An annual surtax on houses valued over $1 million could help reduce housing inequality and cool housing markets, a report says.
Paul Kershaw, founder of Generation Squeeze and author of the report published Wednesday with input from 80 experts, said it's part of a suite of recommendations aiming to shift the cultural view of housing as an investment to housing as a place to live.
The federal Crown corporation building the Trans Mountain Pipeline expansion has been handed a seven-day deadline to answer tough questions about soil stability, drilling method, and environmental impacts after proposing to redrill and reroute part of a 1.5-kilometre tunnel beneath the Fraser River, an iconic salmon-bearing waterway near the Lower Mainland population centre of Coquitlam.
A series of grassroot conversations in communities across Canada is building a picture of how a universal basic income can lay the groundwork for faster, deeper carbon cuts, by boosting local resilience and helping to ease uncertainties around the shift to a low-carbon economy.
"The pandemic isn't over—the relief to withstand it shouldn't stop," said Rep. Pramila Jayapal.
The lapse of Democrats' expanded child tax credit program at the end of last month has progressive lawmakers and advocates vocally warning of a major spike in child poverty in the new year just as the Omicron variant wreaks havoc across the U.S., fueling a staggering rise in infections and hospitalizations.
Growing awareness of contemporary injustices towards First Nations children and a landmark court ruling this fall forced the federal government to reach agreements seeking to settle cases of discrimination in the child welfare system, says the First Nations advocate who led the fight for change.
Cindy Blackstock, the executive director of the First Nations Child and Family Caring Society, called the agreements words on paper, but said in an interview that she will measure progress at the level of First Nations children.
In the last 40 years or so, what is often called “neo-liberalism” has come to dominate the thinking and policies of governments in Canada, the U.S. and other countries. This has meant massive bailouts of financial institutions and corporations, outsourcing of jobs, as well as deregulation, privatization and cuts to public services. The result has been the stagnation of wages and deterioration of living conditions for many Canadians.
