National Office

A new study published by the CCPA and the Polaris Institute shows how the failure to carefully regulate the bitumen industry is putting Canada on a dangerous economic and environmental trajectory.

The study, by Tony Clarke, Jim Stanford, Diana Gibson, and Brendan Haley,
shows that the current bitumen path is creating the double threat: a “staples trap,” whereby the faster Canada exports its bitumen, the less diversified, productive and resilient the economy becomes;” and a “carbon trap,” which locks Canada into an carbon dependent development path, making the costs of future climate adaptation much more difficult.

The Bitumen Cliff: Lessons and Challenges of Bitumen Mega-Developments for Canada's Economy in an Age of Climate Change presents a wealth of empirical data indicating the negative side effects of unregulated bitumen developments for Canada’s trade, exchange rate, productivity, and income distribution performance and proposes a two-track approach to steer away from the “bitumen cliff."

Click here to download the full report. You can also read more in the following commentaries:

• Heading off the bitumen cliff, Straight Goods News 
• The false gods that are Alberta’s oilsands: Walkom, The Toronto Star

According to a new study by CCPA economists Marc Lee and Iglika Ivanova, Canada’s tax system is in dire need of reform.

Fairness by Design: A Framework for Tax Reform in Canada finds that ad-hoc tax changes over the last two decades have seriously weakened the redistributive role of Canada’s tax system at a time when market inequalities call for more, not less, redistribution. The study also present a framework for a progressive tax reform strategy and recommends the establishment of a Fair Tax Commission to examine how federal taxes and transfers work together as a system and make recommendations for changes. 

Find out more in the full report, here.

With mass mobilizations like Idle No More re-imagining how we work together for progressive, just and caring communities, standing up against bullying and calling out and naming oppressors is taking on an even greater resonance these days. 

The winter 2013 issue of Our Schools/Our Selves focuses on standing up to oppression. Two key articles explicitly look at the topic bullying in our schools, provide thoughtful analysis about the impacts on students and adults, and propose a number of solutions for identifying and working through oppressive situations that victimize the most vulnerable.

Other articles look at ways in which educators, parents and students can and are working together to create safe, creative, accessible and nurturing school environments that meet the needs of more kids and more communities. In many cases, creating these multifaceted, dynamic models of education require a rejection of more corporate, private models of school structure and finance that do little but reinforce existing socioeconomic inequities and power dynamics, as illustrated by a number of important contributions to this issue of Our Schools /Our Selves.

Click here to preview and order the latest issue of OS/OS, Bullying: Working together to break the silence.