Starve the Beast

 In a recent letter from the Ontario office of CCPA I learned a new term for, what to me, is an old idea. Starve the beast is a term used to describe how conservative governments reduce spending on social services by first cutting taxes. The idea is to starve the public purse so that less money is available for spending. Randy Robinson from CCPA figures that tax cuts, fee reductions and poorly done tax credits have reduced the Ontario purse by some $7.5 billion in 2022 alone. It's what Conservatives do. They create a crisis and then ram through their solution - privatization.



We can see the desired outcome start to bloom in the healthcare sector where the "innovation" is to privatize healthcare options. Of course, the math doesn't add up. If $100 buys me $100 of socialized healthcare and I give that $100 to a private enterprise then, of course, the shareholders are going to take their $10 or $15 and leave me with $85 of healthcare. They say that private companies can bring efficiencies. That means they think I can get more than $100 of healthcare for $85? The efficiencies they expect is from labour. Staff can work harder for less pay. Staff in the public sector are already overworked and underpaid. I don't know about you but I know how I would feel about getting needed surgery from people even more overworked and underpaid.

But if I am well to do then, of course, I'll just top up that $100 for some decently paid staff. Easy!

We're headed down the same road in education. Teachers will want more than 1% this fall but Ford will show his empty pockets and cry "I have no more to give." Work-to-rule? Strike? Just creates another crisis for the Conservatives to start talking privatization again. We will end up going down the same road as other jurisdictions where, if you've got the money, your kid can get the right education to get into the right schools and become a global player. Otherwise they get an overcrowded, drafty, low tech classrooms headed by overworked staff.

This is how Ford plans to "get it done."

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Lets end the surgery backlog

Image
  The number of hospital beds in Ontario remained unchanged for the last 20 years (through Liberal and Conservative governments) but Ontario’s population grew by 3 million. Now Ford plans to cut the extra beds put in place for the Pandemic despite Ontario Hospital Association recommendations to keep them. A million Ontario residents are waiting for surgery but Ford is only addressing the delays that exceed medical guidelines! So if you are waiting for surgery the government isn’t going to do a thing about it until your situation becomes critical. Here are the OHA Recommendations for budget 2022. For the 2022-23 fiscal year, annual year-over-year base operating pressure:  3.5% ($735 million)  Dedicated funding to reduce the massive backlog of procedures and services.  Continued reimbursement for COVID-related expenses and lost revenues   2022/23 to be a “learning year” to determine which of the COVID-related expenses and lost revenues plus inflationary cost...
Read more

Tax Avoidance

Image
65 years ago Canadian corporations collectively paid about the same amount of tax as private Canadians. Today private citizens collectively pay 3 times as much as Canadian corporations. “In an average year, the 102 biggest companies in Canada pay $10.5 billion less than they would if they paid tax at the official corporate tax rate.” - Toronto Star. But when Revenue Canada tries to recoup 4.4 billion due to offshore tax evasion they can expect to get, maybe half. - National Post Groups like Taxfairness have plenty of straight forward ideas to turn this around. Like a financial activities tax: “Canada’s biggest banks and insurance companies remained profitable through the financial crisis and topped the list of large corporations making higher profits than usual during the pandemic. A Financial Activities Tax could also help cool the over-heating asset market, including housing. Such a tax, as proposed by the IMF, would generate at least $7 billion annually.” The problem is not uniqu...
Read more

UNDRIP

This weekend the Globe and Mail reported that several provincial governments want more time to examine the legislation that would apply the principles of UNDRIP (the UN Declaration of the Rights of Indigenous Peoples). With this bill in place UNDRIP principles would interpret existing laws while helping to shape any future law making. The legislation is built on NDP MP Romeo Sagansh’s private members bill that passed third reading then died when the 2019 election was called. The list of detractors, Ontario, Manitoba, Alberta etc. reads like a list of Conservative Provincial governments in Canada. They want more time for discussions with their “ industry stakeholders and Indigenous communities.” Notice how they put “industry stakeholders” before “Indigenous Peoples”? Of course PC governments want more time to figure out how to prevent a bill that might endanger their unfettered access to natural resources on treaty lands. Their “industry partners” might actually have to pay mineral a...
Read more