Perspectives: A Canadian Journal of Political Economy and Social Democracy

For decades, social democrats have championed industrial policy, prioritizing the governance of the economy and market regulation as a way to build a more just and democratic society. But as a new era of neoliberalism — or post-neoliberalism — dawns, economist D.T. Cochrane sees Canada at a crossroads, in urgent need of a renewed vision of industrial policy. The Canadian Labour Congress’s senior e...

Unifor president Lana Payne explains what’s at stake for Canadian workers in response to Donald Trump’s tariff threats and how unions are adapting to meet the moment. In this episode of Activists Make History , a new podcast series from Perspectives Journal , we sit down with Lana Payne, president of Unifor and a trailblazer in Canada’s labour movement. Payne shares her remarkable journey from uni...

Earlier this fall, The Alberta Federation of Labour released a new report entitled Power in the Public Interest : Re-regulation and increased public ownership in Alberta’s electricity sector . A headline from a press release of the report reads: “Albertans have overpaid $24 billion for electricity since 2001.” This is long before the interruptions and constraints caused by more recent inflation or...

In a joint statement by Environmental Defence Canada released on October 28th at the Transit for Tomorrow Summit in Ottawa, a number of mayors and municipal representatives from cities across Canada, public transit activist groups and transit agencies like the STM in Montreal, declared : “Transit is the most powerful method of tackling traffic congestion. It is the lifeblood of economic growth in...

Alex Himelfarb argues that neoliberalism – or “capitalism with the gloves off” – has become embedded in the fabric of Canadian government and society, and has not yet died off despite its reckoning. Neoliberalism is not dead, according to former Clerk of the Privy Council and Broadbent Institute research fellow Alex Himelfarb . The ideology that pervades government and society in Canada and around...

Chiara Padovani details her political journey in organizing renters and defending tenant rights against the encroachment of for-profit interests in housing.   Toronto, like other cities across Canada, has been coping with the rising housing affordability crisis as inflated rents, increased evictions, and massive real estate investment firms have become more commonplace. For Chiara Padovani , a soc...

It is important for policymakers to use evidence, like data and statistics, to make sound policy decisions. However, governments across Canada and in other places around the world continue to make policy decisions that affect trans lives and livelihoods, while data collection and maintenance on trans people remain lacking or incomplete. Despite advancements in other forms of policy supporting 2SLG...

Despite Canada’s celebrated health care model, a lack of robust and universal drug coverage has resulted in a “fragmented system” that leaves ordinary Canadians without adequate care. Bill C-64 titled An Act Respecting Pharmacare was recently passed in Canada. Providing the framework for universal public drug coverage in Canada, Bill C-64 has been celebrated by some as a welcome and necessary step...

Walmart is notorious for its anti-union practices, pouring millions of dollars into union-busting campaigns every year. But this didn’t stop Angela Drew Kimelman, an Organizer at Unifor, from helping unionize over 800 workers at a Walmart warehouse in Mississauga, Ontario.  In our first episode of Activists Make History , a new podcast series from Perspectives Journal, Kimelman shares the concerns...

'Activists Make History' is a new podcast series from Perspectives Journal, hosted by Peggy Nash, author of 'Women Winning Office: An Activist’s Guide to Getting Elected' As a union activist, feminist advocate, and former member of Parliament in Canada's House of Commons, Nash knows what it's like to start from scratch against the odds. In Activists Make History, she&...

Private nursing agencies are have grown in number and use amid the crises facing the healthcare sector by filling the gaps in chronic understaffing. The Canadian Federation of Nurses Unions’ new report Opening the black box: Unpacking the use of nursing agencies in Canada reveals just how much this reliance on nursing agencies has cost . Dr. Joan Almost, Professor of Nursing at Queen’s University...

Corporate tax breaks and loopholes in Canada have contributed heavily to the affordability crisis argues Silas Xuereb, researcher at Canadian for Tax Fairness , PhD candidate at University of Massachusetts, Amherst, and author of a new report entitled, How tax breaks are worsening Canada's housing affordability crisis . Outside of calls to build housing supply, Xuereb draws attention to a les...

When public services malfunction, such as the Phoenix Pay scandal or the failure of the pandemic travel ArriveCan app occur, it is easy to point the finger at the government and the political party in power. As Chris Hurl and Leah Werner describe in our latest Perspectives Journal podcast episode, there is some truth to this, but The Consulting Trap: How Professional Service Firms Hook Governments...

The price of carbon is in the news again with Conservatives in Canada, and around the world where carbon pricing schemes exist, fuel backlash against the climate policy. Adding to their opposition to carbon pricing policy is today's profit-induced inflation and affordability crisis. For the centrist regimes that pushed for this market-mechanism as their main climate policy plank, they’ve been...

After a long summer break for the Perspectives Journal Podcast , we’re back! With the problematic Temporary Foreign Workers Program in the news, as well as growing anti-immigrant sentiment across Canada and other Western countries, we kicked off this season asking what’s behind this narrative, who’s to blame, and what the working-class is doing to fix this problem. While the mainstream media casts...

The 2024 Ellen Meiksins Wood Lecture was held on Thursday, May 30th in partnership with Toronto Metropolitan University’s Faculty of Arts. A special thanks to TMU Interim Dean of Arts Amy Peng for hosting this Broadbent Institute event. Ellen Meiksins Wood was one of the left’s foremost theorists on democracy and history, and often promoted the idea that democracy always has to be fought for and s...

The housing crisis is apparent for most ordinary Canadians, especially for those paying rents and mortgages that feel increasingly out of reach. Recent data shows that among wealthy countries, Canada's housing cost increases have seen the fastest decoupling from income growth, and with that accelerated price inflation, according to Jeremy Withers, a new class of housing investors has grown. A...

To help make Canada into  a “good society,” Ed Broadbent was a major proponent of “industrial strategy” throughout the 1970s and 80s as leader of Canada’s NDP, to use this policy vision for social democratic change and challenge the dominance of market mechanisms, ultimately to the working-class the tools to build a just and equal economic democracy. Today, comprehensive policy plans in the United...

In today’s apparently well-performing capitalist economy, working-class ordinary Canadians aren’t feeling like they live in a "Good Society" and acutely feel these economic pressures. Price inflation, lagging productivity, and record profits. These are the economic indicators that policymakers use to say that the economy is doing so well, and which ordinary Canadians feel as an “affordab...

This conversation with Nancy Fraser explores her work on the crises of capitalism, democracy, and participation . She is interviewed by Nick Vlahos, Deputy Director at the Center for Democracy Innovation, and Adrian Bua, Marie Curie-Sklodowska Fellow at the Autonomous University of Barcelona, ahead of their forthcoming co-edited special volume of the journal Democratic Theory on "How to Democ...

Earlier this fall, the federal Liberal government tabled Bill C-56, the Affordable Housing and Groceries Act , with the aim of jump starting construction of purpose built rental homes with a GST rebate on these kinds of projects, and increasing competition in the grocery industry by strengthening the federal Competition Bureau, upgrading its ability to investigate companies and closing loopholes i...

Perspectives Journal sat down with Professor Carolyn Whitzman to dive deeper into her Globe and Mail article published last August entitled Canada’s progressive parties have lost the plot on the housing crisis . This was a response to Prime Minister Trudeau’s earlier blunt statement that “ housing is not federal responsibility ” while ordinary Canadians experience an unprecedented housing crisis....

On October 17th, 2023 the Green Economy Network , a coalition of labour, environmental, and social justice organizations working to build a green economy in Canada, held a workshop in Ottawa at the Canadian Labour Congress to present its updated “Common Platform”, an action plan for investments in job creation and emissions reductions in key economic sectors. To accompany the Common Platform, the...

In this episode, we’ll take you to the book launch event of Seeking Social Democracy: Seven Decades in the Fight for Equality , held on October 22nd, 2023 at the Toronto Reference Library featuring co-authors Ed Broadbent, Frances Abele, Jonathan Sas, and Luke Savage. The quartet of authors take you behind the scenes of the book, explaining the impetus and political philosophies and principles tha...

Perspectives Journal chats with Broadbent Institute Policy Fellow Ethel Tungohan; Canada Research Chair in Canadian Migration Policy, Impacts and Activism, and Professor of Politics at York University. Her new book released late this summer is called Care Activism: Migrant Domestic Workers, Movement-Building and Communities of Care, published by University of Illinois Press . Care Activism is abou...