Bringing about a higher level of transparency and accountability in provincial and federal governments to help protect taxpayers from abuse
Families looking to become Canadian permanent residents are being unfairly rejected by immigration officials, say legal experts, and in some cases the federal government may be breaking the law.
The consequence can be devastating for families trying to move to Canada.
The issue involves the government’s failure to provide specific cost estimates in “procedural fairness letters” given to people who could be denied due to so-called “medical inadmissibility.”
Read more at Global News
Among the most insistent critics of the recent proposals by Finance Minister Bill Morneau to tighten up the use of private companies to avoid taxes have been Canada’s doctors.
Canadians generally do not begrudge doctors their above-average incomes. They spend many years training for their jobs, and then sometimes literally hold our lives in their hands. Still, valid questions remain about how much they make and how much tax they pay. Despite some claims, are doctors really in the middle class?
Read more at Maclean’s
Ontario NDP Leader Andrea Horwath used some real-life examples Monday to blast the Liberal record on health care.
With London Health Sciences Centre as a background, Horwath introduced Bev McCann at a news conference.
The London senior said her life has been on hold while she’s been waiting for hip replacement surgery for more than 18 months.
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Horwath blamed the Liberal government and preceding Progressive Conservative governments for decades of cuts and waiting lists.
read more at lfpress.com
FRAUD, abuse and errors in government programs had a cost of $136.7 billion in 2015, according to the Government Accountability Office.
In a nation where $2.8 trillion in annual assistance is paid out, that 95.6 percent accuracy rate is not good enough.
A crackdown is long overdue, and some states are showing how to address the problem.
Read more at whig.com
Health care costs the public sector about $160 billion a year in Canada, a higher per capita cost than most industrialized nations. Yet Canadians are not markedly healthier, nor do we receive better care.
The Commonwealth Fund has ranked Canada 10th out of 11 developed nations for the efficiency of our healthcare system (only the United States was worse). We came at or close to the bottom in access to care, timeliness of care and overall quality of care, and didn’t rank in the top three in any of the metrics reviewed.
Maybe our health care system isn’t as great as we like to think it is. How can Canadian health care move to the front of the pack?
Read more at thestar.com
The federal government recently announced that it is implementing a federal carbon tax starting at $10 per metric tonne in 2018, which will increase by $10 per metric tonne of GHG emissions every year until hitting the $50 per metric tonne mark in 2022.
The carbon tax will come into effect in any provinces that do not have a carbon tax in place by 2018. This currently includes Saskatchewan, Manitoba, New Brunswick, P.E.I., Newfoundland and Labrador and Nova Scotia.
Read more at woodbusiness.ca
Despite policy changes last April to Canada’s refugee health care program, many people continue to be left without adequate access to health care.
That’s the finding that comes out of a series of interviews we conducted recently with refugee service providers in Ottawa.
Health care for refugees in Canada falls under the responsibility of the Interim Federal Health Program (IFHP), and it has had some tumultuous years.
In June 2012, the federal government made significant cuts to the program, leaving many refugees and refugee claimants without access to publicly-funded health care while causing serious confusion among health care providers.
Health care advocates challenged the cuts in the Federal Court and in 2014, the Court found the cuts violated the Charter as they were “cruel and unusual.”
Read more at huffingtonpost.ca
Eight hundred million dollars: that’s the potential price tag of the rising ocean in Vancouver. The city needs a new storm surge barrier to stop flooding if, according to municipal planners, sea levels climb by one metre this century due to climate change.
When discussing this scenario last fall, Vancouver Mayor Gregor Robertson said something that made Andrew Gage perk up and listen from his law office in Victoria. “There are direct costs to our taxpayers, but this is not an act of God,” Robertson reportedly said. “This is tied directly to human activity.”
Translation for Gage: Maybe it’s not just Tracy and Tom Taxpayer who should be on the hook for the new storm barrier. Maybe whoever is to blame for the rising ocean should fork over some cash.
Read more at thestar.com
The Canada Revenue Agency says eight of its employees were fired in the last fiscal year after violating taxpayers’ privacy.
Previously, the agency has not always confirmed if an employee was fired or shuffled out of the CRA for being part of a privacy breach, often citing the employee’s privacy.
A spokesman for the agency says the employees in each case were found to have had unauthorized access to taxpayer information, including one incident that the CRA calls the largest such breach in the agency’s history.
Read more at theglobeandmail.com
Fewer than 20 per cent of employees at Canada’s health and public works departments received mandatory training on ethics, values and conflict of interest between 2013 and 2016, a report from Canada’s auditor general, Michael Ferguson, has found.
The audit on fraud risk management published Tuesday examined both Health Canada and Public Services and Procurement Canada, along with the Canadian Food Inspection Agency, Indigenous and Northern Affairs Canada (INAC) and Global Affairs Canada (GAC). It examined how well the five organizations were equipped to deal with the risk of fraud between April 1, 2013 and October 21, 2016.
read more at nationalobserver.com