National Office

On March 12th, the CCPA released the Alternative Federal Budget 2013: Doing Better Together. This year's AFB shows how growth-killing austerity can be replaced by a plan that strengthens the economy, leads to a better quality of life for all Canadians, and eliminates the deficit by 2016. 

This year's Alternative Federal Budget:

• reduces poverty and inequality by investing in child care, pharmacare, affordable housing, income supports, and post-secondary education,

• tackles the ongoing crisis for First Nations housing, drinking water, education,
• implements a long term, transparent and public plan for investments in infrastructure,
• creates 300,000 jobs, lowering the unemployment rate to 6% by 2014, and
• introduces a new top personal income tax bracket, closes the biggest tax loopholes, and introduces a withholding tax on tax havens.

The full budget document, a budget-in-brief, and infographics are available in both English and French at www.policyalternatives.ca/afb2013.

Senior Economist Armine Yalnizyan recently appeared on CBC Toronto's Metro Morning to discuss the Alternative Federal Budget. You can listen to the discussion, here.

If you haven’t run across the Citizen’s Press website yet, we recommend that you take a look.

Citizen's Press is a Canadian online publication for progressive, union-oriented researchers, activists and organizers. There is also valuable information from the US. The site is organized into editorials, news, papers and right to organize information.

Under the Right to Organize tab you’ll find links to some useful Expert Analysis (click to expand the items on the lefthand menu). There you will find progressive experts such as economists and academics, government officials, journalists and commentators, lawyers and judges and labour union activists. It’s a good place to look for some succinct talking points, but there are also links to full reports if you need a more in-depth analysis.

Besides labour topics, you’ll find coverage of other issues such as EI, the environment, free trade agreements and social impact bonds – to name just some.

This interesting sample will take you to information about a 1995 Alberta Joint Review on the Right to Work. Interestingly, it concluded that RTW was NOT a smart idea. Right under this piece, you’ll find Senator Hugh Segal’s comments on Bill C-377.

More than ever, Canada needs a budget that allows us to take back our fu­ture and to restore a sense of the public good — a sense that we can do bet­ter together rather than continuing on the dead-end path of austerity and market-driv­en “solutions” that don’t benefit the major­ity of Canadians.

Since 1994, the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives has produced such a vision. Each year, the Alternative Federal Budget (AFB) is created with the participation and support of researchers, activists, and a broad spectrum of civil society leadership — representing millions of people living in Canada.

The AFB is about demythologizing budget-making. It's about public accountability and collaboration. And it's about the millions of people living and working in Canada. This alternative vision demonstrates in a concrete and compelling way that by working together, we can do better. 

On March 12, the CCPA will release the 2013 Alternative Federal Budget. And this year, you can help!

Here's how:

• Join our Thunderclap (What's a Thunderclap? Find out here.)
• Like us on Facebook and share our posts (There will be infographics!)
• Follow, comment, and re-tweet us on Twitter, and use the tag #afb2013 to tell us about the kind of budget you want for Canada!