On Wednesday, the Bank of Canada increased its policy rate to 5 per cent, a level not seen since March, 2001. Citing continuing tightness in labour markets and still-firm consumer spending, the bank reasoned there is still excess demand in Canada’s economy, and that Wednesday’s rate hike was necessary to continue to bring activity in line with productive potential. But if that adjustment is already happening, this hike may turn out to be one too many.
Among the many challenges a central bank faces in a fight against high inflation is the mixed signals it gets as it hikes rates to get inflation down. In Canada, the year-over-year headline inflation rate fell to 3.4 per cent in May. However, most of that was driven by a fall in…
Following passage of the Ford government’s Bill 60, Ontario’s ministry of health now has the option to contract out to independent clinics the provision of certain kinds of health-care services normally provided in hospitals. Its opponents have cast the bill as favouring “privatization” and as a threat to the Canadian model of public health care. An emotionally charged television commercial commissioned by the Ontario Public Service Employees’ Union (OPSEU) conjures up a dystopian future where stone-faced capitalists in dark suits push a gurney with a teary-eyed post-surgery patient through dim hospital corridors and present her with a touch screen that she must push to pay for pain relief. In case anyone…
This past May, six family physicians in a Kingston, Ont., practice retired, leaving no successors to refill a prescription, check out a child’s persistent cough, the pain in dad’s knee, mom’s upset stomach, grandpa’s aches and pains, granny’s forgetfulness—every family’s worrying signs of potentially failing health. Ask any of the approximately 8,000 now-orphan patients about this being a crisis.
Combine that with hours of waiting in an emergency room—even longer to be admitted—and longer still to be discharged from hospital in the absence of an alternative, either a nursing-home bed or what people really want: home care and support in the community. These and other problems have been around a while. What’s new is that they are…
