Bringing about a higher level of transparency and accountability in provincial and federal governments to help protect taxpayers from abuse
David Bird wanted to honour his late 22-year-old son Graeme by donating $400,000 to the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health in 2012.
Over the course of the three years he made payments, Bird became so disgruntled with the lack of transparency behind his donation that if it had not been made in his son’s name, he would have considered halting it partway through his commitment.
For the lucrative rights to dispense publicly funded drugs to Ontario nursing homes, pharmacies must pay the homes millions of dollars in secret per-resident “bed fees,” a Star investigation reveals.
Seniors advocates, presented with the Star’s findings, say this practice raises serious accountability questions.
They don’t pass the sniff test. Secret fees paid to nursing homes by pharmacies bidding for lucrative drug supply contracts don’t put the interests of patients first. What makes the “kickbacks,” as one critic calls them, even worse is that nursing homes can’t or won’t say exactly where the money is going.
Why does this matter? Lots of reasons.
Export Development Canada has financed several satellites being built at Space Systems Loral (SSL) in Palo Alto, claiming since the American firm is owned by Canada’s MacDonald Dettwiler and Associates, the funding benefits Canada in the end.
But space industry analysts are questioning how long EDC should continue paying for spacecraft to be built at the California plant since MDA’s management and operations have increasingly shifted to the U.S.
Alberta Health Minister Sarah Hoffman is in Ottawa hoping to fend off cuts to federal government healthcare transfers.
Hoffman sat in a meeting of health and finance ministers from across Canada on Monday to discuss federal cutbacks to the Canada Health Transfer (CHT), an annual payment made to each province and territory to address healthcare costs.
Surgeon Brian Day spends more time in the courtroom than in the operating room these days, as he wages a legal battle against the B.C. government for what he says is British Columbians’ constitutional right to get surgery from a private clinic when hospital wait-lists are too long.
His critics warn that, if he succeeds, it will create a two-tiered health-care system and erode Canada’s universal health-care system.
Source: https://www.biv.com/article/2016/10/public-face-private-health-care/
According to a report by Swiss bank UBS, when it comes to overpriced real estate, Vancouver’s “bubble risk” is unmatched on the planet.
According to the UBS Global Real Estate Bubble Index released this week, the ascent in Vancouver’s average housing costs with the growth in average wages, rents and other economic factors make it the destined to encounter a sudden descending rectification compared with 17 other vast cities around the world. The report likewise cautioned that investors are less inclined to see growth in property value in high “bubble risk” cities.
Premier Kathleen Wynne is worried about what she calls “very bad actors” in Ontario.
While defending her government’s new tax on home heating fuels and gasoline, the premier said that the new tax is necessary because Ontarians are “very bad actors in terms of our per capita emissions.” That’s right, the new tax on keeping your family warm in the winter and on your daily commute to work is because Ontarians are “bad actors.”
Source: http://canadafreepress.com/article/kathleen-wynne-blames-your-family-for-costly-new-tax
Over the past two weeks, rumors have been swirling that Canadian Heritage Minister Mélanie Joly is being pressured to impose a new tax on Canadians’ Internet access — an Internet Service Provider tax or ISP tax — a levy one prominent critic described as “a digital tax on everything.”
Earlier this month, I created an online poll asking readers if they favored a Vancouver, B.C.-like tax on foreign buyers of residential property. The results were unscientific but resounding: More than 68 percent of respondents favored it.
The action by the British Columbia government came in August, imposing on foreigners a 15 percent property-transfer excise tax for real-estate purchases in metropolitan Vancouver.
Source: http://www.seattletimes.com/business/bc-like-tax-is-wrong-answer-for-soaring-home-prices-here/