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Toronto Star Fri Mar 6 2015

The rise of part-time, low-paying jobs and self-employment in Canada over the past 2 1/2 decades has lead to an irreversible decline in employment quality, according to a report from the Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce. Job quality in Canada has been declining for 25 years and is now at a record low, CIBC said. Worse still, it's unlikely that low interest rates and a return of robust economic growth will reverse the trend. "Our measure of employment quality has been on clear downward trajectory over the past 25 years," CIBC deputy chief economist Benjamin Tal wrote in the report, released Thursday. "While the pace of the decline has slowed in recent years, the level of quality as measured by our index is currently at a record low - 15 per cent below the rate seen in the early 1990s and 10 per cent below the level seen in the early 2000s."

The CIBC Canadian Employment Quality Index measures the distribution of full- and part-time jobs, the split between self-employment and paid employment, and the compensation ranking of full-time paid employment jobs in more than 100 industry groups. The index, which uses January 1988 as a base year, has largely been in decline since 1990. On a year-over-year basis, it is down by 1.8 per cent. "The long-term trends of our quality components suggest that the decline in employment quality in Canada is more structural than cyclical," Tal wrote. The chief culprit is often seen as the growth in the number of part-time jobs, which have risen much faster than full-time employment since the 1980s, CIBC said. "The damage caused to

The Northern and Remote (NR) Collaboration provides an opportunity for decision makers, leaders, policy makers and practitioners to build leadership and improvement capacity by networking, comparing innovative solutions and sharing success stories. Healthcare service providers working in northern and remote areas of Canada face unique challenges with developing, implementing and evaluating effective and sustainable solutions in these regions. The collaboration aims to improve the health status of people living in northern and remote regions of Canada. This collaboration was until recently called the Northern, Rural or Remote (NRoR) Collaboration. Watch this video from the 2014 NRoR Roundtable to learn about the benefits of joining the new Northern and Remote Collaboration:

Toronto Star Tue Feb 10 2015

Angry speech complete, Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, who is giving "serious thought" to running for president, sat down to take questions from the Brookings Institution audience. "No one would accuse you of being 'Morning in America' with your presentation today," pundit Mark Shields began, referring to the sunny Ronald Reagan campaign ad.

"My wife often tells me that after I speak we have to pass out the tranquilizers and the anti-suicide kits," Sanders said. "I've been trying to be more cheerful!" White hair askew, suit jacket creased, Sanders, a 73-year-old whose Brooklyn accent occasionally turns Obama into "Obamer," looks and sounds the part of doomsday prophet. On Monday, he said that America is either on the road to "oligarchy" or already there, that the conservative Koch brothers might have successfully purchased the country with campaign donations, and that resistance to "the billionaire class" from a grassroots candidate like him might be futile.

Times & Transcript (Moncton) Fri Feb 20 2015

The Canadian Union of Public Employees in New Brunswick says the province is exaggerating its fiscal situation in order to slash public services and sell public assets. "Four years ago, the Alward government started their term in office with alarmist warnings prepared by Don Drummond that the province would soon run deficits of $2 billion a year," Daniel L�g�re, president of CUPE NB, said Wednesday. "This was highly exaggerated based on faulty assumptions. The budget could have been balanced without cuts to programs, largely by reversing regressive tax cuts."

Now the Gallant Liberal government is doing the same thing despite deficit projections that are not as dire as they had predicted, and the Liberals will get the same negative results for their efforts, L�g�re told a news conference in Moncton.

National Post Thu Feb 19 2015

Re: "Fat public sector paycheques," Charles Lammam and Niels Veldhuis, Feb. 18 Funded by right-wing corporate interests, the Fraser Institute's latest in a series of distorted studies on public sector compensation only aims to spur animosity between Canadian workers. This is a troubling distraction from the real issues of income inequality.

CUPE's own study, B attle of the Wages, shows a small overall premium for public sector workers - less than two percent - when comparing workers in similar occupations. But this is entirely due to a smaller pay gap for women in the public sector than in the private sector. The Canadian Centre for Policy Alternative's own analysis, Narrowing the Gap, shows that higher public sector wages are attributed to higher wages for workers most discriminated against in the private sector. This analysis shows women, radicalized and Aboriginal workers are the ones seeing higher, and much fairer, wages in the public sector.

The StarPhoenix (Saskatoon) Fri Oct 24 2014

Meili is a family physician in Saskatoon and vice-chair of Canadian Doctors for Medicare. Premier Brad Wall took to Twitter last week to ask: "Is it time to allow people to pay for their own private MRIs in Saskatchewan like they can do in Alberta?" This came after a radio talk show during which he'd received a call from a patient who's been waiting three months for an MRI scan. This is one of many Saskatchewan patients who are, understandably, frustrated by long waits for essential imaging services. It is a real problem. For that reason we should be very wary of false solutions and look first to evidence before rhetoric takes over. The best place to look for that evidence is the province Wall references as a model. Many Saskatchewan residents have sought out care in Alberta's private MRI clinics, giving the impression that the experiment there has been a success. When we take a closer look, it turns out things are not so wildly rosy in the land of private MRIs. Perhaps the most surprising fact is that the wait list for MRI scans in Alberta, rather than having been shortened by the presence of private imaging clinics, is actually the longest in Canada. According to the Canadian Institute for Health Information, patients in Alberta can wait from 87 days to 247 days for a scan, compared with 28 to 88 in Saskatchewan.

The Globe and Mail Fri Mar 20 2015

Re An Affordable Step Toward True Universality (March 19): Cherry-picking a system here and there to compare Canada unfavorably is a fun pastime for those keen on privatizing medicare. This time, Konrad Yakabuski argues we should ape the English system as it allows people to buy private care. But English doctors in the public system are paid salaries and are government employees. Canadian doctors are paid on a fee-for-service basis, and this will not change any time soon. Most likely for the Canadian system, if we allow extra-billing, as Mr. Yakabuski argues, nearly every Canadian will be paying out of pocket for care. Colleen Flood, University of Ottawa Research Chair in Health Law and Policy

It is time for Canada to lead in re-evaluating what type of trade agreements are needed for this century.

By HOWARD MANN PUBLISHED : Wednesday, March 9, 2016

While the Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement (CETA) text was in long-term legal scrub, it had taken a back seat to discussions over the Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement (TPP) concluded by the Conservative government during the last election campaign. The TPP has attracted vocal opposition from very diverse sources in Canada, including major innovators, labour unions and organizations focused on achieving sustainable development. With the release now of the final CETA text—the trade agreement between Canada and the EU—new debate is needed on it as well.

The Globe and Mail Mon Dec 7 2015

The intellectual-property provisions in the Trans-Pacific Partnership agreement will drive up global drug prices and make it harder to treat diseases in developing countries, Medecins sans Frontieres (Doctors Without Borders) says. A month after the final text of the TPP was released, the medical humanitarian organization has completed its analysis of the portions of the massive trade pact that will affect drug costs.

Despite changes from earlier leaked versions of the text, there are still serious problems, Judit Rius, MSF's U.S. legal policy adviser, said. "This is catastrophic. This is very negative. The impact is going to be at multiple levels," Ms. Rius said in an interview. "First of all, it is going to delay access to generic competition [for brand-name drugs], which is a proven intervention to reduce the price of medicines."

The Daily News (Nanaimo) Wed Dec 16 2015

The organization representing Saskatchewan doctors says it's concerned that the government's decision to allow people to pay privately for MRIs is a hasty policy.

A letter to physicians from the president of the Saskatchewan Medical Association says it opposes the move and told Health Minister Dustin Duncan that at the end of October. Dr. Mark Brown says the legislation allowing people to pay privately for MRIs runs contrary to the fundamental principle of medicare. "We really believe that a patient accessing a test should be based on a need, rather than the ability to pay. That's the bottom line," Brown said Tuesday in a phone interview with The Canadian Press. A briefing note attached to the Dec. 4 letter says creating dual access to MRI scans does not reduce surgical wait times, and Brown suggested it could lead to queue-jumping for surgery.

Ensuring affordable housing is necessary to divert demand from higher cost health care and this requires well-planned adaptations and investments.

Nicole F. Bernier March 24, 2016 

The good news for Canada’s aging population is that the federal government in its 2016 budget announced that it will develop a national housing strategy, double the current federal funding in affordable housing (to $1.5 billion) and support the construction, repair and adaptation of affordable housing for seniors.