Milton NDP Blog

High-income countries with national health care programs all provide coverage for prescription drugs . . . all except Canada.  It comes down to this, in Canada. People need to make choices. “Do I eat or do I pay for my meds?”. “Do I heat my home or do I get another oxygen tank?”. “Maybe I can take my heart pills every other day to make ends meet?”.  Trudeau has been promising pharmacare since he first ran for office. Non partisan groups like Pharmacare 2020 have also been calling for a plan. The NDP finally put his feet to the fire and brought forward Bill C213 last week. The bill would have started Canada on a path toward universal pharmacare. The bill was soundly defeated. Every Liberal but 3 voted against it. Instead of saying “Thanks for doing the legwork guys - lets get this going”, the Liberals are now calling it partisan grandstanding. The bill was carefully written by lawyers to make sure it worked like our existing medicare program but the Liberals are claiming other...

In 1919 an Excess Profits Tax accounted for a third of the revenue raised by Britain and raised almost as much as personal income taxes. Britain was in debt after WW1 and the EPD helped pay that debt. Today, many businesses and many more people have lost income but some companies such as online retailing and fast food delivery have been granted outsized profits. Post Covid recovery will require more revenue but taxes have to be fair. Will profit makers pay their share? We have had fifty years of tax cuts for the rich but study after study including one done by the London School of Economics have shown that “trickle down economics” is a myth. “Per capita gross domestic product and unemployment rates were nearly identical after five years in countries that slashed taxes on the rich and in those that didn't, the study found .” Canada is in for a new budget in a few weeks. Add your voice to the campaign for tax fairness . To make our tax system fairer and ensure that the wealthiest i...

This weekend the Globe and Mail featured a stunning front page and centre-piece featuring the lives of 100 of the 5,000 Canadians who died of Opioid-related overdoses in 2020. 100 solemn reminders that this crisis is not limited to cities or the homeless or under-educated but includes people just like you and me. It includes people who live in neighborhoods like your own, that have jobs like your own, that have spent as much time in school as you or I. It is heart-breaking to learn that people seeking treatment for their addiction can’t find a bed or a place in programs with severe shortages Since 2016 about 20,000 Canadians have been killed by Opioids. That’s roughly the same number lost to Covid19. We don’t know if we will catch Covid but we take measures to reduce the chances. The fact is, we don’t know if we will be confronted by Opioids. We don’t know that an accident won’t put us on the search for more powerful painkillers. We don’t know if a sudden change in our lives will lead ...

Social Media is pulling the plug on organizations that are racist. The government is labeling one of these organizations as terrorists. An MP is getting booted from caucus for taking donations from a white nationalist. It sounds like something is finally happening to thwart the threat of hate in Canada. But the problem goes back much further and is buried much deeper. Can a few noisome political gestures make a difference? In 1952 my immigrant parents were openly called DPs (derogatory for Displaced Person) and told they were “taking jobs away from Canadians.” In 2016 the United Nations Working Group of Experts on People of African Descent expressed serious concerns about systemic anti-Black racism in the criminal justice system in Canada. When residential schools were ordered closed in Manitoba the native students were integrated into regular schools where they had to stand, not sit, stand at the back of the classroom – all day – all year! Racism is a deep rooted problem in the world ...

Lately we have started hearing more about another acronym - CCUS, Carbon Capture, Utilization and Storage. Who is it for? It’s another proposed tax break for hard to decarbonize sectors, especially oil and gas. What is it for? Like SMR s it is for technologies that are expensive, still in early development, and largely unproven. Why is Ottawa listening? Because it gives politicians another out. Another way of wringing their hands and saying “We tried, we tried!” while keeping their fossil fuel buddies in the game for a few more quarters. A new federal budget is coming and many politicians would like to use CCUS in their upcoming stump speeches. They want an easy out while knowing full well that CCUS or SMR technologies are years and years down the road. When you listen to these speeches be sure to ask “Yes, but what are we going to do about climate change now?” Why aren’t we talking about conservation and green energy starting tomorrow? Not ten or twenty years down the road. The Ontari...