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Bringing about a higher level of transparency and accountability in provincial and federal governments to help protect taxpayers from abuse

Bringing about a higher level of transparency and accountability in provincial and federal governments to help protect taxpayers from abuse.

Quebec to spend surplus on eliminating health tax

Quebec’s finance minister says the province finally has its debt under control and so can now afford to spend $2.2 billion over the next three years on infrastructure, healthcare, and education.

In a mid-fiscal-year budget update on Tuesday, Carlos Leitao said the provincial government is now in a position to eliminate the health tax for all Quebecers on Jan. 1, 2017, two years ahead of schedule.

Leitao had promised in March 2015 to begin wiping out the health tax for low-income Quebecers in 2017, and to eliminate it for everyone in 2019.

This will cost the provincial government $179 million in the current fiscal year.

“Now that our house is in order, we have the means to change things to improve the lives of Quebecers,” said Leitao, who, in addition to spending more on healthcare and education, also wants to take measures to improve the economy in rural Quebec.

Leitao said it’s all a sign that steady, patient work and so-called austerity measures have been effective.

Source: http://montreal.ctvnews.ca/quebec-to-spend-surplus-on-eliminating-health-tax-1.3130592

Jury hearing Jacques Corriveau’s fraud case receives final instructions Thursday

The fraud trial of longtime Liberal organizer Jacques Corriveau is expected to be in the hands of the jury by Thursday.

Corriveau, 83, a former close ally of ex-prime minister Jean Chretien, faces three charges that were laid in 2013: fraud against the government, forgery and laundering proceeds of crime.

Two days worth of final arguments wrapped up Tuesday.

Quebec Superior Court Justice Jean-Francois Buffoni told jurors he will give them final instructions on Thursday morning before they are sequestered.

Corriveau did not take the stand at the trial, which began in mid-September.

The Mounties alleged Corriveau set up a kickback system on contracts awarded during the sponsorship program and used his Pluri Design Canada Inc. firm to defraud the federal government.

The program was intended to increase the federal government’s presence in Quebec after the No side’s slim victory in the 1995 sovereignty referendum. The Gomery Commission, which looked into the program, found that firms were winning contracts based on donations to the federal Liberals, with little work being done.

Source: http://thechronicleherald.ca/canada/1409590-jury-hearing-jacques-corriveaus-fraud-case-receives-final-instructions-thursday

Alberta government officials are carbon tax hypocrites

Alberta’s NDP MLAs sure talk a good game about the environment. They talk the talk, but they aren’t walking the walk.

The government is slapping a multi-million dollar carbon tax on Albertan families and businesses, further taxing people for driving their kids to school and heating their homes in the winter.

Don’t like it? Change your lifestyle, they say. Drive less, or drive a smaller car.

Meanwhile, Alberta taxpayers forked over $2.8 million to purchase vehicles for Alberta government bureaucrats and ministers. Some were luxury vehicles. Most were SUVs and pick-up trucks. Gas-guzzlers.

Taxpayers also pay for the gas, which will soon cost more thanks to the carbon tax.

Why are government officials – so focused on reducing carbon emissions – driving around in pick-up trucks and SUVs? Surely a more fuel-efficient fleet would be more appropriate?

“As someone who spends six hours a week on the QE2, and does that in treacherous road conditions, I need to have a vehicle that is appropriate for the driving conditions,” said Service Alberta Minister Stephanie McLean. “Any minister and deputy minister needs to have a vehicle that is safe and can contend with the treacherous road conditions that we have in the winter.”

Funny. Staying safe on sometimes-treacherous roads is exactly why other Albertans drive trucks and SUVs, too.

Source: http://www.therebel.media/alberta_government_officials_are_carbon_tax_hypocrites

How a moose tax can help B.C. wildlife conservation

Is it time for a moose tax?

Faced with declining game populations and the increasing complexities of wildlife management, people are starting to look at new funding models.

And a tax to help moose and other game animals might be one way to go.

A few years ago, in response to growing concerns that British Columbia’s moose numbers were in decline, the provincial government conducted 20 population surveys. The results were troubling. While in some places numbers were stable, in many regions moose numbers had declined by 50 per cent to 70 per cent.

Word quickly spread among the hunting community about which areas held the fewest moose, and soon there was a pile-on in regions that still had good numbers. That caused alarm in some First Nations communities, where people saw outsiders coming in to shoot moose that local families needed for winter food.

Source: http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/british-columbia/how-a-moose-tax-can-help-bc-wildlife-conservation/article32487113/

One in 18 Canadian patients suffer from preventable hospital errors, report finds

Pretty well everyone has heard a horror story about a serious hospital mishap: a medication mix-up, a sponge or retractor left in a patient after surgery, the wrong kidney removed.

So it would be no surprise if some patients facing an operation or admission to a medical ward may be somewhat anxious about their care.

And that begs the question: just how safe are Canada’s hospitals?

As it turns out, 138,000 — or one in every 18 — patients admitted to a Canadian hospital in 2014-15 suffered some kind of harmful event that could potentially have been prevented, from getting the wrong drug to developing an infection, a report released Wednesday has found.

Of those 138,000 patients, about 30,000 had more than one adverse event that compromised their care.

“We know that most patients experience safe care, but when harm happens there’s a big impact on patients, families and the health team,” said Kathleen Morris, vice-president of research and analysis at the Canadian Institute for Health Information (CIHI), which compiled the report.

Source: https://www.thestar.com/news/canada/2016/10/26/one-in-18-canadians-suffer-from-preventable-hospital-errors-report-finds.html

Shoppers Drug Mart, Canada’s largest pharmacy chain, applies for medical marijuana license

Obtaining medical marijuana in Canada could soon be as easy as strolling into the neighborhood pharmacy. Shoppers Drug Mart, the nation’s largest drug store chain, has asked the government for permission to dispense pot to patients, it said Tuesday.

“We have applied to be a licensed producer strictly for the purposes of distributing medical marijuana,” Tammy Smitham, the vice president of external communication for Loblaw and Shoppers Drug Mart, said in a statement Tuesday.

“We have applied to be a licensed producer strictly for the purposes of distributing medical marijuana,” Tammy Smitham, the vice president of external communication for Loblaw and Shoppers Drug Mart, said in a statement Tuesday.

More than 75,000 Canadians participate in the national government’s medical marijuana program as of June 30, but current law only allows patients to obtain their prescriptions from licensed producers through the mail. With legislative changes likely to occur across the board in the couple years, however, Shoppers has begun laying the groundwork to potentially become Canada’s first legal coast-to-coast pot dispensary.

Shoppers doesn’t intend on growing its own weed, but wants to be considered a licensed producer by the government so its pharmacists can fill marijuana scripts like any other prescription handled at its 1,200-plus drug stores.

Source: http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2016/oct/25/shoppers-drug-mart-canadas-largest-pharmacy-chain-/

Canadian Taxpayers on the Hook for Inefficient and Ineffective Outcomes in Mental Health

taxpayer-waste18One of my pet peeves on government waste, both federal and provincial, has to do with mental health. This is an area of expenditure that, to my mind, has a very poor scrutiny of its spending. The media and other groups have been for a long time promoting that not enough is being spent in this area because not everyone who needs mental health service can avail themselves of it.

Well, from my research, the reason that our mental health dollar doesn’t go so far is because it is ridiculously expensive per person for care. Just like the recent Epi-pen controversy in the United States, in which the drug company Mylan has raised the cost of that drug from $100 to over $650 in just the last few years, so too in Canada is mental health given Cadillac-type spending for a Chevette-type of result.

Did you know that when a person is institutionalized in a psychiatric facility in Ontario such as Centre for Addiction and Mental Health or any psychiatric hospital bed, that it would be less expensive to get them a room at a major Toronto hotel with full-time nursing support? I did the calculations.

Couple this immense cost with the lack of results produced by the system and you just have one big boondoggle.

People once they are ensconced within the system, even if they leave an institution, are generally placed on community treatment orders which force them to take medications that cause them to be debilitated in life. It should be mentioned that the majority of those who are forced to take such medication feel terrible when they take them and can’t function properly. They are debilitated over time as they experience chronic brain impairment which makes recovery and a normal life impossible. This is the major reason why such people stop taking them.

There is little information provided to patients or their families about the effects of such medications as laws which provide for informed consent are largely ignored by mental health providers.

The bottom line is that taxpayers are on the hook for this inefficient and costly system which really doesn’t cure but only warehouses, either physically or pharmaceutically, those in it.

It is a discussion worth having.

Bob D. Smith is the publisher of the Monitor Telegram

Also published on LinkedIn Pulse

Central Bank Chief Says Canada Can Handle More Infrastructure Investment

The Canadian government has ample fiscal room to increase spending on infrastructure, Bank of Canada Gov. Stephen Poloz said, adding it is required to offer a boost to the country’s tepid growth profile.

“We have plenty of opportunities in Canada to deploy more infrastructure investment,” Mr. Poloz said in an interview with Canada’s Global TV network broadcast on Sunday. “There’s a balance point in all this, but Canada is in a very good fiscal situation so we shouldn’t be worrying about” the impact of higher budget deficits at this time, he added.

Source: http://www.wsj.com/articles/central-bank-chief-says-canada-can-handle-more-infrastructure-investment-1477243921

Canada Needs to Crack Down on Private Services to Save Public Healthcare

Canadians pride themselves on their publicly funded healthcare system, so it stung when Donald Trump singled us out in a recent presidential debate for traveling south to the US to pay for medical procedures (even if medical tourism is a reality, at least for some people who live here).

Now, the Canadian Medical Association Journal (CMAJ) is calling on the Minister of Health to give more teeth to the existing law and to “punish violations” by levying fines, in order to stop privatization from sneaking into universal healthcare.

Canada is grappling with the fate of its publicly funded system. In September, orthopedic surgeon and former Canadian Medical Association president Brian Day launched a legal challenge against the B.C. government to lift a ban on private insurance, which he says violates patients’ rights by forcing them to endure long waiting times for medical services.

If Day is successful, the CMAJ warns, it could be the beginning of the end for our cherished single-payer system.

Editors at the CMAJ acknowledge the current system has problems, like its notoriously long wait times—one woman in Quebec waited nine years for a medical appointment. A consequence of this, they say, is the emergence of a two-tiered system that allows well-off people to opt for private treatment abroad, or here in Canada, which has seen private clinics springing up alongside the rise of extra billing for certain procedures.

Source: http://motherboard.vice.com/read/canada-needs-to-crack-down-on-private-services-to-save-public-healthcare

Young Canadians should get used to precarious employment: Finance Minister

Finance Minister Bill Morneau says Canadians should get used to so-called “job churn” — short-term employment and a number of career changes in a person’s life.

Morneau made the comment on Saturday at a meeting of the federal Liberal Party’s Ontario wing, days before he’s scheduled to deliver a fall economic update.

The remark also comes just three days after the Bank of Canada delivered bad news for the economy, downgrading the country’s growth outlook yet again.

And when asked about precarious employment the finance minister told delegates that high employee turnover and short-term contract work will continue in young people’s lives, and the government has to focus on preparing for it.

“We also need to think about, ‘How do we train and retrain people as they move from job to job to job?’ Because it’s going to happen. We have to accept that,” Morneau said during a question-and-answer session.

Elsewhere in his presentation, Morneau noted that some people will see their jobs disappear in the years to come — truck drivers and receptionists, for instance.

Morneau said the government has to look at helping out with the “things underneath” disappearing or precarious work.

Source: https://www.google.com/url?hl=en&q=http://www.waterloochronicle.ca/news-story/6925075-young-canadians-should-get-used-to-precarious-employment-finance-minister&source=gmail&ust=1477420787900000&usg=AFQjCNHJFHrKhKEZfW7Wm2uR9SFvatip4w