Celebrating Public Service
Notes for talk at Public Policy Forum Dinner, April 11, 2013 I am delighted to be here with family, friends and colleagues this evening – an evening that can only be understood as a celebration of Canada’s public service. Such celebrations are pretty rare these days though the public service is an institution that deserves … Read more
The Trouble With Austerity: Economics as Ideology
A somewhat abridged version of this post first appeared in The Toronto Star here Governments here and elsewhere are increasingly preoccupied with cutting even as evidence piles up of its harmful consequences on people and the economy. Austerity is not even delivering the balanced budgets its advocates promise. Even the IMF is now preaching balance … Read more
The Age of Austerity
Notes: Keynote talk, CCPA Post-Austerity session, Toronto, January 9, 2013 We are living in the “Age of Austerity” or at least so says David Cameron, the UK’s Prime Minister. He made this announcement in 2009 at the Conservative convention just before becoming prime minister. This meant, he explained, that he would have to fix the … Read more
Bargain Basement Citizenship and the Decline of Democracy
We ought to be outraged. Just about every day our media provides a new account of the decline of our democracy: the inadequacies of our electoral system and allegations of electoral fraud; the high-handed treatment of our Parliament through inappropriate prorogations and overuse of omnibus legislation; a government ever more authoritarian and opaque, resistant to evidence and reason, and … Read more
Taking Back Our Democracy: Bridging the Generational Divide
These are tough days for Canada’s parliamentary democracy. Having endured years of steady erosion, it is now under frontal attack. Journalists and public leaders, across the political spectrum, have begun to document the injuries. We are seeing stirrings of outrage. But this assault on our democracy could not be happening without some complicity or at … Read more
Going, Going, Gone: Dismantling the Progressive State
![Pyne, William Henry; Combe, William (1904) [1808] "An Auction " in The Microcosm of London or London in Miniature (Volume I ed.) London: Methuen and Company](http://afhimelfarb.files.wordpress.com/2012/04/christies_colour.jpg?w=440&h=240&crop=1)
Now that some time has passed since the federal budget it might be useful to step back and assess what it says about where the government is taking us. Reaction has been pretty muted. The “centrist punditry” generally see this as an incremental budget, business as usual, “balanced” and “mature”. For our Globe editorialists, for … Read more
The Price Of Austerity
Austerity, we have been told repeatedly by pundits and political leaders, is the defining issue in these uncertain times, the solution to our economic challenges. We have been given fair warning that the next federal budget will be first about cuts – cuts to government even as we continue to cut taxes. We can expect … Read more
A Bad Day: What Now?
C10, the omnibus crime bill, passed third reading and is now over to the Senate for what is supposed to be sober second thought. The vote could only have been a depressing anticlimax for the many Canadians who were fighting to stop or amend this legislation. And the implacable inevitability of its passage must surely … Read more
