Government and Democracy

We have a national childcare plan at long last, and we cannot afford to lose it to political games in Ottawa.

It’s just too important.

It has been more than 16 years since the previous Liberal government tried to bring in a national childcare program, only to see Stephen Harper’s Conservatives kill it after Jack Layton helped them defeat the Paul Martin government

This column originally appeared in the Toronto star.

To hear executives at two of Canada’s largest retailers and a private long-term care home chain tell it, they did a pretty bang up job handling the pandemic – and promptly wrote themselves hefty bonus cheques to prove it.

We’re talking about millions in bonuses, on top of salaries that already put them in the top one per cent.

It’s been more than a year since the coronavirus pandemic took hold and air transportation was severely restricted.

Statistics Canada released the latest economic statistics on air travel this week. Unsurprisingly the numbers paint a troubling picture.

Large Canadian airlines carried less than 800,000 people in January. That’s nearly 90% less than the number of passengers the same airlines carried in January 2020.Operating revenues are down 85% compared to January 2020. GDP created by the industry fell even further, to just 11% of pre-COVID levels.