Oct 14 2021 — Heather Scoffield — Toronto Star — It’s convoluted, it’s taken years of give and take, and it could have been a lot stronger, but the world has finally come to a basic understanding on how to clip the wings of the web giants — and Canada could become a beneficiary if it plays its cards right. Last week, 136 countries signed […]
Oct 1 2021 — Heather Scoffield — Toronto Star — When it comes to climate change, money can move much faster and with a lot more impact than government policy. That’s something federal Environment Minister Jonathan Wilkinson hopes to harness, but it’s something the Alberta government seems to fear. Wilkinson is in Italy this week, working with his German counterpart to raise billions of dollars […]
Sep 23 2021 — Heather Scoffield — Toronto Star — One of the subplots of the election campaign was a war on wealth that every party engaged in, hoping to garner votes from disgruntled Canadians with their competing plans to tax the rich, sideline elites or make companies more compliant. But we’re on the other side of that now and the campaigning politicians are now […]
Sep 21 2021 — Heather Scoffield — Toronto Star — A minority Parliament shouldn’t stand in the way of the new government pushing ahead on some key parts of the affordability agenda. After all, the Liberals, Conservatives and the NDP all made meaty promises on reducing the costs of homes, on bolstering wages and on the continuity of COVID-19 benefits. They agreed, more or less, […]
Sep 19 2021 — Heather Scoffield — Toronto Star — The promises are certainly glitzy: a million jobs, a million houses, perhaps even more! The details are far less glamorous, at least from an electoral standpoint. The market, not politicians, will do most of the heavy lifting. But that shouldn’t let governments off the hook for making sure our recovery from the pandemic is at […]
Sep 6 2021 — Heather Scoffield — Toronto Star — There won’t be any voting booths set up on campuses this federal election — and that’s a problem for all of us. Elections Canada had a good thing going in 2019, when it set up stations at universities and colleges across the country, recognizing that young people had low turn-out levels that could be boosted […]
Aug 22 2021 — Heather Scoffield — Toronto Star — They were the darkest of days for Canadians during the pandemic, but the most promising in terms of political collaboration. As long-term care homes reported wave after wave of fatalities due to COVID-19, a horrified country cried out about the conditions, lack of investment and financial underpinnings of the system we have set up helter-skelter […]
Aug 18 2021 — Heather Scoffield — Toronto Star — We learned on Wednesday that inflation is at its highest point in two decades — and Conservative Leader Erin O’Toole is raising the alarm. Not without good reason, but without reasonable solutions. The consumer price index for July was 3.7 per cent, the hottest it has been since 2003, taking markets by surprise. “Uncomfortable,” as […]
Aug 16 2021 — Heather Scoffield — Toronto Star — Erin O’Toole thinks he can pull Canada out of its economic rut, and his election platform depends completely on him doing so. But he’s betting he can do it without the full force of women. The Conservative leader took the unconventional step of issuing a full-fledged book of policy proposals on Monday, something that usually […]
Aug 15 2021 — Heather Scoffield — Toronto Star — As Justin Trudeau headed down the path to Rideau Hall on Sunday morning and launched Canada’s 44th election, the country was in a precarious spot. Ontario was reporting 511 new cases of COVID-19 but no deaths — signs of a worrying but not yet confining fourth wave. Statistics Canada’s most recent assessment of the labour […]
Aug 13 2021 — Heather Scoffield — Toronto Star — The Canadian Taxpayers Federation is a cheeky small-c conservative interest group that knows how to get a rise out of people with its gimmicks. Remember the inflatable Mike Duffy they launched to represent Senate largesse, or the giant national debt clock that ticked its way into our national psyche in the 1990s? This week, true […]
Aug 9 2021 — Heather Scoffield — Hamilton Spectator — For years now, Toronto MP Adam Vaughan has personified the Liberals’ housing policy, an outspoken advocate within the government ranks, pushing to entrench Ottawa in the subsidy game and making affordable housing his cause célèbre. But if he thinks the federal work is done on the affordable housing front, he should think again. As he […]
Jul 31 2021 — Heather Scoffield — Toronto Star — The last time Stephen Harper doled out investment advice during a financial crisis, he characterized the global meltdown of 2008 as a “buying opportunity” and then went on to design his fiscal policy accordingly. Harper, in a minority Parliament, soon had to about-face on austerity and introduce a deficit-financed stimulus budget that enabled an economic […]
Jul 26 2021 — Heather Scoffield — Toronto Star — When the federal Liberals rolled out with fanfare last week their plan to deal with the human cost of cutting greenhouse gases, their timing was dubious. It’s been two years, after all, since the Liberals committed to legislating a “just transition” for people working in fossil fuels who lose their jobs as Canada moves toward […]
Jul 22 2021 — Heather Scoffield — Toronto Star — It was almost like a flashback to the election campaign of 2019. Justin Trudeau was out in Hamilton and Brampton this week, announcing hundreds of millions of dollars in government funding for affordable housing. The NDP is complaining it’s just not enough. And the Conservatives are saying he’s doing it all wrong. The housing issue […]