Rather than scapegoating the CAW for a crisis it did not cause, the federal government should focus its efforts on combating the pressures of wage-driven deflation, maintaining income and employment, and using public dollars to buy transformation of the auto industry away from gas-guzzlers to the low emission vehicles of the future. Industrial policies like this have been an important part of the development of the auto industry and are needed once again.
January 29, 2009 02:49 PM
How well did the budget deliver on these three key areas of concern?
Little for jobless, families, elder care or students
Instead, the new budget confirms that equalization improvements already announced will be limited to the growth rate of the economy, meaning that struggling provinces will receive $7 billion less from the federal government than they had been counting on over the next two years. The budget also contained next to nothing to help the unemployed, families struggling with the rising costs of child care and elder care, students with rising debt loads, and seniors struggling with reduced retirement savings.
“Extending Employment Insurance (EI) benefits by five weeks is not nearly enough to help unemployed Canadians,” Clancy says.
“Improving access to EI and increasing benefits would have been far more helpful when it comes to putting money in the hands of those who need it most. But the budget does nothing to address our flawed system, where only 40% of workers qualify for what are now poverty-level benefits."
“Most Canadians were expecting new investments in our social infrastructure but this budget invests nothing in child care, elder care, mental health, post-secondary education or community-based social services,” he adds.
"Furthermore, the budget does nothing to improve public pensions for seniors and nothing to shore up workplace pension plans.”
For the first time in nine years, Genome Canada, a
non-profit non-governmental funding organization, was not mentioned in
the federal budget and saw its annual cash injection from Ottawa -
$140-million last year - disappear.
He didn't even have the
guts or the decency to ask for changes to Employment Insurance, so many
more Canadians could be eligible for benefits, instead of being driven
into poverty and misery. Now there are two Conservative Parties in Canada: Harper's LibCons, and Ignatieff's ConLibs.
Meanwhile, Jack Layton has become the real leader of the opposition. He showed courage when he reached out to the Liberals to form a progressive coalition that could provide Canadians with the leadership they need to cope with the economic crisis. He tried the option of working with the Liberals. Michael Ignatieff has walked away from that option. Layton has retained his integrity and his clear understanding of what the country needs. Progressives now have one party and one party only available to them: the NDP.
LESS HELP FOR THOSE THAT NEED IT THE MOST: The driveways and decks tax credit is up to three times bigger than the entire investment set aside for lower-income Canadians who are suffering the most. An even bigger concern – virtually the entire $2 billion in affordable housing investments will have to be cost-shared with the provinces and territories following negotiations.
It spews money in every direction to try to buy votes. It depends too much on shared funding from cash-strapped municipalities, its tax cuts are peanuts that will cost us dearly later on. It does almost nothing to encourage a greener economy. And it continues this foul Con government's war on Canadian women, with nothing for childcare spaces, and an assault on pay equity.
But its most catastrophic
omission is that it it fails to adequately reform the Employment
Insurance system and prepare it to cope with the enormous tide of human
misery that could be coming its way. Because as I pointed out yesterday
EI in Canada these days is completely inadequate.
Cuts
in the early 1990s mean barely half of the country's unemployed today –
and fewer than a quarter in Toronto – are eligible for benefits. Those
lucky enough to qualify often get far less than poverty-level incomes.
And for almost everyone scrambling to find work as the economy
crumbles, benefits run out too soon.
And
if more people don't become eligible, and benefits are increased,
millions of Canadians could be forced into lives of grinding poverty,
welfare rolls could swell, and our whole safety net could collapse.
But its most catastrophic omission is that it it fails to adequately reform the Employment Insurance system and prepare it to cope with the enormous tide of human misery that could be coming its way. Because as I pointed out yesterday EI in Canada these days is completely inadequate.
Cuts in the early 1990s mean barely half of the country's unemployed today – and fewer than a quarter in Toronto – are eligible for benefits. Those lucky enough to qualify often get far less than poverty-level incomes. And for almost everyone scrambling to find work as the economy crumbles, benefits run out too soon.
And if more people don't become eligible, and benefits are increased, millions of Canadians could be forced into lives of grinding poverty, welfare rolls could swell, and our whole safety net could collapse.
Depending on how you interpret the budget, the government is committing itself to direct new spending of about $10 billion to $12 billion, on infrastructure and housing, over the next two years. Some of this depends on matching provincial and municipal funds, which may never materialize. Much of it depends on how much the government actually spends, a crucial matter since the Harper government has left most of the previous infrastructure money it promised in earlier budgets unspent. At most, the new direct spending by the government amounts to about $6 billion a year.
These numbers may sound big. In fact, they are puny. The Canadian Gross Domestic Product totals about $1.5 trillion a year. Six billion dollars a year amounts to just over one half of one per cent of our country’s GDP. Economic announcements and forecasts tell us that Canada is on track to lose hundreds of thousands of jobs over the next six months. The Conservative government’s planned spending would create, at most, about sixty thousand short-term jobs.
The various tax measures in the budget will be equally ineffectual in stimulating the economy.
"With listeria, which killed a few-fold more people than Walkerton, we don't have one. It's no exaggeration to say that the Harper government has done less than any government in recent Canadian history to seek to understand what went wrong when Canadian citizens died. And it has sought to do less just because it knows it's culpable.
When the press colludes with the PMO to spread disinformation, even unwittingly, is there any wonder why the people of Canada are so ignorant of the democratic process?
Look, I know that Goebbels is said to have once famously (and
perceptively) quipped that if you “repeat a lie a thousand times it
becomes truth”; but one would hope that our nation’s elite would have
higher standards with regards to whom they are channeling their PR
strategy through.
The Harper conservatives deregulated our mortgage insurance, and created a Canadian subprime mortgage crisis that should start to hit our economy in about six months and they are lying about.
The economy is going to get worse than both Harper and Flaherty have forecasted and it would appear our government's finances could be in worse shape than they have reported hinted (since they have to date avoided and discussion or disclosure in parliament).
Regardless of the plan presented in January the Coalition needs to replace this government, we can no longer afford their ideological incompetence or believe a word they are saying.
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