Budget 2010, too little for too many

Public service freeze, cuts to corporate taxes, cities left to fend for themselves.

by John Baglow

"Recalibration?"

There were no signs of it in the Throne Speech, and none in the hundreds of pages of budget documentation yesterday. As one observer said during the lockup, "a lot of this is last year." 2010 is, after all, Year 2 of the Harper government's Economic Action Plan. "Same old, same old," says James Turk of the Canadian Association of University Teachers. "A stand–pat budget," says the YWCA's Ann Decter. "84 days to craft a budget that looks just like 2009," says Canadian Union of Public Employees President Paul Moist.

Indeed Budget 2010, it must be said, is hardly a strategic document. Moist finds in it no semblance of an industrial or job strategy. The $125 billion dollar deficit faced by our cities is nowhere addressed. Instead, much like last year, there is blind faith in the private sector to lead us into full economic recovery, considerable corporate and personal tax cuts to offset stimulus spending, and a starry–eyed projection that the current deficit will be eliminated by 2015. ...

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Posted: March 04, 2010

Public sector spending is essential to our economy

by Larry Brown

Far too many people see the economy as two separate and enclosed containers, one called the private sector and one called the public sector. In that view, if money is moved from the private sector into the public sector, it supposedly disappears forever into this enclosed container, never to be seen again, lost to the private sector forever. ...

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Candidate Smitherman would privatize garbage, TTC

by James Laxer

You learn a lot about a candidate for public office when he or she first stakes out a position on a key issue.

In this case, the candidate is George Smitherman, who recently left the Ontario Liberal cabinet, to run for mayor of Toronto. In an in–depth interview with the Toronto Star, Smitherman mused that he would consider privatizing garbage pick–up in Toronto and the privatization of some of the city's public transit lines. ...

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Budget called short–sighted, lacking vision

After a prorogued Parliament, many were disappointed about what they say is a lack of innovation and vision in the recent budget. And many were also not impressed with a throne speech in Ontario that seemed to re–announce former promises.

Some of the areas of concern in the federal budget include aboriginal peoples, climate change and the environment, early learning and child care, employment insurance, health care, municipal infrastructure, non–profit community social services, pensions, post–secondary education, privatization, water, and women. Spending was either lessened, stayed the same or increased very little on many programs. ...

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Victoria looking to privatize sewage services against industry advice

The game is far from over on Vancouver Island in the fight against the privatization of sewage services for the city of Victoria. After a meeting scheduled to coincide with the Canadian women's gold medal games that nonetheless filled the room with concerned citizens, another meeting on March 10 filled the room again with a broad cross-section of people. Citizens from 26–year–old Craig Ashburne talking about how, growing up in Hamilton, private sewage was a disaster to Raging Granny Fran Thornburn expressing concern that private sewage will lead to privatization of water. ...

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NEW: Looming pension crisis needs attention now

With only about one–third of working Canadians with a pension plan, it is time to address our looming pension crisis, says the head of the Canadian Union of Public Employees (CUPE).

"We are experiencing a national pension crisis," CUPE National President Paul Moist told a crowd over breakfast in Saskatoon last week. Over 200 members had gathered in the city for CUPE Saskatchewan's division convention. ...

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