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Just remember it's ideologically-induced decay and rot we have and not merely a case of the sniffles. At some point Pinocchio'ss nose will have to be amputated before it reaches his brain if it hasn't already happened.
After having grown up with the constant roar of Highway 401 in the background I have trouble getting excited about a wind turbine. I do feel the province should create a better legal standard for noise and enforce it well, but what is the practical alternative? Carbon emissions must go down and to do that we have to take advantage of the free energy available. We need gigawatt quantities of it. Cities need to be generating more of their own power too. So there's now more than ten different companies selling solar systems to Toronto residents. We could be doing better on wind power but - surprise, surprise - proposed turbines fully two kilometers into Lake Ontario have been blocked courtesy of wealthy homeowners on the lakeshore who feared for their property values. On the other hand, geothermal heating systems are selling like crazy. New buildings of over a certain size are going to require roofs that either support plants and add to the building's insulation or which generate renewable energy.
Strictly speaking, no, the NDP won't be supporting that because it's not going to be part of the budget legislation. It'll be in its own bill that won't cause the government to suffer a loss of confidence if it's defeated. I suspect the Liberals will be hoping the Tories help them out on that one. Previous attempts by the Liberals to negotiate a wage freeze - essentially by strongly suggesting to public employers like school board and hospitals that they negotiate one - failed miserably. An approach that didn't violate collective bargaining would probably have to involve some sort of temporary centralized bargaining process for the whole public sector with the government negotiators making it clear that unions have a choice between a salary increase and X thousand layoffs. Uuuuuuugly! It might be more voluntary than the Social Contract but I bet it would look an awful lot like it.
Unless the Ontario economic picture starts to look better than projected or there is public willingness to accept a large general tax increase raising billions, things remain that icky for everyone involved.
You know how I mentioned business doesn't like the idea of a tax increase....take out "doesn't like the" and replace with "will be driven insane by". Apparently Andrea Horwath is going to have every businessperson in the province shot and dumped in a mass grave or something like that.
Not surprisingly, the Bay Street crowd isn’t amused by the New Democrats’ tax-the-rich gambit. Money manager Jim Doak of Megantic Asset Management, a former chairman of the Toronto Society of Financial Analysts, has likened Ms. Horwath’s proposal to “ethnic cleansing.”
“It’s nasty,” Mr. Doak complained to CTV News last week. “She’s defined a group, not by culture or by language, but by how much money it makes, and she wants to get rid of them.”
The tax increase on the $500K is a positive step, but most of that revenue is scuttled away by the HST cut. Then there's all this stupid "reward the job creators" crap. And $500K is far too high to start in terms of taxing high income earners. This doesn't even hit the 1%.
It should start at $100K at most. And for those who protest that "$100,000 isn't all that much", keep in mind that 95% of Canadians earn less than that.
There's a group of Ontario doctors saying "tax us!" But Horwath won't.
Perhaps this is a moot point though, as I'm pretty sure the ONDP is going back this austerity budget.
The budget specifically refrains from allocating any money for public sector salary increases in upcoming negotiations, and McGuilty says if the unions won't accept 0% at the bargaining table, they will pass legislation forcing them to accept a wage freeze. That legislation will of course have Conservative support and will pass.
It would be the height of hypocrisy for the NDP to vote for this budget and a 0% increase and then mount a token vote against the enforcing legislation later on when it's too late, since they are already well aware that the only chance to stop a wage freeze is to amend or defeat the budget itself. Once they pass the budget, they seal the fate of the public service workers.
Doak sounds like a spoiled brat.
It's an extremely modest tax proposal.
According to the Toronto Star, the provincial income tax rate on the portion of income between $78,000 and $500,000 would remain at 11.16%, but rise to 13.16% on the portion of income above $500,000. A person with an income of half a million a year would see no change in their tax rate. A person with taxable income of $600,000 would pay an extra 2% on the $100,000 that exceeds the half-million — i.e., an extra $2,000 (a third of a percent of their taxable income).
We're talking about a class of people here who own vast amounts of wealth, quite apart from their "income", and have the wherewithal to structure their income for maximum tax advantage. Their accumulated wealth doesn't even come, for the most part, from their fantastic salaries, which are often only a small fraction of their annual incomes. Typically, the bulk of their income comes not as salary but as dividends and capital gains, which get favourable tax treatment as compared with salary income. They also can take full advantage of tax shelters, RRSP's, TFSA's, and many other income-deferral, tax-deferral, and income-splitting arrangements - all completely legal. Some of these people pay less income tax than their secretaries do.
Yup.
I think that to get more substantial tax reform, you need to start by opening the door a crack a creating some precedent for increasing taxes. Just raising taxes in income above $500,000/year could be a good Trojan horse for more increases down the road.
I wasn't aware that tax increases were all that unprecedented.
There haven't been any general-purpose increases in almost 20 years.
Hi Doug, you may not know this but industrial wind turbines need to be backed up with "fracked natural gas" because their energy production is intermittent and we don't have the capacity to store this energy. Since we need a steady and stable supple of energy (think black and brown outs), natural gas and it's fracking consequences to our water and health will be necessary.
I will in Bruce County and and live near a nuclear generating station, and live in the heartland of industrial wind turbines. As said already, the view of them on the horizon is not the problem. For me, it is about green washing and who reaps the reward - corporations and particulary oil corporations rather than actual communities, who have lost any right to suggest where they go.
No need to do that at all. You can pair wind power with hydroelectric power for that purpose. When there's a surplus of power water gets pumped uphill, when power is needed more water is allowed to flow through the generators. There's been an advance in battery technology to allow for storage of sizeable amounts of power too. You can see a talk on it here. Let local communities decide where turbines will go they are liable to decide that they will go nowhere, which is why the Green Energy Act removed that power. That probably isn't the best approach but something did have to be done to facilitate the adoption of renewable energy across the province.
Uh, battery storage on the scale you are talking about is NOT available or just over the horizon, nor is there enough water re-pump available to meet peak demands. I really wish people would look at the reality of our energy grid and not the pipe dream. Two facts from the government's green-wash energy plans. If you are an individual producer of renewable energy, as I am, you can not store that energy and sell it back to the grid. You are on or off, no inbetween. Ontario is moving forward on fracking and gas paired energy for quick up and down loss from renewables (a reality) Only gas and coal plants at this stage could provide enough power and the ability to get more hydro-electrical power through environmental assessments is pretty long term, if ever. There is a reason the govenment had so many plans for new gas plants.
As for communites getting to decide why should rural Ontario put up with all this stuff so you can Younge and Dundas lit up like a Christmas tree all night, everynight. If you look at a wind map of Ontario one of the best spots in the province is the Lake Ontario shoreline, not out in the lake, but the shoreline. When I see them lining the shoreline I believe it is isn't out of sight out of mind. Meanwhile solar is getting sqeezed out. Did you know for instance that if, say Wal Mart is building a new building and wants to put solar panels on the roof they will get the more lucrative rooftop solar rate. Wheras a farmer building a new barn is only allowed the ground mount solar rate. One more instance that the green in the Green Energy Act is really about green for the corporate friends of this government.
plus 100 in agreement.
I'd like to bring this thread back on topic to the provincial NDP convention, which ended on April 15. Nobody who was there has posted on it since it ended. So what happened?
Here's what the MSM are saying:
Come to think of it I haven't seen Radwanski's plan for socialism in one province after the Tory-Libs have so hopelessly bankrupted it, either. We can only assume that he doesn't have one.
I was there and there was huge disappointment from labour. Andrew Mackenize didn't win the Presidency and the party brass ran what amounted to a slate even running and getting Taras Natyshak elected as a VP and Michael Mantha elected as Northern rep. Mantha's election was particularly controversial as the previous rep who was going to run again had endorsed Mackenzie for president and then Mantha jumped in at the last minute. The pro-Andrea crowd blames Sid Ryan for everything. Of course Ryan can be divisive but it goes beyond that. He did offer up a conciliatory speech on Sunday though say MuGuinty was the main enemy and bringing out a worker from Electro-Motive. There is no one from the OFL on executive for the first time in the history of the party. While Neethan Shan is a step forward for the party that has been very white in the past, his presidency was compromised by the way it went down with the leader and the MPPs getting involved. There was even a provincial office employee running around gathering Shan supporters while wearing a headset. Such a blatant example of the party bureaucracy getting involved.
Not a good idea to piss off labour seeing as they co-sign the election loans and offer up lots of cash. It's not as if big business is quite ready to start supporting the ONDP even if they claim they are not your grandfather's NDP.
Sid Ryan is not "labour." He's not even the OFL, although he may think he is. I have projected a breakdown on how many Nash real-time supporters followed him when he tried to bring them over to Topp on the second ballot; not many.
That sounds like a serious error, if you mean no one from labour; really?
OFL for sure. Richard Eberhardt who Mantha defeated for Northern Rep does have a labour background. He's the only one I think with any labour connection. Natyshak and Mantha have "labour" backgrounds too but of course they are there for other reasons.
I thought the executive voted to abolish slates at its pre-convention meeting.
Ok, so only a rich province can dabble in socialism. A bankrupt province needs a few terms of capitalism to get off life support. Interesting thesis. Someone should let Alberta know.
I don't know about that, but like minded people will always come together to push their agenda, concerns, issues, what have you. Has been ever thus in every organization. Nothing particularly wrong with it as long as people are open about it I guess.
The apparent absence of high ranking labour reps from the executive is surprising considering the extent to which Horwath was the "labour candidate" in the leadership convention. She didn't have the exclusive support of labour but she certainly had the support of most of the labour leadership, particularly the OFL ie CUPE, Steel and OPSEU (and not only Wayne Sameulson and Irene Harris, then OFL President and Secretary-Treasurer but also Sid Ryan, then head of CUPE Ontario).
double post
It seems clear the ONDP is prepared to leave organized labour to twist in the wind under the McGuinty/Hudak austerity program.
Is it time for a real labour party in Ontario?
Very doubtful under Andrea. She has worked with the labour movement all her life: a degree in Labour Studies, followed by her first job with the Hamilton labour movement for several years, programming and providing literacy, numeracy and ESL training for workers. Then she worked in the Hamilton Community Legal Clinic system which is unofficially linked to labour, providing public legal education to groups working with tenants, injured workers and people with disabilities. She made her name as Co-chair of Hamilton's very successful 1996 Days of Action organized by the Labour Council and Hamilton unions, and rode that into a city council seat in 1997. She was very much the labour candidate in the 2009 leadership campaign; in Hamilton to say NDP is to say labour, since it is the most labour-dominated city in Ontario's NDP, and has been so ever since Walter Rollo became Minister of Labour in 1921 in the Farmer-Labour government. The first time David Lewis ran for Parliament in a general election in 1945 he chose Hamilton to run in. It's true Andrea has to show she is not just a puppet of the Steelworkers Union, but that certainly doesn't mean she has to morph into Bob Rae.
So, Radwanski wrote this in The Globe: "The closest [Horwath] comes to traditional NDP doctrine is calling for a surtax on people making more than $500,000 per year. But other big asks - [including] . . . caps on the pay of public-sector executives - are more populist than left-wing."
Rubbish! Different countries currently reduce income inequality using two methods:
Calling one method left-wing and the other populist seems like nonsense to me.
Blah, blah, blah!
If she's so fucking labour-friendly why didn't she even mention the public-service wage freeze at the convention?
She's so fucking terrified of the NDP being seen as labour-friendly that she'd rather hand hundreds of millions of dollars to fucking capitalist employers as a reward for giving people McJobs than raise a word of protest at making the public sector workers pay for the financial crisis of the rich.
Compared with Rae Days, this is at least as big a betrayal.