Aug 18 2023 — Monitor Mag — Canada is finally following through on its commitment to tax large foreign digital corporations. At least, it is planning to do so at some point after January 2024. The federal government’s proposed digital services tax (DST) on online giants like Meta, Amazon, and Google is heightening trade tensions with the U.S., but that should not […]
Apr 7 2023 — Monitor Mag — Just when we thought we were out, they pull us back in. In three months, Canada was going to be free from the threat of unnecessary corporate lawsuits under the investor-state dispute settlement (ISDS) mechanism in the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). That’s when NAFTA’s controversial investment protection chapter was set to expire for […]
Mar 25 2023 — Monitor Mag — Thus far, 2023 is proving to be an extremely deadly year for Israeli violence against Palestinians. The Israeli military has killed over eighty Palestinians and wounded hundreds more in raids so far this year. Israeli settlers, with the backing of the state, recently attacked the town of Huwara, leaving large parts in ruins, killing one […]
Jan 15 2023 — Steven Staples — Monitor Mag — The federal government’s announcement on Jan. 09 that Canada is buying a fleet of U.S.-built F-35 Lightning II fighter jets came as no surprise. Opposition parties decried the Liberals’ reversal of their pledge to never buy the F-35, spoken by then-election candidate Justin Trudeau in the 2015 campaign. But the writing was on the wall. […]
Jan 10 2023 — Monitor Mag — International trade remains a battleground in 2023, as a growing number of countries question the sustainability of the current rules-based international trading order. Supply chain resilience, reshoring manufacturing, “inclusive” trade, labour rights and decarbonization are the new themes driving economic thinking, especially here in North America. Canada, Mexico and the United States have all, in […]
Apr 19 2022 — Bruce Campbell — Monitor Mag — In response to the brutal inequality of the 1920s and the Great Depression, and under widespread political pressure after World War II, Canadian and other western governments brought in major reductions in income and wealth inequality through tax and transfer policies. It was an era of full employment, high taxes on the wealthy, universal Medicare, […]
Mar 7 2022 — Bruce Campbell — Monitor Mag — In remission for now, the “Freedom Convoy,” led by a small group of well-funded, seditionist and far-right activists, tapped into the grievances of a much larger segment of the population that is resentful of government policies—measures which have triggered anxiety about their ability to earn a living and their future. EKOS pollster Frank Graves and […]
Aug 31 2021 — Bruce Campbell — Monitor Mag — In an August 2021 report, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change concluded the Paris Agreement climate targets could soon be out of reach without immediate and massive greenhouse gas emission reductions this decade. António Guterres, the UN Secretary General, warned the report “is a code red for humanity.” The climate crisis and unprecedented wealth inequality […]
May 18 2021 — Bruce Campbell — Monitor Mag — For more than four decades the economic paradigm that prioritized private market-led policy has been embraced by corporate, academic, bureaucratic and political elites. The paradigm enlisted a variety of well-known policy tools, including inflation control, deregulation, privatization, austerity, balanced budgets and globalization. The corporate-government power relationship that underlies this paradigm is one of capture and […]
Apr 12 2021 — Bruce Campbell — Monitor Mag — April 19 will mark the first Liberal government budget since it was re-elected in 2019—and the first since the coronavirus pandemic struck. Budgets are about choices. Given the monumental challenges going forward and the consequences of not facing them head-on, this budget will have only one precedent: wartime budgets during World War II. The budget […]