money

Thursday November 19, 2020

Editorial Cartoon by Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Thursday November 19, 2020

The province is dodging the truth on COVID-19 in long-term care

On Monday, Ontario’s long-term-care minister, Merrilee Fullerton, assured Ontarians that in spite of COVID-19 spreading through long-term-care homes, they’re actually doing better than they did in the first wave of this pandemic.

June 17, 2020

Speaking at Queen’s Park, the minister summed up: “There’s no doubt that lessons have been learned from the first wave and the data shows our homes are doing much, much better.”

Really? On Tuesday, 26 of 32 new COVID-19 deaths were in care homes. The province says 678 nursing home residents have the virus. And 100 of the province’s 626 care homes have outbreaks. 

Does that sound like “much, much better” to you? It doesn’t to us, either. And it doesn’t to many health experts. 

Health experts like Dr. Amit Arya of McMaster University, who described the first wave in long-term care as “a horror movie” and who says now: “We really have not done anything close to what we should have done to prepare for the second wave.”

Natalie Mehra, executive director of the Ontario Health Coalition, agrees. She has said in media reports: “It’s devastating … The numbers right now are just exploding.” She also says “we’re shaping up to have a worse second wave.”

Indeed, according to Doris Grinspun, CEO of the Registered Nurses’ Association of Ontario: “The number of residents with COVID is increasing, the number of staff with COVID is increasing and the number of residents who die is increasing. How can anyone sleep well at night with that?”

May 27, 2020

It’s a good question. Notwithstanding Minister Fullerton’s claims to the contrary, it doesn’t seem as if Ontario’s retirement home care system is in a better place than it was during the first wave. It’s clear that the Ford government is concerned and has been trying to put improvements and protections in place, but the reality is that it started too late, and it had repeated warnings during and after the first wave.

The Registered Nurses’ Association, for example, asked the government to make investments in staffing with registered nurses, nurse practitioners, registered practical nurses and personal support workers in homes across Ontario. The government didn’t act. And so when the second wave hit, staffing levels were already at or below operative minimum, and that was before staff began to get sick and be absent. 

The government’s own LTC commission, in its interim report on fixing the system, released a series of recommendations urgently calling for action on things like staffing levels and compensation. Fullerton said her department was “carefully reviewing” the recommendations. 

July 17, 2020

This is all happening at the same time as a Toronto Star investigation revealsprivate LTC operation is such a lucrative business opportunity, private equity funds are being set up to cash in on the potential. That’s not surprising given the shortage of beds that continues to exist and our aging population. 

But keep in mind this is specifically about private, for-profit LTC operations. In Ontario, for-profit homes account for a little more than half of the province’s long-term-care beds. But they also accounted for 70 per cent of COVID deaths in the first wave of the pandemic. According to a Star analysis, so far in the second wave for-profit homes have just under 80 per cent of the deaths.

So if you’re a wealthy investor, there’s money to be made in for-profit long-term care. What is less clear is whether the for-profit model, where the bottom line is always going to competing for the top priority, even over resident care, has a place in the long-term-care system. That the government isn’t even considering that is troubling. (Hamilton Spectator Editorial)

Thursday August 27, 2020

August 27, 2020

Editorial Cartoon by Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Thursday August 27, 2020

Doug Ford praises appointment of ‘amazing’ Chrystia Freeland as federal finance minister

“Amazing.”

“Incredible.”

November 21, 2019

Those were just two of the adjectives the Progressive Conservative premier of Ontario used to hail the new federal Liberal finance minister.

“I absolutely love Chrystia Freeland. She’s amazing. I’ll have her back, I’ll help her any way we can,” an elated Premier Doug Ford said Tuesday.

As first revealed by the Star’s Susan Delacourt in April, the COVID-19 pandemic has forged a close friendship between Ford and the deputy prime minister.

The premier was visibly delighted that Freeland, who represents University-Rosedale in the House of Commons, is succeeding departing Toronto Centre MP Bill Morneau as federal treasurer.

December 11, 2019

“I want to congratulate my good friend Chrystia Freeland. An amazing person. I actually texted her this morning to say congratulations. I don’t know how she’s going to do it. She’s working around the clock now,” Ford told CityNews’s Jamie Tumelty in Scarborough.

“There’s no one that would be better in that role than Chrystia Freeland,” he said, pointedly declining to comment on the WE Charity scandal that triggered Morneau’s resignation.

“I’m not going to get into that federal politics. That’s up to the prime minister to deal with. We’ve been working very collaboratively together.”

The premier predicted Freeland would be a good partner for Queen’s Park, which is seeking additional federal funding for infrastructure projects.

“If there was one person, I have confidence in, it is Chrystia Freeland. She’s going to do an incredible job,” said Ford. (Toronto Star) 

March 27, 2020

Now this just in: With less than two weeks to go before most schools are set to welcome back students for the fall term, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau today announced more than $2 billion in funding to help provinces and territories re-open their schools and economies safely.

The announcement comes as some provinces are reporting increases in the number of confirmed COVID-19 cases.

The funding is meant to allow provinces and territories to work with local school boards to implement measures to protect students and staff from COVID-19. The money can be used to help adapt learning spaces, improve air ventilation, increase hand sanitation and hygiene and buy extra personal protective equipment (PPE) and cleaning supplies. (CBC) 

Friday April 16, 2020

Editorial Cartoon by Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Friday April 16, 2020

The Bank of Canada rolls the dice

Coronavirus cartoons

If desperate pandemic times demand desperate government actions, the Bank of Canada just delivered big-time. 

It’s printing money out of thin air to fund an estimated $200-billion-plus spending-spree intended to keep the nation’s economy alive. 

The best name for this historic and, frankly, alarming intervention is quantitative easing, and every Canadian should pay close attention to what amounts to a roll of the dice by their central bank.

That’s because while quantitative easing is justified under the circumstances, it’s unconventional, controversial and highly risky. Our 85-year-old central bank has never tried it before, and no wonder. It may cure what’s ailing the Canadian economy today only to infect it with new illnesses a year from now.

It all began at the end of March when the Bank of Canada announced it would spend at least $5 billion a week in the coming months to buy Government of Canada bonds on the open market. In other words, it would buy up much of the federal government’s debt.

That action was meant to ease the pressure on the federal government’s growing debt burden while injecting badly-needed cash into an economy ravaged by the COVID-19 pandemic.

And that part of quantitative easing makes sense because it works. The mind-bending part of it comes with the realization that all these billions of dollars are being created digitally. 

It’s as if Bank of Canada Governor Stephen Poloz had donned a magician’s cape, put his hand into a top hat and — poof — the Canadian economy had what it needed to buy its way out of this crisis.

What Poloz did was correct, according to experts such as former Bank of Canada governor David Dodge. At the time of Poloz’s intervention, the rapid spread of COVID-19 across Canada had already triggered government-imposed business shutdowns, huge job losses and what could become the nation’s sharpest economic downturn ever. 

The federal government was mobilizing its fiscal forces to prop up revenue-starved businesses and extend a financial lifeline to the newly unemployed, whose numbers could reach 2.8 million this month.

Other governments around the world were doing the same. And other central banks, most notably in the United States, the United Kingdom and the European Union, were also playing their part by making new money to ease the debt loads of their governments.

The Bank of Canada doubled down on that strategy this week when it expanded its bond-buying program to include purchases on the open market of the debts of provincial governments and corporations. They need help, too, but it will mean pulling another $50 billion in new, digitally-created money out of Poloz’s magic hat. 

The sheer magnitude of all this newly manufactured cash is worrisome. If countries can get everything they want by simply printing more money, why doesn’t everyone do it all the time? 

The answer is the world’s financial markets wouldn’t let them get away with it. The U.S. Fed and the European Central Bank are considered to be big and powerful enough to do what they deem necessary. 

Canada, with its much smaller economy, probably won’t be cut the same slack. The value of its currency may slide if quantitative easing lasts too long. Inflation could rise to unmanageable levels even as millions of Canadians remain unemployed and the nation’s economic engines are struggling to fire on all cylinders. 

This spring, the Bank of Canada had no choice but to experiment with quantitative easing. In short order, it must provide Canadians with a plan and timetable for getting out of it.

Canada, with its much smaller economy, probably won’t be cut the same slack. The value of its currency may slide if quantitative easing lasts too long. Inflation could rise to unmanageable levels even as millions of Canadians remain unemployed and the nation’s economic engines are struggling to fire on all cylinders. 

This spring, the Bank of Canada had no choice but to experiment with quantitative easing. In short order, it must provide Canadians with a plan and timetable for getting out of it. (Hamilton Spectator Editorial)

Saturday January 18, 2020

Editorial Cartoon by Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Saturday January 18, 2020

$60 payout ‘putting money back in parents’ pockets’, education minister says

May 4, 2019

The minister of education is offering parents money for childcare costs incurred during rotating teachers’ strikes.

Stephen Lecce says parents can apply for amounts from $25 to $60 per day for children under twelve.

Lecce says if all unions were to walk out, subsidies for childcare would amount to $48 million a day.    

“Just for clarity, every day that all unions withdraw services, that full withdraw saves the government $60 million dollars in salaries,” Lecce said. “So the concept here is we know that’s not our money, it’s our tax dollars, we’re using it. It’s the savings from their withdrawal of service.”

November 22, 2019

Parents of pre-schoolers at school-based child-care centres affected by the strikes will get the most money. Those with children in grades 1 through 7 will get less and parents of high school students will get nothing.

Lecce said the government’s motivation for the payout was to put money “back in the pockets of working people in Ontario.”

“At the end of the day the greatest constituency that bears the costs of this are parents and middle and low-income families who have to find childcare on short order,” he said.

As for criticisms that the payout was a bribe to parents, Lecce said he wasn’t surprised it was being spun by teachers’ unions as such.

August 29, 2019

“I think union leaders, respectfully, must accept the premise that there’s a cost when a child is staying home,” he said. “We have examples, real human examples, of individuals and low-income families and single parent families where they have to take vacation days.”

“Those will eventually add up,” Lecce said. “So it is absolutely in the interests of the taxpayer to return that money to them to make their life a little bit better and a little less difficult during this time of turmoil.”

“And it underscores our commitment to standing with families against this escalation.” (CBC) 

 

Wednesday January 8, 2020

Editorial Cartoon by Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Wednesday January 8, 2020

The Trump We Did Not Want to See

Much of the work of H.P. Lovecraft, an American horror and science fiction writer who worked during the first decades of the 20th century, is defined by individual encounters with the incomprehensible, with sights, sounds and ideas that undermine and disturb reality as his characters understand it. Faced with things too monstrous to be real, but which exist nonetheless, Lovecraftian protagonists either reject their senses or descend into madness, unable to live with what they’ve learned.

June 25, 2019

It feels, at times, that when it comes to Donald Trump, our political class is this Lovecraftian protagonist, struggling to understand an incomprehensibly abnormal president. The reality of Donald Trump — an amoral narcissist with no capacity for reflection or personal growth — is evident from his decades in public life. But rather than face this, too many people have rejected the facts in front of them, choosing an illusion instead of the disturbing truth.

The past week has been a prime example of this phenomenon. On Thursday night, the United States killed Maj. Gen. Qassim Suleimani of Iran leader of the Islamic Republic’s Quds Force and one of the most powerful military leaders in the region. The strike was sudden and unexpected. The White House notified Congress only after the fact, with a brief, classified document.

May 11, 2018

The assassination of Suleimani was tantamount to a declaration of war and has escalated tensions between the United States and Iran. Tehran has already promised “harsh revenge” against the United States, while Trump said he would  “HIT VERY FAST AND VERY HARD” if Iran made good on its threat, vowing an attack on “52 Iranian sites” including locations “important to Iran & the Iranian culture.”

This standoff, which in its latest incarnation saw Iranian missiles sailing toward bases in western Iraq on Tuesday night, is so consequential that it’s been hard not to impute some logic to the president’s actions, even as many observers acknowledge the lies and dysfunction surrounding the attack. It’s only natural. As humans, we want to impose order on what we see. As Americans, we want to believe our leaders understand the gravity of war. Traditional news outlets published detailed descriptions of the president’s decision-making process. Sympathetic observers, like Matthew Continetti of the Washington Free Beacon, hailed the strike as a “stunning blow to international terrorism and a reassertion of American might.” Cable news analysts spoke as if this was part of a considered plan for challenging the Iranian government. (Continued: New York Times)