Publications, web sites, videos of interest

  • 2009 Ontario Budget Published March 26, 2009.
  • Ontario Economic Outlook and Fiscal Review 2009 Published October 22, 2009, this document from the Ministry of Finance provides updated forecasts for the Ontario economy and provincial finances.
  • What’s the best way to kick-start a flagging economy? Put money in the pockets of low-income people who will spend it, says the prestigious Brookings Institution. As an economy-booster, increasing Employment Insurance is five times more cost-effective that corporate tax cuts, according to the Brookings analysis.
  • Corporate tax cuts provide little economic stimulus. Moody’s Economy, a leading U.S. economic forecaster, says in this report
  • Creating the good, green jobs of the future. Blue Green Canada is an alliance between Environmental Defence and the United Steelworkers. For examples and information about the green jobs of the future . The U.S. wing of the Alliance also has a web site with many more green jobs ideas.
  • The no-money-down green jobs plan. At the top of Scientific American’s list of “20 World Changing Ideas,” Property Assessed Clean Energy is sweeping across the United States as a way to help homes and businesses generate their own energy and reduce greenhouse gas emissions at the same time – at no upfront cost. Summarized here by the Toronto Star’s Tyler Hamilton. More details are available from the City of Berkeley , California, where the idea started, and from the U.S. government.
  • Corporate tax cuts would hurt Canada: Erin Weir, economist for the United Steelworkers, explains how corporate tax cuts in Canada don’t reduce taxes for U.S. corporations operating in Canada – they just transfer those tax dollars to the U.S. federal treasury. Read his National Post article and the full report
  • How are Canada’s top CEOs handling the recession? Just fine, thanks. The average 2008 income for Canada’s top 100 CEOs was $7.3 million in 2008. That’s 174 times more than the average Canadian. Read A Soft Landing: Recession and Canada’s 100 Highest Paid CEOs by Hugh Mackenzie of the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives.
  • Rich get richer, poor get poorer: “Between 1980 and 2005, median earnings among the top 20% of full-time full-year earners increased by 16.4%,” according to a Statistics Canada report from the 2006 Census. “In contrast, median earnings among those in the bottom one-fifth of the distribution fell 20.6%. Median earnings among those in the middle 20% stagnated, increasing by only 0.1%.”
  • Profits up, wages down: “If Canadian workers had earned real wages that rose in proportion to their productivity increases between 1991 and 2005, their incomes would have been $200 higher each week in 2005 (in 2005 dollars),” says this report by Ellen Russell and Mathieu Dufour. “Canadians who work full-time for a full year could have been receiving at least $10,000 more in average real pay in 2005.”
  • The average family raising children is working 200 hours more per year than they were a decade ago, explains economist Armine Yalnizyan in this speech to the Walter Gordon Massey Symposium last year.
  • Child poverty in Ontario. Even before the recession, 11.7 per cent of Ontario children lived in poverty, according to the 2009 Report Card on Child and Family Poverty in Ontario from Campaign 2000.
  • Canada’s growing gap explained. The income gap between the rich and the rest keeps growing, in good times and in bad. Learn more about it in this video from www.GrowingGap.ca .
  • Same job, lower pay: The web site at www.equalpay.ca looks at the problem of part-time, temporary, and temp agency workers who are paid less hour than full-time permanent co-workers doing exactly the same job. Includes polling data, facts from the European Union’s approach to the problem, and other research.
  • The Next Economy. “People see the economy from the ground up,” says this report on a 2009 cross-country consultation organized by the National Union of Public and General Employees.
  • Are wages higher in the public sector than in the private sector? If so, why? Find out in An examination of the Public Sector Wage Premium in Canada by David Macdonald.
  • Where does Ontario rank in school funding? Find out in No Time for Complacency: Education Funding Reality Check by Hugh Mackenzie.
  • Asset sales? No thanks. Click here to watch United Steelworkers economist Erin Weir debates privatization of the LCBO and other public entities on BNN.
  • Is budget-slashing the way to cut deficits? This case study by CAW economist Jim Stanford looks at the impact of program cuts on the nation’s books when Paul Martin balanced the federal budget back in the 1990s.
  • How are Canadians Really Doing? “Nearly 15 per cent of food bank users in Canada get all their income from work and still aren’t able to care for and feed their family,” says this report from the Institute of Wellbeing , a research institute founded by the Honourable Roy Romanow.
  • Rich people who want higher taxes? Responsible Wealth, a project of United for a Fair Economy, is a network of over 700 business leaders and wealthy individuals in the top 5 per cent of wealth and/or income in the United States who use their surprising voice to advocate for fair taxes and corporate accountability.
  • Child care funding isn’t charity, it’s an economic necessity to create and maintain thousands of direct and indirect jobs, as detailed in this new report from the Centre for Spatial Economics: Early Learning Impact, Analysis of Subsidy Removal.  The Ontario Coalition  for Better Childcare provides more detail and context on how this vital issue impacts working families and our communities in their pre-budget submission.

Organisations

  • Good Jobs for All is an alliance of more than 40 community, labour, social justice, youth, and environmental organizations in the Toronto region. It was formed in 2008 to start a focused dialogue on how to improve living and working conditions in Canada’s largest urban centre. See also the Good Jobs Declaration.
  • The Workers’ Action Centre is Ontario’s leading advocate for the rights of low-wage workers and those struggling to make ends meet on part-time, temporary, and temporary agency jobs.
  • Campaign 2000 is a cross-Canada public education movement to build Canadian awareness and support for the 1989 all-party House of Commons resolution to end child poverty in Canada by the year 2000.
  • The 25 in 5 Network for Poverty Reduction is a multi-sectoral network of more than 100 provincial and community organizations and people working to eliminate poverty in Ontario. The network’s immediate goal is to reduce poverty in Ontario by 25 per cent in five years and 50 per cent in 10 years.
  • The Equal Pay Coalition was formed in 1976 to seek the implementation of equal pay for women for work of equal value both through legislation and collective bargaining. The Coalition has over 39 constituent and partner groups.
  • The Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives is an independent, non-partisan research institute concerned with issues of social and economic justice.
  • The Progressive Economics Forum is an online meeting place for 125 Canadian thinkers who provide economic and political perspectives not seen on CNN.
  • The Canadian Federation of Students (Ontario) represents more than 300,000 students at Ontario post-secondary institutions. The CFS works for affordable education and against youth unemployment and poverty.
  • that permanent corporate income tax cuts provide 30 cents of economic benefit for every dollar spent, while infrastructure spending provides $1.59 for every dollar spent.

Labour and Community Organisations