Ontario Office

A new report from the CCPA’s Education Project tracks the affordability of university education across Canadian provinces. The study looks at trends in tuition and compulsory fees in Canada since 1990, projects fees for each province for the next four years, and examines the impact on affordability for median- and low-income families using a Cost of Learning Index.

Since 1990, with very few exceptions, the tuition fee burden across the country has been increasing faster than incomes, and the average tuition and compulsory fees for Canadian undergraduate students will continue to rise by an estimated 17.7% by 2015-2016.

Read the full report, Eduflation and the High Cost of Learning, to find out which provincial governments are ensuring university education is more affordable for median and low-income families, and which governments are telling students to take a hike.

Check out our Take a Hike! infographic (click to enlarge):

The Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives-Ontario presents
the 2012 David Lewis Lecture

Generation Now: Four emerging voices on the
Canadian political landscape

Brigette dePape, writer and activist also known as the “rogue page” who stood in protest in the Canadian Senate chambers

Ben Powless, Mohawk citizen from Six Nations, co-founder of the Canadian Youth Climate Coalition and organizer with Defenders of the Land

Jamie Biggar, founding executive director of Leadnow.ca who coordinates national campaigns designed to get more Canadians engaged in their own democracy

Emma Pullman, freelance writer, campaigner with sumofus.org and research director with Leadnow.ca

They’re actively engaged in the biggest challenges of our time. Find out what they think about Canada’s future.

Thursday October 4, 2012
Doors open: 6:30 pm, lecture starts: 7:30 pm
Wine and cheese social: 9:00 pm
Trinity St. Paul’s Centre, 427 Bloor Street West, Toronto (map)

Lecture only: $40 lower level seating; $20 upper level seating

CCPA Fundraising wine and cheese social, includes a free drink and a chance to meet the guest speakers (limited tickets available): $40

Online ticket sales are now closed, however tickets are still available for purchase at the door or in-person at the Toronto Women's Bookstore, 73 Harbord Street Toronto, 416-922-8744.

For more information about this event, please contact CCPA-Ontario Director Trish Hennessy at 416-525-4927 or by email at ccpaon@policyalternatives.ca.

A Living Wage in Ontario: Why It Matters
October 11th & 12th, 2012
Cara Commons, Ted Rogers School of Management, Ryerson University
7^th Floor, 55 Dundas Street W., Toronto

• Thursday, October 11th, 7:00 pm - Evening keynote address

The History and Potential of the Living Wage Movement: The B.C. Experience, featuring Seth Klein, Director of the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives–BC.

• Friday, October 12th, 8:30-4:30 pm - Full-day workshop

What does it take to make a living wage?
What role can governments play in ensuring a living wage?
How can businesses get engaged in the goal of paying a living wage?
What can we learn from Canadian experiences with living wage campaigns?

The workshop will draw on real-life examples of living wage successes and it will provide space for participants to consider what a living wage could mean in the context of reducing income inequality in Ontario.

Guest speakers include:

Hugh Mackenzie and Jim Stanford, Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives

Jaime McEvoy, City Councillor, New Westminster

Michael McCarthy Flynn, full-time organizer, Metro Vancouver Living Wage campaign

Jordan Brennan, Dept. of Political Science, York University

Robert White, B.R.I. Consultants

Kristyn Wong-Tam, City Councillor, Toronto

Kernaghan Webb, Director, Institute for the Study of Corporate Social Responsibility, Ryerson University

Winnie Ng, Sam Gindin Chair in Social Justice, Ryerson University

Sonia Singh, Workers’ Action Centre,

Dave Tate, ACORN

Kirsten Sutton, SAP Labs

… and more! 

Conference Co-Sponsors:

Centre for Labour Management Relations, Ryerson University

Metcalf Foundation

Centre for Civic Governance, Colombia Institute

Social Planning Toronto

Income Security Advocacy Centre

Hamilton Roundtable for Poverty Reduction

Campaign 2000

Our workshop has reached capacity, and registration is now closed. If you have any questions, please contact CCPA-Ontario Director Trish Hennessy at trish@policyalternatives.ca.

The Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives' Ontario team was pleased to host a lecture, as well as a wine and cheese social in downtown Toronto on June 28th, featuring globally recognized economist Steve Keen, who is based at the University of Western Sydney, Australia. The lecture focused on the continuing global debt bubble and what it could mean for Canada. It was sponsored by the CCPA, the Progressive Economics Forum, and Ryerson University's Department of Politics and Public Administration.

Watch the video of the lecture here:

Watch the screen recording from the lecture here:

Over on our blog, Behind the Numbers, CCPA Research Associates are sharing their analyses of the Ontario budget:

• Hugh Mackenzie shares his devastating critique of the budget, suggesting that Premier Dalton McGuinty’s ninth Ontario budget completes the job of cutting government down to size—a job started by the Mike Harris Conservatives in the 1990s. Read the full post: Completing the job started by Mike Harris. 
• Erin Weir shares his analysis of the budget in the blog post, Drummond Commission report: countering cutbacks in Ontario. He suggests that the most striking feature of the budget might be how close it comes to last month’s Drummond report. Read more here.

In his new report, Ontario's Fiscal Reality: Glass Half Empty or Half Full?, economist Hugh Mackenzie takes a critical look at the assumptions that drive the Drummond report's claim that Ontario is in a fiscal crisis that can only be resolved through unprecedented austerity. He finds that the predicted fiscal crisis is driven not by lower-than-normal economic growth, as Drummond and the government assert, but by a series of unusual assumptions carefully selected to inflate the deficit, and that using more normal and reasonable assumptions, the deficit turns out to be a problem that can be resolved without austerity budget cuts. In his report, Mackenzie writes: "The province is recovering, more slowly than anyone would wish, from the worst recession to hit the world economy since the 1930s. It is coming to terms – along with much of the rest of the developed world – with the likelihood that in the future the economy will grow more slowly than it did in the past. It is finally having to deal with the cumulative impact on Ontario's fiscal capacity of nearly two decades of unaffordable tax cuts. But Ontario is not in a fiscal crisis." Read the full report here.

Economist Jim Stanford also recently presented his analysis of Ontario's fiscal reality. Watch a video of his presentation here.

The Ontario budget will be tabled on March 27, 2012.