Category: Economy
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The Ontario Budget: Hard Times Ahead
To ease future cuts, the government established a budgeting system this year which would see much of the COVID-related funding budgeted under special funds distinct from the normal ministries. So much of the increased funding for the Ministry of Health or Ministry of Long-Term Care (LTC) is not reflected in their line items but instead … Keep reading »
Ontario 2020 Budget
“We are here at a critical time; not just for Ontario but for the whole country. And during this difficult time, my government’s top priority is the health and well-being of all Ontarians. Moments of urgency require us to put aside our differences, have each other’s backs, stick together as a country, and reassure the … Keep reading »
Pension Fund Capitalism and the Campaign to “Make Revera Public”
The COVID-19 pandemic has exposed some of the damage wreaked by neoliberalism to a harsh new light. The erosion of workers’ rights to basic safety and livable wages, the particular exploitation of women, racialized and migrant workers in our healthcare system, and the destructive effects of for-profit corporate management of long-term care, have all combined … Watch video »
Boeing: A New Report, An Old Story
Item 1. A major tobacco company had to deal with regulators in the Czech Republic. The regulators were demanding that rather alarming health hazard signs be put on cigarette packs. The tobacco company argued that, really, tobacco was not that dangerous but, even if it did kill people, it would be wise for the government … Keep reading »
Lessons from the Gig Economy for Transforming Public Services
Even before the arrival of the coronavirus pandemic, major upheavals were taking place in the UK labour market. Between 2016 and 2019, the number of people working for online platforms such as Deliveroo and TaskRabbit doubled from 4.7% of the adult population to 9.6% – the equivalent of 5.5 million people. Lockdown caused these trends … Keep reading »
Pension Fund Capitalism and the COVID-19 Pandemic: The Case of Revera
Of the many crises provoked by the COVID-19 pandemic across Canada, the dire situation in long-term care facilities and retirement housing may be the most widely and urgently recognized. Even Ontario Premier Doug Ford, whose own party engineered the significant shift to more privatized and ‘marketized’ long-term care (LTC) provision in the 1990s, recently declared … Keep reading »
Political Openings: Class Struggle During and After the Pandemic
For some on the left, the economic breakthrough brought on by the pandemic was the general consensus, not least among economists, for an astonishing increase in fiscal spending. Relative to the economy’s size, the stimulus introduced so far in the US is already double (in Canada triple) what it was during the 2008-09 crisis, with … Keep reading »
Crisis and Virus: COVID-19 in Context
“Toward the end of the twentieth century a sickness struck the world. Not everyone died, but all suffered from it” — Samir Amin (2003, 7). It has been over forty years since Thatcher and monetarism, thirty years since the Canada-US Free trade agreement came into effect, and twenty years since the launch of the Euro. … Keep reading »
An Economic Recovery for Whom?
The Ford Omnibus Bill and Post-Pandemic Politics In the first week of July, the Ontario government announced the COVID-19 Economic Recovery Act (Bill 197). The sweeping omnibus bill changes twenty pieces of existing legislation and introduces several new acts. There has been little discussion in the mainstream media regarding the content of the bill, outside of … Keep reading »
The Fiscal Deficit, Modern Monetary Theory and Progressive Economic Policy
Modern Monetary Theory or MMT has crept in from the academic margins to become an influential doctrine in progressive policy circles in the United States. Both Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders drew on the ideas of MMT to shape their ambitious public spending platforms. MMT has been cited as one way to fund a Green … Keep reading »
Agenda for the Global South After COVID-19
In 1974, the United Nations General Assembly passed a New International Economic Order (NIEO), which was driven by the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM). The resolution laid out a clear plan for the structural transformation of the world system, which was in the throes of a crisis at the time. However, the NIEO was set aside and … Keep reading »
COVID-19: A View from the Great Depression of the 1930s
The Great Depression. It rests in our collective consciousness as a time when unemployment was rampant, when soup kitchen and bread lines were long, when misery was widespread, when dust was everywhere. In our imaginations, the Depression had a light at the end of its dark tunnel, too. In that story, the onset of the … Keep reading »