• 8 Posts
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Joined 2 years ago
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Cake day: June 11th, 2023

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  • You might expect that, with all this support, Canada has roared to the top of those rankings of global indicators of productivity and economic success, or at least caught up to Italy. But no. Our economic performance is worse. We have warning lights popping up around all of our important indicators. Productivity, or the amount of output for every hour worked, has actually declined since 2018.

    Worse, while we’ve been shovelling money at corporations, our social services have declined. There are 2 million more Canadians living without a family doctor than there were in 2019. Housing has become wildly unaffordable, with the Bank of Canada’s Housing Affordability Index reaching heights unseen since the excruciating double-digit interest rates of the early 1990s. And that marquee Liberal social program, universal access to subsidized child care spaces, is hitting bumps with staff shortages and long-term funding gaps that leave its future in doubt.

    Since 2019/20, Canadians have been giving away more than fifty cents of every dollar collected in corporate income taxes right back to businesses.

    Canadians are facing serious crises in critical public services like health care and child care and social goods like housing. Does it really make sense for us to give Canadian businesses back more than half of what they pay in taxes when so many people can’t find a family doctor or afford a home?










  • Which policy exactly is consistent with keeping prices high?

    The statements around increasing supply without discussing lowering prices.

    In the election platform, increasing supply was discussed separately from affordable housing.

    Well if what we have currently is “unaffordable” I think it is safe to assume that “Affordable housing” means less than market

    From what I’ve seen, “affordable housing” typically refers to government owned and managed housing that is rented out below market cost. That’s consistent with the language used in the LPC election platform. Usually there is a waiting list to get it, and some sort of means test or qualification (like being homeless, etc) to get onto the list.

    I’d distinguish that from making open market housing more affordable, either through rent caps, subsidies, changes to tax law, flooding the market, etc. That would lower the cost of housing on the open market.

    I think that distinction is real because neither Carney nor the housing minister have said “we will make housing cheaper and more affordable”. Instead, they’re using Affordable Housing like a proper noun and talking around a very straightforward question.

    Who do you believe will get access to it?

    I don’t know. I haven’t seen an explanation of what the Liberals plan.

    If spaces are very limited, I hope for a means test, prioritizing people on disability, or the homeless.

    If spaces are kind of limited, I hope they limit it by income. Poorer people would get access first.

    If it’s abundant (which hasn’t been promised), I hope that it would be open to all. But that seems really optimistic.

    It’ll be defined at some point. We’ll see then.

    As someone who has never had a hope of owning a home in their lifetime, you can get in line behind the people without a place to live and wait with the rest of the middle class.

    I’m waiting right along with you.




  • Probably the answer is in the sense that the government’s focus should not be where the prices should be but whether there are sufficient homes people can house themselves in.

    Government policy moved prices up to where they are, so all three levels of government need to remedy the problem.

    The thing these conversations rarely mention is that a lot of retirement savings are tied up in homes. As long as young Canadians are being gouged for rent, it’s harder to put money aside for retirement.




  • I know everyone loves to hate on the boomers, but most of them didn’t strike it rich, many live in homes that are old and not well maintained, have failing bodies, are being squeezed out of labour jobs, etc. Having a tiny, taxable income stream at a time where society is turning against you isn’t some crazy benefit.

    Kershaw and (I suspect) u/wampus are talking about the intersection of rich and old. Someone who is making ~140k/year (or 250ish as a couple) doesn’t need a top-up from the feds, regardless of their age. Kershaw’s other op-eds have proposed lowering the OAS clawbacks for the wealthy and using that amount to increase payments to poor seniors.

    For example:

    Refining the OAS clawback for households with incomes of more than $100,000 would be transformative. It would free up $36-billion in federal spending over the next five years.

    About $12-billion could be added to the Guaranteed Income Supplement to deliver an extra $5,000 a year to the 469,000 seniors who currently fall below Canada’s official poverty measure. This would virtually eliminate poverty among seniors … . For those who remain near the poverty line, another $4-billion could be added to the GIS to enhance their incomes too.

    The remaining $20-billion could be reinvested to double the increases for housing and postsecondary education in the 2024 federal budget, add 50 per cent to child care and cut the deficit by billions.