Update

Last November we pointed to articles about how individual taxpayers are contributing an increased share of government revenue.

In a story entitled What the Finance Minister hasn't told Canada's middle class taxpayers, Barrie McKenna reports for the Goble and Mail how more and more tax breaks are being directed at - dare I say it - special interest groups.

“Canadian families keep more of their hard-earned dollars as a result of the government’s actions to reduce the tax burden,” the 419-page document points out.

So it might come as a bit of a surprise to many Canadians that the government’s long road back to a balanced budget is as much a story about rapidly growing tax revenues as it is about more widely discussed spending cuts.

McKenna says that this is partly due to the fact that more people are working and incomes are rising so more people are paying more income tax and partly due to the cutting of taxes elsewhere so that the ratio of income tax to other taxes has shifted. Tax breaks have come in the form of a reduction in the GST from 7 to 5 percent,

"But the drift started long before that – the result of lower tariffs from free trade, lower corporate tax rates and other policies that have shifted more of the load of government onto individuals." ...

The party – and the Reform Party from which it emerged – has long espoused broad-based tax cuts for individuals. But what it has delivered up to now has been mainly targeted relief to very specific groups, for often political reasons. The budget touts 160 tax measures that have saved Canadians $160-billion since 2006, including breaks for children’s sports, art lessons and firefighters.

 And so it goes.

Sound Science

About a year ago, some of us attended a CLLN (Canadian Literacy and Learning Network) webinar by T. Scott Murray. Most of us were surprised when he used the images of brain scans to bolster an argument.You can see our response here.

Today I watched a TEDTalk by Molly Crockatt (embedded below) about how neuroscientific research becomes headlines and headlines become products.

It seems that we were right to be skeptical about the science behind the claims Murray makes in the webinar.

At about the 4 minute mark she explains how including pictures of brains make us more likely to believe the claims made in an article or webinar.

The science of diagnosing reading diseases through the examination of brain scans may be junk but the idea of using brain scan images to add credibility to your claims is backed up by research. And so it goes.

“If someone tries to sell you something with a brain on it … ask to see the evidence. Ask for the part of the story that's not being told.”

Shocked

As you may know, we have been following the controversy over the Temporary Foreign Worker program. Here is the latest update from PressProgress:

Prime Minister Stephen Harper has delivered a scathing critique of the controversial Temporary Foreign Worker program, saying the government has been "assisting these companies to work around the marketplace in a way that disadvantaged Canadian workers only for the sake of the bottom line profit."

In an audio recording leaked Wednesday to a Vancouver newspaper of a recent roundtable discussion with local ethnic media, Harper's blunt analysis of the troubled program raises the question: will the Conservative government follow through to crack down on employers that abuse the TFW program — after facilitating its rapid expansion since 2006.

Most recently, new regulations governing the TFW program dropped a provision from an earlier draft that explicitly banned employers from accessing the TFW program if they were convicted of human trafficking, or of assaulting or uttering threats to an employee.
Meanwhile, Employment Minister Jason Kenney remains a defender of the program to tackle what he says is a skills shortage in Canada.

Listen to Harper for yourself. Is Harper blaming the bureaucracy and the previous government for the whole debacle?

Read some extracts over at PressProgress.

My favourite one is

There must be plans for companies to transition to a permanent workforce. What I say is if you really need temporary workers permanently, then that means we need permanent workers who become Canadian. And they have a right to stay here, and they have a right to bargain with their employer, and they have a right to be treated fairly, and they have a right not to be sent back to where they came from the first time they don't like something.

Not bad for the leader of a notoriously anti-union government.

Hope from across the aisle

"Ontario P[rogressive] C[onservative] education critic Rob Leone is introducing a bill that would give employers a tax credit for helping workers go back to school and earn their high school diploma." 

Tax credit proposed for businesses that help employees upgrade education, 

Kristin Rushowy, Toronto Star

In light of the recent kerfuffle over the Job Grant Program and the history-making year we are having, this iteration of the Conservative penchant for tax cuts seems like an idea worth exploring.

"“The idea behind the bill is to encourage this idea of lifelong learning because it has positive implications not just for the economy … but also for families and children.”

Hope

Here is what Ontario Premier Kathleen Wynne said yesterday about education:

 “We need to find space to focus on higher-order skills like creativity, collaboration, community and critical thinking,” she said. “Quite frankly, I know that many of you have been pushing for this for some time and fostering this learning in your own schools and boards."

Premier Kathleen Wynne: Ontario education needs to move beyond focus on 3Rs,
Kristin Rushowy, Toronto Star

Are you listening over there at the Ontario Adult Literacy Curriculum Framework?