OTTAWA – La veille du Jour de deuil national à la mémoire des travailleurs morts au travail, le Centre canadien de politiques alternatives (CCPA) dévoile deux études qui soulignent la nécessité d’améliorer l’application de la législation et de la réglementation sur la santé et la sécurité.
Selon Le succès n’est pas le fruit du hasard, produite par David Macdonald, attaché de recherche du CCPA, le financement insuffisant et le manque d’inspecteurs de sécurité mettent en danger les employés relevant de la compétence fédérale.
Corporations and corporate power
OTTAWA—On the eve of the National Day of Mourning for workers killed on the job, the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives (CCPA) is releasing two studies highlighting the need for improved health and safety enforcement and regulation.
According to Success is No Accident, by CCPA Research Associate David Macdonald, federal underfunding and understaffing of safety inspectors are putting federal jurisdiction employees in harm’s way.
Can World Trade Organization negotiations on environmental goods and services play a positive role in reducing climate change? This green justification for the WTO’s current round of negotiations is critically assessed in this report by CCPA research associate Ellen Gould.
TORONTO – The global recession hit Ontario harder than most provinces, making the need for job creation – not deficit reduction -- a top priority in this week’s provincial budget, says a new report by the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives (CCPA). Steering Ontario Out of Recession, by CCPA Research Associate Hugh Mackenzie, says Ontario lost 201,000 permanent jobs last year while only 15,000 new part-time jobs and 20,500 temporary jobs were created to offset those losses.
It’s a clear case of déja vu, all over again. Back in the 1980s, Brian Mulroney raised the spectre of U.S. protectionism, then set out to win guaranteed access for our exports. He didn’t succeed: we got a “dispute panel” system instead, and even that doesn’t work. But his government was publicly committed to “guaranteed access,” so Mulroney put a brave face on his 1988 deal – spinning it as essential insurance, worth the steep price (i.e., control over our energy) we paid for it.
The Harper government portrays itself as standing up for Canada, but it is preparing a major selloff of Canadian interests that will compromise our cultural sovereignty, national identity and national security.
In the Speech from the Throne, the Harper government signaled its intent to throw open the doors of foreign ownership in three strategic, previously protected, sectors: telecommunications, satellites and uranium.
On February 25, 2010, Naomi Klein gave a lecture on the issue of climate debt, organized by the CCPA.
This was the first in a series of lectures in honour of David Lewis (1909-1981), a leading labour lawyer, life-long social democrat, a founder of the NDP and its national leader from 1970 to 1975. His grandson Avi Lewis introduced the lecture series.
The lecture series will focus on issues that were important to David Lewis: social democracy, organized labour, and income inequality.
There has never been a better time in recent history when the core democratic value of equality can be seen as both an ethical and practical option. Governments in advanced democracies around the world have been forced by the current prolonged economic crisis to openly acknowledge that the dominant political and economic ideology has been a failure. Its system of values, with the minimal role assigned to government, has been proven by experience to be disastrously wrong, both in terms of stability and social justice.
Politics is about choices. But we can’t make effective choices without clarity. And that means we have to have an adult conversation about taxes and public services. A conversation that starts at A and goes to B, and doesn’t assume something that doesn’t make any sense to get there. A conversation that re-establishes in public discourse a connection between the public services we need and the taxes that pay for those services. The kind of conversation we expect our children to learn to engage in virtually from the moment they can talk.