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Articles by Marjorie Cohen
Interprovincial Trade Barriers - A Solution Looking for a Problem?
Canada, Economy • February 25, 2025 • Canada struggles with the threats from the United States that include imposing not only high tariffs, but even the unimaginable – annexing the country. In a highly defensive mode, the economic future of the country is beginning to be debated.
Can more for-profit health care be stopped?
The new health accord between Ottawa and the provinces provides more money, but it could also easily bring an even faster rollout of for-profit provision of health care across the country. Right now, it’s pretty much up to the provinces to determine health care spending. But there are big differences between what they are doing and saying about for-profit care.
Pay transparency is not enough to close the gender pay gap
It is hard to understand why the B.C. government is so reluctant to enact pay equity legislation. Other provinces did this a long time ago, and they are much better than B.C. in having lower gender pay gaps. The B.C. government tabled new legislation, the 2023 Pay Transparency Act, and says it will move the province toward pay equity. Why not just do it? Rather, B.C.’s government is inching forward in closing the horrendous gender pay gap in tiny, little steps.
11.7% or 55% - which is too big a wage increase?
The contrast between the treatment of the wage increases for doctors in B.C. and what is happening with education support works in Ontario could not be more striking. In response to CUPE’s initial demand for a 11.7 per cent wage increase the Ford government invoked the extraordinary pre-emptive use of a legal weapon, the notwithstanding clause, to prohibit the strike. The union shifted its wage demand to six per cent.
Opinion | Provinces need to have a plan for health-care funding — or they shouldn’t get the money
Every day brings fresh evidence of profound mismanagement in health care: closing emergency departments, burned-out nurses quitting the profession, fewer Canadians with family doctors, hospitals full of older people with nowhere to go. Meanwhile, premiers want the federal government to ship them another $28 billion for health care, no questions asked — on top of the $45 billion they already get yearly. What’s wrong with this picture? Accountability.
Opinion | Provinces need to have a plan for health-care funding — or they shouldn’t get the money
Every day brings fresh evidence of profound mismanagement in health care: closing emergency departments, burned-out nurses quitting the profession, fewer Canadians with family doctors, hospitals full of older people with nowhere to go. Meanwhile, premiers want the federal government to ship them another $28 billion for health care, no questions asked — on top of the $45 billion they already get yearly. What’s wrong with this picture? Accountability.
The Ontario election campaign produced some surprisingly good ideas for Canada
No big ideas during an election campaign? Au contraire — the Ontario election campaign produced some unexpected and innovative proposals. This doesn’t happen often, mostly because politicians don’t dare to dream. And, as Kim Campbell infamously put it during her brief tenure as prime minister, the election period is too short a time to discuss serious issues.
National Nurses Week: Time to Fix Dire Nursing Shortages
“A bed is just a bed without a nurse to provide care” The crisis in health care in Canada has many dimensions, but the most obvious is the problem with labour shortages. For years, researchers, advocacy groups, and various government commissions identified the need for a national health care labour force strategy. It isn’t as though it is a puzzle about what to do. Ensuring an adequate supply of well-trained labour in any area does not just happen because it is needed – it needs to be planned.
Beyond Mother's Day: Caring for Mothers
Flowers are nice on Mother’s Day but ensuring access to quality care and quality care work would be better. And last much longer. Mothers are primary users of care services and primary providers of care, both paid and unpaid. But Canadian governments at all levels still cling to neo-liberalism and the shop-worn idea that the private marketplace knows best.
Opinion | Too many dangers in promised privatization of care economy Original
Federal Conservative leadership candidate Jean Charest is promising a “sea change” for health care by directing more public funds to privately delivered care. In Ontario under Doug Ford this is already happening as his government quietly expands the for-profit share of publicly funded care. Sixteen thousand long-term care beds were recently licensed to for-profit facilities and more are in the works despite the widespread evidence of appalling conditions of work and care in many of these homes.
Do Nothing by Halves That Can be Done by Quarters: Federal Budget 2022
Economy, Public Goods • April 21, 2022 • Marjorie Griffin Cohen A consistent theme in the media, when writing about healthcare in Canada, is to use disparaging adjectives, such as ‘dilapidated,’ ‘ramshackled,’ ‘exhausted.’ They are not exaggerations. The main thing we know is that healthcare here underperforms, and does not meet current needs, a fact distressingly visible during the disasters of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Mandating care: recommendations for Canada’s new ministerial mandate letters
Many care workers are on the verge of burnout, with ballooning workloads and no significant relief nor improvement to their wages and working conditions on the horizon. Things are likely to get worse during this administration unless the government decides to take seriously the need for a mandate for care.
It's 2021 and it's time to care about care
Among wealthy countries, Canada is a laggard in providing for care. Canada now spends a smaller proportion of national income on social services (18 per cent) than it did in the early 1990s (20 per cent). Since the mid 1990s, Canada has consistently spent less on social programs than the average for OECD countries. Even the U.S. government spends more on social programs than Canada does.
The Christian Labour Association of Canada (CLAC): Between company and Populist Unionism – Labour / Le Travail
Cite this article MLA Tufts, Steven et Mark Thomas. "The Christian Labour Association of Canada (CLAC): Between company and Populist Unionism." Labour / Le Travail, volume 80, 2017, p. 55–80. APA Tufts, S. & Thomas, M. (2017). The Christian Labour Association of Canada (CLAC): Between company and Populist Unionism. Labour / Le Travail, 80, 55–80. Chicago Tufts, Steven et Thomas, Mark "The Christian Labour Association of Canada (CLAC): Between company and Populist Unionism".
Opinion: More women in politics? There is a way
Justice Minister Jody Wilson-Raybould answers a question during Question Period in the House of Commons in Ottawa, Monday, April 18, 2016. Adrian Wyld / THE CANADIAN PRESS Canada has a democratic deficit that is fairly widely acknowledged. The first past the post electoral system denies the majority of people a voice in decision-making.
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