Kinder Morgan. He didn’t await the legal outcome before allowing work to begin on the expanded pipeline — or to start arresting people. Perhaps that’s because the prime minister is also on record declaring that Canada’s Indigenous peoples do not have a “veto” on resource projects in this country. At least that’s what he’s saying now.
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Ontario NDP has no answers for Toronto’s homeless death crisis
Canadian PoliticsThere’s no reason why this needs to be viewed as a crisis only for the currently poor, either. The economic shifts and the effects of austerity described by research coalition Homeless Hub, affect all working people in Toronto. In Globalization, Precarious Work and the Food Bank, Lightman, Mitchell and Herd write that with the onset of grinding austerity brought about by the Common Sense Revolution in 1995 , the number of food bank users in Toronto jumped from 115,000 to 170,000.
