It was a very business-friendly fiscal update, with the Ontario government promising a spate of business tax relief in the face of Trump’s tariff war, which impacts the manufacturing sector of the province’s economy.

By far the most consequential item in the whole update is the province’s commitment to mirror the federal government’s unwise tax policies on capital cost allowances with the Ontario Competitiveness Tax Cut. Ontario intends to lower the cost of capital investment by allowing businesses to immediately write off 100 per cent of the value of many new assets, such as machinery, equipment, or computer software. This policy will provide more than $8 billion in tax relief over five years to businesses that qualify. Combined with a similar tax cut announced in the 2026 budget, these measures will cost Ontario coffers more than $12 billion over five years.

On top of those breaks, the province is implementing a $1.17 billion tax cut for small businesses (from 3.3 per cent to 2.2 per cent over a three-year period), which it promised in the 2026 budget. Adding it all up, it amounts to $13.17 billion in business tax cuts spread out over five years.

Support for workers who are impacted by the tariff war, in contrast, has been paltry. Nearly all the provincial government’s policies in response to tariffs have been aimed at supporting businesses owners, but it has directed very little to workers. While the Ontario government is pulling out all the stops for businesses, there was no new announcement for workers in the fall statement.

Instead, the Fall Economic Statement is a brag book of gifts to the corporate class. They brag about cutting Ontario’s business marginal effective tax rate by 75 per cent, from 14.4 per cent to just 3.6 per cent, compared to the OECD average rate of 19 per cent. They also brag about their business-first policies over the course of their tenure, giving businesses $10.2 billion in “savings and support” in 2026 alone, with policies such as:

• Delaying the 2018 minimum wage increase from $14 to $15, crowing that wages are lower today than they would have been had that wage increase gone ahead as the previous Liberal government had promised.
• Further reducing employer premium rates for the Workplace Safety and Insurance Board (WSIB), the main government body responsible for providing support to injured and ill workers and their families. Employers have saved billions in WSIB contributions since 2018, meaning there is less available to workers when they need it the most.
• Cutting employer payroll taxes meant to fund health care and education. The 2020 Ontario budget raised exemptions to the Employer Health Tax and cut the Business Education Tax Rate, saving businesses hundreds of millions annually, while education and health care are chronically underfunded. 

A business-friendly statement, not a worker-friendly one

The news hasn’t been good for workers. Ontario’s industry association, Canadian Manufacturers and Exporters, says about 50,000 jobs have been impacted by the tariff war so far. Statistics Canada says 27,200 manufacturing jobs in Ontario were lost between December 2024 and December 2025.

We know more losses may be underway this year. Last year, the Financial Accountability Office of Ontario (FAO) predicted “57,700 (-6.8 per cent) fewer jobs in 2026” in manufacturing compared to 2025.

We have already seen 1,000 workers laid off by Algoma Steel, jobs lost to Stellantis’ decision to move Jeep production from Brampton to the U.S., and the loss of more than 700 jobs due to layoffs at GM’s Oshawa plant.

Job casualties are piling up in Ontario—but you wouldn’t know it from the province’s economic statement.

Funding corporations with public service cuts

While the provincial government is giving businesses all the love, it is neglecting public services. The chart below shows just how lopsided Ontario government investments are as the province weathers the tariff storm.

Base funding amounts for education, health care, and post-secondary education remain unchanged from the 2026 provincial budget. They were underfunded then and are still underfunded now.  

The FAO estimates Ontario would need to increase education spending by an average annual rate of 2.1 per cent over the next three years just to maintain current service levels. But that’s not what’s happening.

In the 2026 provincial budget, the province projects Ministry of Education spending will only increase at an average annual rate of 0.6 per cent between 2025-26 and 2028-29. Compared to the FAO’s cost driver projection, this results in a funding shortfall of $0.7 billion in 2026-27, $1.2 billion in 2027-28 and $2 billion in 2028-29. The FAO also predicts school board operating funding to decline by about $365 per student (2026-27 constant dollars) between 2025-26 and 2028-2029. The CCPA has estimated the accumulated school budget shortfall since 2018 reached a whopping $6.5 billion this year.

Those are, effectively, public service cuts.

It’s a similar story for health care services. In the 2026 provincial budget, the Ontario government projected health care spending will increase at an average annual rate of 3.2 per cent between 2024-25 and 2028-29. The FAO says it will result in a $2 billion funding shortfall in 2027-28 and a $3.8 billion shortfall in 2028-29. The FAO predicts the rate (per 100K people) of hospital beds, long-term care beds, and funded nurses will decline between 2025-26 and 2028-29.

Again, more public service cuts.

Same thing with post-secondary education, where the FAO projects a funding shortfall of $1.7 billion in 2027-28 and $2.2 billion in 2028-29—at a time when universities and colleges are reeling from the loss of international students due to new federal rules.

If we add up the funding shortfall amounts for these programs—based on FAO estimates—between 2026-27 and 2028-29, we get a total shortfall of $13.3 billion over three years for vital public services. Bear in mind, that amount would be required to maintain current service levels, to say nothing of solving the crises currently afflicting Ontario’s public services.

There’s also a list of other funding shortfalls that are getting swept under the rug, including (but not limited to) real ODSP spending per case is declining over time, the province is failing to meet its commitment to lowering child care fees to $10-a-day, and post-secondary education students are worse off thanks to OSAP cuts.

Businesses aren’t the only entities impacted by the tariff war and the rising cost of living—real people are struggling to pay the bills. They’re getting a pittance from the Ontario government.

The post Ontario’s Fall Economic Statement a gift to the corporate class appeared first on CCPA.

Affordability was a major consideration at the ballot box, but municipalities aren’t as well-positioned as the federal and provincial governments to address things like the cost of food and housing.

In Northern Ontario, where the cost of food is typically higher than in the south, experts are predicting that food costs are likely set to increase as winter approaches, due to rising gas and diesel prices.

While the cost of food had been broadly identified as an election issue, so few levers exist to alleviate the problem on the municipal level.

In the final days of the Ontario municipal election, the federal government announced $20 million in funding through the Local Food Infrastructure Fund: Community Support Stream. Initial recipients were two Toronto food banks, with funding delivered as part of the federal government’s 2026 National Food Security Strategy.

According to a recent report by Food Banks Canada, a record number of Canadians visited food banks, citing 2.3 million in March 2026.

Food scarcity also remains a problem in some key areas. During one of my recent workshops in the Warden Woods community of Scarborough, residents talked about the lack of a grocery store in their community and how getting to the closest one requires taking a car or getting there by bus.

While current conversations are rightly centred on increasing grocery store competition, the lesser-known reality of food deserts remains.

Provincewide, housing affordability crises exist—from market rentals to homeownership, continuing to decimate household budgets of individuals and families whose incomes are not high enough to sustain housing market demands, amid other costs of living necessities.

Despite over a decade of efforts to address a nationwide problem, through the federal government’s previous National Housing Strategy as well as subsequent provincial and municipal efforts, progress on housing has modestly improved, more in some regions than others.

The lack of strong rent controls at the provincial level are adding to the affordability problem.

Municipalities are limited in their ability to fund solutions

In Ontario, where the history of downloading, amalgamation and more recently, governance changes to how municipalities engage in local decision-making, municipalities have added another layer of complexity and volatility to its political and policy environment.

This was most evident near the end of the municipal campaign period.

Near the end of the Ontario municipal election, affordability emerged as the defining issue for voters, placing greater attention on the topic of municipal finance and taxation.

It forced candidates, particularly in larger municipalities, to share what revenue-generating measures were necessary, to make their plans a reality.

And it’s a clear indication of what the electorate wants to see prioritized as the dust continues to settle, whether incumbents were victorious or swept out of office.

Increased transparency over taxation and spending should always be welcomed, but there needs to be much greater awareness about the fiscal constraints of municipalities. Municipal governments are legally not allowed to run deficits, and larger ones like Toronto come with semi-fixed costs, as employers for their region.

Municipalities are increasingly being pressured to address an affordability crisis that they themselves cannot solve alone. Commitments to making life more affordable without increasing revenue is a hard fiscal reality for municipalities to deliver on.

Even more so, affordability measures that focus on expanding access to recreation and social services, and/or increasing the amount of people who qualify for rebate programs would require local governments to have to spend more to make it happen.

Finding ways to help put more money back into people’s pockets, when current ones are stretched so thin is noble. But knowing the limitations of your ability to do is honest policy-making.

Without expanded funding support from senior levels of government, the future looks more like the present. Municipalities have some revenue-raising possibilities, but not enough to tackle the depth of the problems—especially in Ontario’s big cities.

So perhaps the biggest takeaway is the role that provincial and federal governments must play in addressing the issues and concerns that were so present at the ballot box in municipalities across the province.

The post Ontario municipal elections are over but the affordability crisis remains appeared first on CCPA.

To help answer that question, back in March 2026, Health Minister Marjorie Michel announced the creation of the Pharmaceutical and Life Sciences Sector Task Force to “explore innovative, made-in-Canada solutions that enhance competitiveness, and long-term growth to support reliable and sustainable access to pharmaceutical products in Canada.”

But the task force was not a balanced body. Martin LeBlanc, one of two co-chairs, was the co-founder and vice-chairman of CellCarta Biosciences Inc., a global contract research organization headquartered in Montreal that provides a variety of services to pharmaceutical companies to help them get their products approved for marketing. Out of the other 26 members, 23 were directly connected with the pharmaceutical industry—including the president of Innovative Medicines Canada (IMC), the Canadian lobbying arm for Big Pharma. 

Where were the medical researchers who do the laboratory research and test new drugs, the patients who are the ones who need the drugs, the academics who study the pharmaceutical industry, the workers who do the work of making the drugs? None of them were on the task force.

Although the final report, released towards the end of July, contains some important information and reasonable recommendations, much of its content reflects the overwhelming industry bias in the task force membership, both in what is included and what is left out. 

An industry wishlist

The report recommends that Canada should “address structural barriers faced by small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) and not-for-profit organizations developing made-in-Canada advanced therapies.” But the task force did not consider the possibility of public ownership of drug manufacturing facilities, as already occurs in Sweden to a limited extent.

There is some discussion about economics but, perhaps not surprisingly, there is no mention that Canadian brand-name prices are the 5^th highest among 30 countries in the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD). Despite these high prices, the report sees it as a problem that Canada has “focused on cost containment” and claims that this priority “may impact the launch of new medicine.” This is a claim that the drug industry makes whenever government talks about taking action on issues that the industry opposes, or does not adopt initiatives that industry is pushing. A few years ago, when Ontario was on the cusp of making drug companies disclose their payments to doctors, the IMC voiced the same threat of not introducing new drugs into the Canadian market. 

The task force wants immediate access to new medicines once they have been assessed for safety and efficacy by Health Canada, presumably on the grounds that they will better the lives of Canadians. In making this recommendation the task force is knowingly distorting what it means when Health Canada approves a new drug. “Approval” simply means that the drug provides some health benefits and is safe enough to be used. Approval does not mean that the new drug is superior or even as good as products already on the market, nor does it mean that the new drug is safer than existing products—and it does not mean that the new drug provides value for money.

Comparing the benefits and safety of new drugs to existing ones and making recommendations about value for money is the job of Canada’s Drug Agency (CDA). Most of the time, when CDA recommends that provinces and territories should fund a new drug, it bases that recommendation on a price reduction, as do similar organizations in many other countries. The Task Force report wants the CDA to stop the practice of publicly publishing its price reduction

recommendations, leaving the public in the dark about the true value of new drugs. 

Annual reports from the Patented Medicine Prices Review Board (PMPRB), the federal organization whose mandate is to keep the price of patented medicines from being excessive, have documented the decline in the proportion of revenue that companies are spending on research and development (R&D)—from a high of nearly 12 per cent in 1995 to 3.7 per cent in 2023. 

Industry complains that these figures are misleading because the PMPRB is using an out-dated definition of what constitutes research spending. IMC wants the PMPRB to use a definition of R&D “that includes activities in the social sciences and humanities, including donations and grants given to organizations that support community programs, education and environmental activism, as well as research in the social sciences, such as bioethics.” 

Though supportive of research in other ways, these activities do not fulfill the original objectives of the agreement between the federal government and IMC to create research jobs, advance science and grow the Canadian pharmaceutical R&D industry. The task force report backs up industry’s claims with a call for the federal government to “moderniz[e] and migrat[e] the current reporting requirements regarding R&D, which reference an outdated 1987 definition.” 

The report frequently uses the terms “innovation” and “innovative.” Industry frequently uses the term to mean drugs that use a new mechanism of action, drugs that are new dosage forms, drugs that are made using new manufacturing technology. But if you ask patients and clinicians, innovation means drugs that either prolong meaningful life or that improve the quality of life. By that definition only 10-15 per cent of new medicines are truly innovative—a major therapeutic advance over existing drugs. Without defining innovation the task force report leaves the impression that every new drug is potentially life-saving.

Innovation comes up again, when the task force, seemingly approvingly, cites a 2026 report from the United States Trade Representative that claims that Canada undervalues innovative medicines. The rationale is that Canada does not consider prices in the U.S. and Switzerland, countries that have the highest and third highest brand name drug prices in the world. 

When it comes to covering the cost of drugs for the Canadian population, the report correctly notes that “100 public drug plans and approximately 100,000 private plans, [result] in uneven coverage, administrative complexity and incomplete alignment across decision-makers”. But it does not make the jump to recommending a national universal first-dollar pharmacare plan. Perhaps unsurprisingly, because this is not an option that industry supports.

Watch out for what’s coming

Consider the overlap between parts of the report and a recent article co-authored by the IMC president. Both praise Australia for taking a number of industry friendly actions, both point out that because of lack of action Canada is less attractive as a “first-launch market”, i.e., a country where new drugs are marketed early in their life cycle. Neither point out that Australia is also not a first-launch market.

At this point, we should be watching closely the degree to which Mark Carney’s government adopts the recommendations of an industry-friendly task force to the benefit of drug companies and the detriment to Canadians.

The post Is Canada about to give the pharma industry its wishlist? appeared first on CCPA.

We appreciate the opportunity to provide input on the current minimum wage review and the process for setting it in Prince Edward Island. Our detailed submission outlines reasoning and evidence to support key recommendations to ensure that the minimum wage provides sufficient protection for workers on P.E.I.. 

We also encourage Islanders to reach out to the Employment Standards Board and share their thoughts via email to labourrelations@gov.pe.ca. Just be sure to include “Minimum Wage Review Feedback” in the subject line. The last day for submissions is October 30th, 2026.

1. Substantially increase the minimum wage to $20 in three years.

The current minimum wage does not sufficiently reflect the cost of living as captured by Prince Edward Island’s living wage calculations. We recommend implementing a plan to raise the base to $20 within the next three years and continue monitoring the gap between it and the living wage.

While the living wage includes a regional breakdown, the minimum must be sufficient to cover the highest costs in the province. As we outline in our living wage reports (2026 is forthcoming), we could do more to address regional inequities through investments in public services, affordable housing, affordable transportation, and more. We do not recommend regional minimum wage rates, which could intensify disparities; instead, we recommend that the provincial minimum better reflect costs. The living wage report also includes a provincial weighted living wage average based on where the population resides. In 2025, that provincial living wage was $22.77, which leaves a significant gap, which has increased in 2026 (report forthcoming). 

A significant minimum wage increase is a crucial response to the living wage gap.

Arguments against raising the minimum wage lack empirical support. Businesses often oppose minimum wage increases, claiming they will have no choice but to raise prices, which will increase inflation or lead to job loss. Since the 1990s, real-world evidence shows that even significant minimum wage increases have little to no effect on job loss. In Ontario, a significant minimum wage increase led to employment growth even in sectors known for low wages and precarious work; overall unemployment fell, wages rose, and racialized workers saw significant gains in particular. As for inflation, businesses pass on only a fraction of the increase in labour costs through higher prices; the extent depends largely on demand and supply, not a simple cause-and-effect relationship. Broader macroeconomic factors overwhelmingly determine costs and employment levels. 

Providing workers with a living wage improves their health and their ability to bring their best to the workplace. We should also recognise the negative impacts of a low-wage economy on government revenue and expenditure, and on society; when workers are stressed, it takes a toll on their health and increases their need for health care. For employers, ample evidence shows that living-wage employers benefit from lower turnover rates and thus lower training costs, and they find it easier to recruit and retain employees who take fewer sick days.

Substantially increasing the minimum wage can also help reduce income, gender, and racial inequality. While 5.18 per cent of P.E.I. people work for the minimum wage during 2025, another 24.3 per cent work below $20 an hour. ¹

Lifting low-wage workers’ wages recognizes that there are disproportionately more women and racialized workers earning below this amount (almost 60 percent of those earning minimum wage are women, and 25.6 percent of employed women earned less than $20 an hour, compared to 23 per cent of men).

The minimum wage review should seek to advance gender equality and non-discrimination wage policies. As the CCPA report shows, even though P.E.I. has one of the lowest gender pay gaps when it comes to hourly wages, there is a gap that is still significant when considering annual income. The gap is largest for non permanent residents. The government should also strengthen pay equity, by extending it to the private sector.

2. Establish a minimum wage formula that reflects the cost of living and work effort.

It is time to think more holistically about the minimum wage rate. Ensuring the base wage is not eroded by inflation is important, but not having your income erode is also not getting ahead. Furthermore, adjusting a base rate that is too low only by inflation is insufficient. A minimum wage that leaves full-time adult workers with too little income to cover basic expenses is not doing its job. 

The current plan for Prince Edward Island’s minimum wage, which is currently $17.30, is to increase to $17.60 on April 1, 2027. Once it reaches $20, we recommend adjusting it using the province’s annual overall Consumer Price Index, or the annual provincial average of combined CPI food and shelter costs, whichever is higher, plus one percent. The additional percent recognizes that adjusting for inflation only prevents wage erosion and does not provide gains for these workers, which would also help narrow the gap between the minimum and the living wage. Regular, annual reviews are critical, but the struggles of low-waged workers are not just about the hourly minimum wage amount. 

3. Strengthen all labour standards. 

The minimum wage should be strengthened alongside other labour standards, and while P.E.I. recently made some changes, more is needed. For example, workers should never have to provide a medical certificate to take short-term sick leave; it burdens healthcare professionals. The goal should be to ensure access to paid leave to support sick individuals to not go into work. We need to consider how employers can better support workers’ health and well-being more broadly—especially if the aim is to retain employees. This includes providing more paid vacation leave (note that Quebec just added a third week of vacation), as well as leave to care for loved ones, attend medical appointments, manage personal responsibilities, and take sick leave (with the choice left to the worker). Trust is key.

Regarding the standard work week, it is undeniably important to lower the threshold for overtime pay; at 48 hours, Prince Edward Island had the longest work week in Canada (tied with Nova Scotia). 44 hours is an improvement, but still very long; we recommend the regular work week should be no longer than 40 hours. We must remain vigilant about actual hours worked. We do not want employers to try to avoid paying overtime by hiring more part-time workers instead. What is particularly concerning about the current trend toward “task-based” or precarious work is that employees have no guaranteed hours; any reforms should address this.

Labour standards are minimum standards for workers, designed to improve working conditions and reduce precariousness. When governments speak of “striking a balance,” we must remember that employers already have significant leeway and power, and these standards are meant to rebalance. Workers deserve better protection. The government must ensure these standards apply to all employees (no matter the industry or immigration status). The government should also proactively enforce these standards, rather than in response to individual complaints.

We recently outlined changes needed for Nova Scotia, many of which would apply to P.E.I., including more paid leave, and removing incentives for hiring part-time or gig workers. The government should also conduct research, consult with the public, workers, unions, community organizations, and businesses, and develop recommendations to ensure employment standards keep up with changing labour market conditions, including issues such as “gig” workers, AI, and just transition processes.

4. Supporting low-waged workers beyond raising the minimum wage.

There are often proposals from business owners that there are better ways to support minimum wage workers than raising the minimum wage. We would argue that there are policies and programmes that would complement increasing the minimum wage, to get at some of the root causes and strengthen support to these low-waged workers, including stronger labour standards. However, given P.E.I.’s perennially low average wages, it is also critical to work towards broader policies that will support economic security for everyone. 

We do not advocate using the tax system, and tax cuts, as the road to affordability for these workers. Across the board tax cuts such as further raising the basic personal amount, do not sufficiently help these workers, while resulting in a significant loss of revenue that could be used to strengthen public services, and other income transfers, as we outline in our living wage reports. The P.E.I. Child Benefit, and the P.E.I. Essentials Benefit, are excellent mechanisms that could be further enhanced, providing more assistance to those who are struggling when their wages are insufficient. We also underline the importance of further expanding public services, including public health care, investing in making transit more available and accessible, expanding non-profit child care, and funding non-market affordable housing (co-ops, social housing). The government also has a mechanism to cap rental increases that should continue to be strengthened, along with improving tenants rights. As is outlined in the CCPA submission about this cap, Islanders deserve a rental freeze. 

These low waged workers need more income security, but they also need a safety net that will support them. 

5. Utilize more robust data to inform decisions.

To design and implement an adequate minimum wage policy, the government needs more timely, robust, reliable data. Data should support an evidence-based approach enabling an intersectional analysis of labour market impacts, including by gender, race, residency status, and ability. The only race-based income and work-related data at a provincial level is from the Census. The labour market survey provides only Atlantic regional data disaggregated by race, but not by province.The government could invest more in provincial data collection or oversample national data as needed, supporting and building a local database accessible to the public, like Newfoundland and Labrador’s Community Accounts. 

Submission of the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives–Nova Scotia and MacKillop Centre for Social Justice. 

The Nova Scotia office of the CCPA opened its doors in 1999. With the help of our loyal supporters and research associates, we continue to raise debate and propose policy alternatives that will get us closer to achieving a more economically and socially just—as well as environmentally sustainable—province and Atlantic region.

The MacKillop Centre for Social Justice is a community and advocacy organization based on Prince Edward Island with a focus on the social justice issues faced by Islanders. 

The post Closing the gap to the living wage: Prince Edward Island needs to stay the course appeared first on CCPA.

Twelve months ago, this newsletter wrote about reconciliation on the altar of extractive nationalism—the federal government’s willing and deliberate subjugation of Indigenous rights in service of resource industry profits.

This year’s National Day for Truth and Reconciliation is a stark reminder that little has changed. In fact, with Bill C-39, the federal government proposes to go even further in permanently curtailing Indigenous and environmental opposition to new projects, in part by establishing “regions of national interest” (i.e., sacrifice zones) that are not subject to typical assessment processes.

C-39 comes on the heels of recent regulatory amendments that exempt oil sands facilities and gas power plants from environmental impact assessments, one of the most consequential pieces of environmental deregulation in decades, as Anna Johnston explains. It also follows the federal government’s efforts to court foreign investors with an à la carte menu of Canadian assets, including airport privatizations. And the announcement of a major new tax cut that will, in part, subsidize new oil and gas projects.

These developments do not yet amount to the bulldozer politics of China (or of Chinese companies in East Africa)—the brutal state displacement of entire communities in service of new infrastructure projects—but they represent several worrying steps in that direction.

Indigenous groups in Canada are deservedly up in arms. But Indigenous reconciliation and energy investment can still go hand in hand, as Indigenous Climate Action argued in a report published earlier this year, Energy Sovereignty. There is a lot of good stuff in here, but it boils down to putting Indigenous Nations and businesses in control of new projects on Indigenous land. That’s a very different approach from governments bulldozing assessment processes so that foreign investors can build pipelines, mines, and data centres in record time.

If you’re looking for more good ideas, you’ll find plenty of them in the new 2026-27 Alternative Federal Budget. The AFB is, as always, a comprehensive blueprint for progressive public policy in Canada and an essential resource for activists. I was the lead author on the climate and artificial intelligence chapters, which address many of the issues discussed in this newsletter over the past year. Shift Storm readers may also be interested in the infrastructure and industrial development chapters, among others.

But that’s not all! There was a dizzying amount of new research released this month and I’ve done my best to cram it all in. Let’s hop to it.

Storm surge: this month’s key reads

For Canada, the climate crisis is already in full swing—and just getting started

Every five years, the federal government conducts a comprehensive assessment of how climate change is unfolding across the country and where things are headed. The latest Canada’s Changing Climate Report is now public, and I think it should be required reading for, well, just about everybody in Canada. (If nothing else, please skim the headline statements.)

There is lots of good science here about rising temperatures—Canada is warming twice as fast as the global average—and all the spin-off consequences that entails, from longer fire seasons to thawing permafrost to rising sea levels. But I am particularly concerned with the future projections.

Based on current policies, Canada is on track for five degrees Celsius of warming by the end of the century. That figure rises to a staggering seven degrees of warming if governments around the world continue to roll back their climate policies. At those temperatures, Canada’s glaciers would all but disappear, forest fires would consume three times as much land every year as they do today, and every part of the country would be subject to a calamitous cascade of droughts, heat waves, and/or storms.

The most important takeaway, however, is what happens if we change course. Getting to net-zero emissions, which Canada and many other countries around the world have nominally committed to, leads to a dramatically better outcome—little more extreme than what we’re already experiencing.

It’s a useful reminder that while climate change is as real and problematic as ever, we have every incentive to fight for a better future.

Research radar: the latest developments in work and climate

Signs of hope in global emissions, even as Canada moves in the wrong direction

A widely publicized report from the UN Environment Programme, Limiting Overshoot, acknowledges that the global goal of limiting warming to no more than 1.5 degrees above pre-industrial levels is now essentially unachievable. Many commentators framed it as an admission of defeat—that the fight against climate change is lost. That is incorrect and unhelpful. We may have locked in a certain amount of warming, but, as discussed above, everything we do moving forward matters in terms of limiting future damage.

One sign of hope is that global emissions from fossil fuels may actually fall in 2026 due mainly to the crisis in the Strait of Hormuz, as CarbonBrief reports. It’s a strong piece of evidence in support of supply-side fossil fuel policies—i.e., reducing coal, oil and gas production to curtail demand, rather than (as industry and petro-states would have it) claiming that demand must fall first.

Unfortunately, Canada is moving in the complete opposite direction. While the prime minister has admitted that his oil-first agenda will increase emissions, a new analysis from the Canadian Climate Institute illustrates just how bad it’s going to get. At this rate, we would be lucky to hit our 2030 emissions target by 2050. Net-zero by 2050 in Canada is completely off the table.

Clean electricity turns the corner

Two new reports, The Future is Electric from the Transition Accelerator and Electrification from the International Energy Agency, document the staggering rise of (clean) electricity in the global energy system. Although we’ve been talking about the renewables boom for some time, only in 2025 did fossil fuel consumption for electricity generation actually decline. That marks a significant turning point, and it is a key reason why the long-term outlook for oil and gas demand is so bleak.

For fossil fuel importers, such as Europe, another perk of transitioning from fossil fuels to electrification and renewables is job creation. Hundreds of thousands of workers are already employed in the EU’s clean economy, according to a new report from the European Environment Agency, which is far more than are at risk in the fossil fuel industry.

Oil stands on the precipice of an unpredictable collapse

Clean electricity may be a win-win for fossil fuel importers, but it is a big problem for fossil fuel exporters, including Canada. In Playing the oil endgame, the think tank E3G puzzles out what falling oil demand means for producing countries. The vital takeaway is that the greatest risks of economic and social fallout stem from “disorder in the transition, rather than the rate at which demand declines.” In other words, it’s going to get messy. As Matt Hulse and I warned in Heads in the Sands, a place like Alberta is going to witness its oil sector decline gradually at first and then collapse suddenly and unpredictably. We’d better have a plan in place for when it does.

In that context, building a new oil pipeline, which the federal government seems hell-bent on doing, is just about the least sensible plan possible. The Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis explains why it’s such a bad idea in a new report, Assessing Alberta’s proposed West Coast Oil Pipeline. The paper concludes that the pipeline’s ~$40 billion price tag would almost certainly never be recouped, which would either fall on the public (yet another fossil fuel subsidy) or on oil producers themselves (ironically undermining their competitiveness).

The case for liquefied natural gas (LNG) keeps getting weaker

LNG is in a stronger position than oil, but even here the argument for new investment is shaky given the exponential growth of renewables. A new article from IEEFA warns against Canada stumbling into a “bull trap,” which is an investment signal that appears positive in the short-term but is likely to reverse. While there is demand for LNG today, an excess of supply will come online around the world in the coming years. Many proposed Canadian projects will never be viable. That finding echoes an earlier report from the Pembina Institute, The LNG Gamble, which concluded that long-term demand for LNG in Asia is unlikely to materialize at the scale required to justify new investments in Canada.

As a reminder (and as a new report from STAND.earth points out), LNG investment in Canada is being driven mainly by foreign (mostly American) corporations, creating few jobs or net economic benefits, increasing greenhouse gas emissions, raising consumer energy prices and running roughshod over Indigenous opposition. These are ugly projects, and the public will be left holding the bag if and when the industry goes bust.

Data centres go brrr

Does this go in the climate section or the AI section? Either way, lots of research on the data centre front this month, starting with a pair of reports from the Pembina Institute, Footing the Bill and From Principles to Practice, which discuss how data centres could increase electricity costs for Alberta consumers and how the federal government could establish better guardrails for these projects.

A new report from STAND.earth, NVIDIA’s AI climate hoax, pours more cold water on claims that AI offers a net environmental benefit, which is almost exclusively due to the emissions associated with gas-powered data centres. Indeed, in Alberta, the provincial government is actively working to link new data centres with increased oil and gas production, as the Narwhal reports. Corporate Europe Observatory reaches a similar conclusion in a new article, “A deadly alliance of Big Tech and Big Oil,” which exposes how tech companies are using the fig leaf of carbon capture to justify massive new investments in fossil fuels.

And in Power under pressure, researchers at S&P Global document the bitter irony of how AI infrastructure itself is threatened by climate change. Droughts, in particular, are a big problem for data centres and for the hydro, nuclear and gas plants that power them (which is, incidentally, yet another argument in favour of wind and solar).

Dark clouds: artificial intelligence on the horizon

First they came for the schools

The education sector is, in many ways, ground zero for the impacts of AI on society. Tech companies are making a big push to get their AI products into schools, governments and many educational institutions are largely acquiescing, and teachers, parents and students are reeling. These issues are well summarized in a new policy brief from the Canadian Federation of Teachers, which calls for, among other things, clearer protections for students and greater public control over educational technologies.

It’s important to remember that nothing about AI is inevitable, as New York City proved recently by banning AI in primary schools. In a democratic society, we decide the pace of change.

See also a new report from UNESCO, The algorithm in the room, which includes more than two dozen essays from global thinkers addressing a wide range of related issues. A useful primer on the big questions facing education in the AI era.

Then they came for the workers

The UK-based Centre for Economic Policy Research published an interesting article, New jobs in 140 years of data, which attempts to draw lessons from previous technological revolutions and apply them to the AI era. The big takeaway is that even if AI systems automate a large share of tasks (the metric that many researchers use), they are unlikely to automate a large share of jobs (the metric most people actually care about). There are two big caveats. First, task automation can make jobs worse for workers even if they don’t get laid off (through intensification, alienation, etc.). Second, past technological revolutions created a lot of new jobs as well, and it remains to be seen whether modern AI will do the same.

Calls for AI governance grow louder

BC Policy Solutions published a new report, A roadmap for building BC’s AI public policy framework, that provides a comprehensive overview of AI issues in the province and next steps for governance. Its recommendations echo our own Citizen’s Guide to AI with an emphasis on collective ownership and democratic control over AI systems.

The federal government recently concluded its consultation on AI transparency. The CCPA submitted comments, in which we recommended maximum expectations of transparency across the entire AI supply chain. But we had concerns about the process, as Rachel Pettigrew writes for the CCPA blog. Stronger transparency rules are absolutely essential, but they will not, on their own, address any of the risks or harms that AI is causing.

Three important new books for understanding the current moment

Looking for something meatier than a policy report? The inimitable Naomi Klein and Astra Taylor published End Times Fascism and the Fight for the Living World, which exposes the fatalistic alliance emerging between tech bros and the far right. The venerable Alex Himelfarb published Breaking Free of Neoliberalism in Trump Times, which charts a path for Canada away from Carney’s corporatocracy. And the brilliant Paris Marx published Hyperscale, which unpacks the data centre industry and its consequences for our collective future. All three are on my holiday wish list.

Got questions about AI? Ask the CCPA on Oct. 15

The CCPA’s AI research team will be talking about our AI research program and answering your questions about AI and data centres on October 15th. Register for the free public webinar here!

The post Bulldozer politics comes to Canada appeared first on CCPA.

Canadians answered the call—and have stopped travelling to the United States, chosen Canadian products at a premium, and changed their investment decisions. Over and over again, evidence shows Canadians are doing their part in this sensitive moment. What about their governments? 

“Buy Canadian” is more than a consumer mantra. It is also a call for governments to make purchases in line with Canadian workers, industry and unions. One in three dollars spent by governments goes to public procurement—the purchase of goods, services and construction work. The federal government alone spends roughly $40 billion each year on contracted work. 

This is an industrial lever. Rhetorically, our governments have committed to pulling that lever to support Canadians. The federal government’s Buy Canadian Policy, Ontario’s Buy Ontario Act and New Brunswick’s New Brunswick First Procurement Strategy are three examples.

Rhetoric, however, is easy. But what of the real-world policy action? To answer that question, we must survey federal, provincial and territorial government procurement policies advancing “Buy Canadian.” Where do these policies exist—and how do they navigate harsh trade rules, avoid maple-washing, and mitigate supplier loopholes? 

Today, “Buy Canadian” public procurement is more of a performance by government than the substantive industrial policy tool it could be. Only half of the surveyed governments have any real policy at all and only four have a passing grade. The onus to Buy Canadian falls disproportionately on individuals. In other words, our governments are flunking the class.

How governments can fail at buying Canadian

Buy Canadian public procurement involves preferential treatment for suppliers based on their origin and local returns. The theory is that local preferences support domestic employment, minimize transaction cost between governments and their suppliers, and spur growth. Significant data supports this position. 

One economic analysis suggests the Buy Canadian movement could add $10 billion to Canada’s gross domestic product (GDP). It is also true that domestic preferences can sometimes increase government expenditures, as critics of the policy warn. However, the point of Buy Canadian policies is not to lower costs but to increase value for money. Buying Canadian offers better value because it minimizes uncertainty and generates downstream benefits. 

In a global environment in which international trade dependence is a vulnerability, governments cannot afford to be neutral to the origin of their goods, services or construction work. The short-term savings of always picking the lowest-price supplier carries significant long-term costs. 

Until recently, Canadian governments fiercely opposed domestic preferences in public procurement. As recently as 2023, the federal government argued Buy Canadian policies “are unfairly punitive for Canada’s trading partners.” Canada is among a small number of what international trade circles see as procurement restriction maximalists. While most governments refrain from limiting their ability to buy locally in bilateral trade deals and at the World Trade Organization, Canada has voluntarily bound all levels of government—even down to the municipal and school board levels in some agreements. 

This expansive coverage is managed through procurement thresholds—the contract value floor at which covered entities must comply with trade rules. Figure 1, below, shows that Canada has relatively low and inconsistent thresholds. In practice, this has made explicit support for Canadian suppliers, like a scoring advantage for Canadian bids (bid preference), difficult. 

Policymakers have softened their maximalist position in recent years. The direct threats to Canadian companies and entire sectors from the Trump administration’s trade wars, international supply chain disruptions and competitive economic nationalism has made “procurement localism” attractive. This attraction to buying local is widely shared by the public. 

Canada’s trading partners including Europe, Australia, the United Kingdom and Mexico are also warming to procurement localism, which could make them amenable to unorthodox interpretations of existing trade rules. The European Union in particular is leading the way with new local procurement efforts, including its proposed Industrial Accelerator Act and related Buy European measures. This is in addition to the vast majority of EU procurement contracts that are awarded to EU vendors.

Put differently, governments may be able to get away with more industrial strategy than before. In theory, this is exactly what Canadian governments are anticipating.

Navigating international trade commitments is only one hurdle—another is so-called “maple-washing,” or the act of misleadingly labelling something as Canadian even if it is not.  For example, supermarkets introduced Canadian labelling schemes to promote products which were made outside of Canada. This maple-washing phenomenon extends to governments, too. 

It is easy to advertise an initiative as pro-Canadian without changing procurement behaviour, as the federal government has at least twice. In January, the government claimed the Toronto Transit Commission’s purchase of 55 subway trains was made under the Buy Canadian Policy. In truth, the purchase was not related to the Buy Canadian Policy. 

Similarly, in September, the government suggested Via Rail’s purchase of passenger cars was “in line with the Buy Canadian Policy.” This tricky language ignores that the contract was solicited prior to the Buy Canadian Policy’s creation. A functional Buy Canadian Policy generates its own outcomes rather than claiming coincidental Canadian purchases. If Canadians are going out of their way to buy Canadian, then so should their governments.

Policymakers easily maple-wash public procurement because public transparency and awareness is limited. Some jurisdictions in Canada do not offer centralized public contracting data. Among those that do, several governments do not disclose the true origin of their suppliers, so we cannot always be certain if our governments are truly buying Canadian any more than before. This is made all the worse by misleading information. 

The federal government’s Spring Economic Update claimed that it had awarded $528 million under the Buy Canadian Policy. This language is technically right but misleading. This value aggregates all policy mentions by solicitation but not whether they had a material impact. We do not know if the policy is changing anything for certain. 

Saskatchewan, for its part, claimed that 99 per cent of its procurement already flows to Canadian suppliers. This data would be encouraging if Saskatchewan’s definition of Canadian did not also include so-called mailbox firms—companies from anywhere whose only presence in Canada is a business number and listed address. 

Beyond trade rules and maple-washing, domestic spending preferences can still fall flat. Well-meaning procurement policies can fail because global supply chains rarely operate within the boundaries of the nation-state. Multinational corporations, procurement consultants and resellers can skirt new rules through various loopholes. 

The most pressing loophole involves defining origin. If our definition of a Canadian or local supplier is too weak, foreign suppliers can “pass” as Canadian while minimally contributing to our economy or workers. This origin loophole is most likely to rear its head when origin is defined too simply, such as by supplier address or “place of business.” Multinational businesses without a Canadian PO box can also shop around for the trade treaty or policy that gives them the best chance in a Canadian procurement competition.

There are three other loopholes worth mentioning. First, domestic suppliers may enable foreign parties to join their bid in a joint venture. This joint venture loophole is open as long as governments consider those foreign parties as “extended origin” because their partner is Canadian. Second, ostensibly domestic suppliers can subcontract their winning public contracts to non-Canadian parties and labour. Third, and similar, domestic suppliers can source foreign products thereby diminishing the downstream value for local workers and the domestic economy. This sourcing loophole is inevitable to some degree, but it can be problematic if not managed. A vendor sourcing non-Canadian dumped steel, for example, not only diminishes local content value but also undercuts a sensitive industry.

Buy Canadian policies or other local preferences can fail for several reasons. International trade rules limit the ambition of these policies, reducing their overall value. Perverse incentives to maintain the status-quo or exaggerate change, like maple-washing, may also minimize the policies’ impacts. Even when government attempts to maximize local economic benefits in public spending are earnest, they can still fall short due to technical loopholes. A passing Buy Canadian Policy must avoid all these pitfalls and more.

The report card

This study examines and ranks current federal, provincial and territorial Buy Canadian measures found in procurement policies, frameworks and legislation supporting local benefits. Local benefits can be pitched as primarily Canadian or within-jurisdiction to count. Indigenous set-asides and preferences were not counted here. These policies are meaningful and valuable but should not be equated to Buy Canadian policies. Buy Indigenous policies merits their own evaluation with Indigenous engagement. 

In this exercise, the ideal Buy Canadian Policy is characterized by 15 criteria. A jurisdiction that meets all 15 criteria fully navigates the limits of trade rules, the performance of maple-washing and the four loopholes by which foreign suppliers siphon contract value. Table 1 summarizes each criterion and how they are measured. 

These criteria fall into three categories. The first category is the policy’s preference itself. Are Canadian (or local) suppliers advantaged directly or indirectly (content value) and what is that magnitude and coverage? 

Buy Canadian policies typically implement these preferences as either a minimum score advantage (bid preference) to a Canadian supplier or a variable advantage based on how much local content (i.e., labour or goods) the contract would use. Ideally, policies should use both preferences and they should account for more than one-tenth of vendors’ scores for procurement decisions—governments typically create such scorecards as part of their procurement process, dispersing points based on a variety of factors including price and vendor reliability. Table 1 shows a purely hypothetical example of a scorecard in which a Canadian vendor wins a contract over their foreign counterpart after Canadian content and origin are factored into their score. 

When it comes to purchases based solely on price, the policy instead operationalizes that 10 per cent advantage as a discount on local suppliers’ proposed pricing. For example, in Table 1 if price was the only factor, a 10 per cent discount would allow the Canadian vendor to leapfrog the non-local supplier despite their cheaper proposal. These discounts do not carry forward beyond bid evaluations, meaning local vendors receive their full proposed price.

The question then turns to which purchases the Buy Canadian policy actually covers. Trade rules generally prohibit any discriminatory preferences. As such, governments must either target low-value purchases, which is suboptimal, or use existing trade exceptions. The most common trade exception involves national security. For instance, the Canada-EU Comprehensive and Economic Trade Agreement (CETA) excepts procurements “indispensable for national security.” Like most treaties, it further makes an exception for procurement necessary to protect “public morals, order or safety” and “human, animal or plant life or health.” These exceptions are vaguely worded, offering an opening for governments to interpret them in their interests. Alternatively, there are also provincial exceptions for regional or rural development under the Canadian Free Trade Agreement (CFTA), although some governments have recently eliminated them in the name of internal trade.

The second category pertains to public disclosure. Does the jurisdiction have a workable data transparency regime? It is vital that data be publicly disclosed, otherwise maple-washing becomes simple. This transparency can include a waiver (exception) system that is transparent. If a government is repeatedly making exceptions on its purchases without scrutiny, the value of Buy Canadian drops. 

Finally, the third category captures loopholes. Has the policy navigated each potential loophole? Here, we measure origin twice—once for dealing with physical presence and once for additional criteria around domestic labour and corporate control. Each of the remaining loopholes are allocated one criterion.

Below, the governments are clustered together in order of their scores against these 15 criteria. The exact scores for each government are available in the subsequent appendix. 

The achievers: Federal, Manitoba and Northwest Territories

The top tier of governments involve those that have made some effort at creating Buy Canadian policies and navigating some pressing implementation challenges. While imperfect, the federal government, Manitoba, and Northwest Territories are starting in a stronger place than the rest of Canada. 

The federal government’s Buy Canadian Policy was introduced in late 2025. The policy (or framework) is comprised of  several other policies, an avoidable communications challenge. Of those policies, two stand out among the others: the Policy on Prioritizing Canadian Suppliers and Canadian Content (the supplier policy) and the Policy on Prioritizing Canadian Materials (the materials policy). The former provides two benefits to Canadian suppliers: a 10 per cent bonus to Canadian suppliers for covered procurements, as well as a maximum 25 per cent content value benefit for suppliers based on their domestic contribution. 

This policy covers contracts above $5 million in “strategic” areas. The policy’s designers likely specified those areas, like defence and health, in order to anticipate any international trade challenge. Indeed, it appears the federal government is attempting to elicit trade exceptions. This is an ambitious strategy that most governments have avoided. The federal materials policy pertains to sourcing. It requires steel, aluminum and wood product sourcing for contracts above $25 million if they buy enough of those products.

Altogether, the federal government scores an 11 out of 15, or 73 per cent. It is very effective at addressing some loopholes. The policy limits subcontracting through its definition of a Canadian supplier, albeit vaguely. Here, Canadian suppliers cannot routinely subcontract abroad if it results in “minimal” domestic value. Likewise, joint ventures must independently meet the definition of a Canadian supplier. Those suppliers’ sourcing practices are shaped by the materials policy. 

The origin loophole, however, remains open—in part because the government has not included any employment or ownership criteria. The federal government also loses points for its disclosure regime, which offers limited vendor description beyond origin and sometimes number of employees. Information on subcontracting and sourcing is imperative to ensure the government does not exaggerate the policy’s impact, which they have appeared to do at times. The government also loses partial marks for its vague waiver conditions. We do not know when or why some procurements are exempted from the framework.

Manitoba’s Buy Canadian Policy is almost identical to the federal government’s. Its definition of origin is nearly the same, although Manitoba further defines origin for both Canadian and Manitoban vendors. Manitoba also makes use of “strategic sectors” language, which means they can cover higher value procurement despite trade commitments. On this front, Manitoba is more aggressive than the federal government. They have included eight strategic sectors that cover much of provincial government spending. 

Manitoba provides a 10 price discount for Manitoban vendors for provincial strategic sectors, followed by a five per cent discount for Canadian vendors. Manitoba also includes a 10 per cent preference (operationalized as either one-tenth of a vendor’s evaluation score or a discount on financial proposals). This is less ambitious than the federal government’s 25 per cent and is the primary reason why Manitoba receives a lower score. Manitoba does get credit for specifically targeting Canadian-produced steel, aluminum and wood products in construction.

Manitoba scores 10 out of 15, or 66 per cent. It addresses nearly every loophole in some fashion. Like the federal government, it limits subcontracting and requires joint-ventures to meet origin. It further addresses sourcing through content value preferences and construction inputs. Manitoba loses points for limited engagement with employment or control. It also loses points for a functional but incomplete disclosure regime—Manitoba’s public data does not reveal enough about suppliers and their origin nor does the policy make its exceptions public by default. Last, Manitoba loses two points for capping their preferences at 10 per cent.

The Northwest Territories’ local procurement strategy rivals the federal government’s Buy Canadian Policy. It has three interrelated policies: the Business Incentive Policy (BIP), the NWT Manufactured Products Policy, and the Negotiated Contracts Policy. Summed together, these policies encourage local content advantages for recognized NWT businesses. The bid preference varies by the context. It can reach a maximum of 15 per cent or as little as 0.5 per cent. This advantage covers major contracts. The government may also bypass competitive tendering and instead directly award a contract to local or Indigenous parties if there are material interests at play. The policy also defines origin not only by place of business, but also either by the ownership or location of employees—more comprehensive than most jurisdictions.

Northwest Territories scores 10.5 out of 15, or 70 per cent. It has solid coverage, though is docked points for no minimum Canadian bid preference. Instead, it provides a varying preference depending on content value. The policy has similar data transparency limitations to that of the federal government—once again, the capacity for accountability is deeply limited by the public disclosure regime. It is also unclear how the territorial government allows for exceptions under each policy. Finally, Northwest Territories does not fully close the joint venture and subcontracting loopholes. Direct and indirect free-riding from international vendors remains a risk.

To be clear, neither the federal government nor the Northwest Territories are “over-achievers” but rather “achievers.” Both governments have created a functional policy that will generate some gains for local (or Canadian) suppliers. The actual impact of either policy remains impossible to measure because their accountability frameworks are insufficient. This makes maple-washing very possible.

The improvers: Ontario and Québec

This category features two provinces that have improved their Buy Local procurement efforts over time. Both Ontario and Québec were among the first jurisdictions in Canada to introduce Buy Local procurement initiatives. Indeed, both established their respective policies prior to the present Trump threat. In response to this changed context and perhaps public criticism, these provincial governments have improved their strategies, but the policies remain incomplete. 

Ontario’s current suite of policies aims to favour Ontario-based (followed by Canadian) suppliers. The Buy Ontario Act is the latest component of that strategy—a legislative successor to the Building Ontario Businesses Initiative Act (BOBIA). The differences between the two acts are superficial: the Buy Ontario Act now targets municipal procurement where BOBIA did not. The acts, however, were never the substantive component. Instead, it was the policies that followed. 

The current policy defines Ontarian and Canadian businesses (beyond supplier address). It also adds social and economic criteria that can “level the playing field” for procurements covered by trade agreements. This is joined by new provincial requirements for capital infrastructure (Capital Infrastructure Policy), the Industrial and Technological Benefits Policy (ITB) and Fleet Vehicle Policy.

In brief, Buy Ontario has come a long way from its original 450-word enabling legislation in 2022. Today, the province scores 8.5 out of 15 in our procurement grading system (57 per cent). It gets full points for its Canadian bid preference, better coverage of trade-covered purchases and definition of origin, which includes employment factors. Where Ontario is failing the most is data collection. Its data disclosure system barely exists through Ontario Tenders, from which it is difficult to pull large data let alone specific vendor details. Ontario also ignores the joint venture loophole, and only indirectly limits subcontracting and sourcing leakages through its infrastructure content value emphasis. The benefit under Buy Ontario is restricted to a bonus 10 per cent on evaluation scores, which is modest.

Québec’s procurement regime is more complicated than Ontario’s. There is no single policy but a set of actions that favour local suppliers. This started with the previous government’s Buy Québec Priority in 2022. At that time, the Québec government introduced a 10 per cent preference for Québec and, after internal trade thresholds, Canadian suppliers. That preference is primarily delivered through content-value assessments and is not necessarily origin exclusive. This value-add preference continues into 2026 with adjustments from recent orders-in-council. Today, some purchases have a 15 per cent content-value bid price discount (e.g., office supplies) while other purchases are exclusive to local suppliers (e.g., some computer products). These adjustments meaningfully expand the scope of Québec’s Buy Local agenda.

Québec scores a nine out of 15, or 60 per cent, which is the third-highest of any province. It stands out for its relatively sophisticated value-add bid adjustments. It also has effective data transparency through SEAO and, better yet, the Open Contracting Partnership platform. This data still misses some vendor information, especially regarding subcontracting and sourcing transparency. 

Québec loses most of its points for its poor engagement with procurement loopholes. Its policies do not address any of the loopholes directly. Indirectly, the government’s focus on value-add may mitigate some subcontracting and sourcing.

Some recent orders-in-council are illustrative of these awkward supply chain challenges. For example, the government requires laptops to be purchased from Québec-based suppliers. This category of purchase, however, only requires origin and does not include sourcing. This is likely because Québec does not widely manufacture laptops. So, what does this accomplish? There is a difference between paying a premium for domestic labour and paying a premium for domestic resellers. The latter makes for more attractive topline numbers but little impact.

The tryers: Atlantic Canada 

The next category covers provinces that have made some effort to Buy Canadian, often through initiatives that predate the recent fissure in Canada-U.S. relations. That said, the stalling of updates and the lack of policy clarity undermines each attempt.

Of the four Atlantic provinces, New Brunswick may be the most ambitious. New Brunswick first introduced a procurement policy favouring provincial and Canadian suppliers in 2020. This policy—the New Brunswick First Procurement Strategy—has carried over through a change of government, with another update in 2026. 

The policy distinguishes between vendors and manufacturers, generally allocating four and five per cent of total evaluation scores respectively. For price-based assessments, the policy applies preferential treatment when the price differential is under 10 per cent. This relatively minor benefit is restricted to low-value purchases below trade thresholds and will have a negligible impact. This is worsened by limited engagement with any potential loopholes. The policy gets modest credit for waiver condition clarity. Still, New Brunswick’s data regime is outdated and offers limited information. Overall, New Brunswick scores 4.5 out of 15 (30 per cent).

Newfoundland and Labrador is very similar to New Brunswick. The provincial government introduced the NL First Procurement Strategy in 2024 to provide a 10 per cent preference to its suppliers. Generally, the policy operates below conventional trade agreement thresholds, which minimizes its impact. Most low-value contracts already flow to local suppliers because they are otherwise unattractive to foreign suppliers. 

There are, however, some Canadian Free Trade Agreement (CFTA) exceptions for higher value non-urban procurement in which the policy may apply. The policy undermines this moderate coverage in other ways. For example, the origin loophole is wide open, with only a place-of-business definition. The policy does not address any other loophole at all. It is not backed by a robust transparency regime, either. While the government publishes biweekly contract data, it includes very limited details on vendors. Likewise, the waiver conditions remain unclear. Newfoundland and Labrador scores a four out of 15 (27 per cent). 

Nova Scotia theoretically has a policy called Nova Scotia Loyal. Originally announced in 2024, the initiative gestured at a Nova Scotian supplier preference of 10 per cent. The information about this program is very limited. It appears to primarily target contracts below trade thresholds, therefore offering little beyond the status-quo. Without more details, it is unclear if Nova Scotia is navigating any loophole.  Nova Scotia does have decent public disclosure and vendor information. In fact, Nova Scotia’s public disclosure is among the best in Canada, although it lacks information on subcontracting for sourcing. Nova Scotia receives a three out of 15 (20 per cent).

Prince Edward Island is similar to Nova Scotia. Under its Procurement of Goods Regulations, PEI offers a 10 per cent preference to its suppliers. There are no content value or offset advantages. The preference strictly applies to low value procurement outside the purview of trade. It does not mitigate any loophole either. PEI’s data regime is slightly below Nova Scotia’s. That is, while there is public disclosure, vendor origin is not readily available and data is not exportable. PEI scores a two out of 15 (13 per cent).

The dissenters: Alberta, Saskatchewan and British Columbia

The westernmost provinces share much in common, including (with the exception of B.C.) an aversion to seriously challenging the United States. Alberta, Saskatchewan and British Columbia have also all entirely disengaged with Buy Local procurement policies. None of the provinces provide any advantage to their local suppliers. In the case of Alberta and Saskatchewan, they even have been resistant to banning American suppliers from their procurement. B.C. has at least been more engaged on that front. Yet, the very fact B.C. has been vocal about fighting the Trump administration makes their laggard status all the more curious.

All three provinces have passable data coverage, which accounts for the 1.5 out of 15 (10 per cent) score each province receives here. Saskatchewan uses SaskTenders, which offers basic information though not readily exportable for analysis. Alberta uses Purchasing Connection, which has award notices dating back to 2024, but otherwise no single dataset. There is, however, a dataset on sole-service contracts. British Columbia has BC Bid, which has some general but non-exportable information, and a “Ministry Contract Awards” dataset. Even with these datasets, it is difficult to discern larger trends or vendor activity. Even for those who prefer open and competitive procurement, this is problematic because it means vendor’s anti-competitive practices (e.g., trojan horse bidding) can escape public scrutiny. 

The undetermined: Yukon and Nunavut

Neither Yukon nor Nunavut has seriously engaged with Buy Canadian or an equivalent territorial policy. Much like the Western provinces, these territorial governments do not strategically use public procurement in that way. That said, Yukon’s and Nunavut’s public procurement environments are unique. Not only are they smaller jurisdictions with far fewer options for vendors, but they are also disproportionately populated by Indigenous (Inuit) peoples. In that regard, both territories have Indigenous procurement policies that may go much further than other jurisdictions in actually preferring local companies and parties. As such, it would be unfair to treat them as equal to other jurisdictions. At best, these territories may be well placed to learn from the Northwest Territories in refining their procurement regimes.

A path forward

The call to Buy Canadian has been unevenly answered. While Canadians have clearly done their part, their governments have generally fallen behind. As this analysis revealed, only four of the 14 governments scored a passing grade. Even the best Buy Canadian policy to date is marred by international trade exposure, maple-washing and procurement loopholes. Still, even some effort can go a long way. On that front, three provinces and two territories offer no Buy Local or Canadian policy whatsoever.

The regionalization of procurement practices is a notable finding itself. Beyond the federal government and Manitoba, central provinces like Ontario and Québec are advancing more ambitious policies than their provincial counterparts. Atlantic Canadian provinces all have similar outcomes: minor preferences that are minimally institutionalized. Governments of the Western provinces (save Manitoba) have made almost zero effort to enact Buy Canadian policies. The Territories are unique because their international obligations are different and their vendor options are inherently limited. Still, Northwest Territories shows Buy Canadian policies are achievable  despite these limitations. This may suggest isolated cross-jurisdictional learning is taking place. If so, governments and senior public servants would be well placed to expand their survey nation-wide.

Still, it must be reiterated that no jurisdiction comes close to a perfect score. There is plenty of room for improvement across the board. The most consequential area is data transparency. Canadians know very little about what their governments are buying. At the very least, governments should be expected to host publicly available datasets on public websites. Public procurement data should not be relegated to third-party platforms. Beyond that, our basic information on vendors and their origin must be precise and detailed enough to measure a policy’s success. Without this data, it is far too easy to exaggerate Buy Canadian public procurement. 

Canadians are making sacrifices, and so must their governments. The current global climate demands responses we once deemed unnecessary or undesirable. Our trading partners have made the choice to buy into Buy Local. Ideological disposition notwithstanding, Canada must do the same. We must Buy Canadian and support Canadian workers with each and every dollar we can.

The post The “Buy Canadian” report card appeared first on CCPA.

A video of the event is also available.

Why we came together

The roundtable brought together labour organizations, care sector advocates, researchers, and community organizations to discuss the shared challenges facing Canada’s care economy and to identify opportunities for collective action.

What we heard

Cross-cutting themes:

• Chronic workforce shortages and retention issues;
• Growing gaps in service and quality of care;
• Expanding privatization and profitization;
• Heightened precarity and exploitation of migrant care workers;
• Gendered and racialized dimensions of care work;
• Invisibility of care work and the voices of care workers in today’s policy debates;
• Underinvestment in public care services and the workforces that power them.

Priorities for collective action:

• Develop a comprehensive, national plan to guarantee care for all;
• Improve job quality and workforce retention in the care economy;
• Maintain and strengthen public and non-profit financing and delivery;
• Embed gender and equity lens in policy and programs;
• Recognize migrant worker rights and equity;
• Invest in care economy data, research capacity and public reporting.

Where to next

A consistent message throughout the roundtable was that we need to change the narrative about the care economy. Recognizing care as a larger public good is a fundamental step in building a new approach that prioritizes the sustainability of life and the planet.

The CCPA is pleased to support and advance these efforts. Moving forward, we will continue to undertake research on employment and decent care work as well as convening future gatherings to share information and work on priorities for action where energies and interests align.

A new Care Economy project webpage hosts this report and the recording of the roundtable presentations. The site also features other research and analysis on Canada’s care economy: policyalternatives.ca/careeconomy

The post Reimagining Canada’s care economy: Cross-cutting themes and strategic imperatives appeared first on CCPA.

On May 29, 2026, the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives hosted a Care Economy Roundtable to shine a light on these developments and mobilize support behind decent work for care workers and quality care for us all.

Care workers, unions, civil society groups, advocates and researchers from diverse sectors came together to discuss the common challenges confronting care workers and potential policy solutions and strategies for strengthening high-quality public care services in Canada. 

Several priorities for collective action emerged, including efforts to improve job quality, workforce retention, and to strengthen public and non-profit financing and delivery. A consistent message throughout the roundtable was that we need to change the narrative about the care economy:

Recognizing care as a larger public good is a fundamental step in building a new approach that places care for life and the planet at the heart of public policy. 

read the full report pdf

Meeting materials

Roundtable PDF agenda

Roundtable slide decks:

Roundtable partners:

The post Canada’s Care Economy appeared first on CCPA.

Budgets are about values and priorities

Every budget reflects values and priorities. The Nova Scotia Alternative Budget (NSAB) 2026 challenges the status quo and offers a bold, evidence-based vision for a fairer, greener, and more inclusive province. Developed by the Nova Scotia office of the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives (CCPA-NS) in collaboration with over 60 working group members, the alternative budget shows how we can tax and spend differently to build a future where everyone prospers, not just the few. The 2026 alternative budget shows how the government can make investments to address the affordability crisis, housing insecurity, systemic inequality, and climate inaction, while prioritizing public services that support all Nova Scotians. 

In contrast, the government’s budget for 2026-27 reflects the same status-quo values that entrench privatization of public services, and create growth for growth’s sake promising a trickle-down will provide all Nova Scotians what they need. This approach lacks significant evidence-based investment to support Nova Scotians who are living in poverty, struggling with housing costs, cannot access affordable child care, or have unmet health care needs. This lack of investment, combined with planned multi-year cuts to public sector jobs and services, will not make life less expensive for Nova Scotians; it will make life harder.

The current budgetary consultations are hamstrung by excluding any discussion of raising additional revenue and by framing a narrow list of priorities, with no evidence for how they were chosen. 

Public sector cuts hurt

When the last budget was tabled, the government suggested that expenditure cuts are necessary and can be done without Nova Scotians feeling the impact. The government is Nova Scotians providing services, caring for those who are ill, caring for our parents and grandparents, educating our children, creating art, protecting and sharing our history, staffing our libraries, and supporting community members across the province to have a better quality of life. These cuts will hurt. Public services are social and economic infrastructure. When they are weakened:

• Families pay more out of pocket;
• Local economies lose good jobs, a majority of which are filled by women who will disproportionately be affected by public sector cuts;
• Pressures increase in health care and housing, and;
• It can cause long-term costs to government.

Resource extraction and data centres

The government is also signalling a greater reliance on natural resource expansion as the “path towards prosperity.” Resource development cannot substitute for the broad-based growth that comes from investing in housing, care, education, and community infrastructure. Jurisdictions that rely heavily on resource extraction often experience greater volatility and less inclusive growth. The risks to the environment and to our climate are too costly, especially given how low royalty rates are, and how few jobs there will be beyond the initial phase. The recent data centre announcement has similar risks and environmental concerns. Both, indeed, much of the economic development the government is prioritizing, are about selling Nova Scotia to the highest bidder, not about building a province where the people have a say, where there are good jobs in communities across the province, where there is public stake. The government is not only ignoring sectors of the economy with better investment returns; it is undermining them, including arts, culture, heritage, tourism, and the care economy.  

Cuts to community: Arts, culture, and libraries

The total cuts announced in the last Nova Scotia budget were just over $300 million this year, increasing to a billion dollars in year three. Nova Scotians reacted immediately to the impact these cuts would have. While the government reversed some of the cuts, the elimination of the publishing industry fund and cuts to arts and culture remain, causing serious hardship and dampening growth in parts of the economy that had shown significant returns on investment. 

The government has suggested that criticisms have overlooked spending increases in specific sectors. The government also said the tax cuts mean Nova Scotians keep more money in their pockets and that they, individually, are better able to spend it than the government. Rather, what has become abundantly clear is how much we can do together when we pool our resources through taxation. Witness how far $130 million that was cut went. That funding cut came from 287 grants. Statistics Canada data estimates that in 2023, Nova Scotia’s arts and culture sector contributed just over $2 billion in GDP and supported 16,000 jobs. Similarly, why cut the $700,000 publishers’ fund, when it is critical for not only telling our stories, but for good jobs and economic growth – an estimate of over $9 return for every $1 of government investment? 

Many other organizations have been cut, like libraries, because they haven’t seen budget increases in years, forcing difficult decisions to do less with less, the full effect of which we saw in the Annapolis Valley library system. These grant and program cuts, plus cuts to public-sector jobs, will have a ripple-out negative effect on our economy and society more broadly.

• The government should reverse these arts and culture cuts.
• The government should reverse and not proceed with planned cuts to either the public sector or broader public sector (largely non-profit). 

As we outline below, more investment is needed in critical sectors that will not only return on investment by creating new jobs and additional revenue; it must respond to the needs of Nova Scotians, while improving their quality of life, protecting the environment, and working to mitigate the effects of fossil fuel pollution (not make it worse).

Fiscal health: Government is not a household

The province has not run out of fiscal room. The problem is how the government chooses to spend and tax. The province has the fiscal capacity to make careful, targeted investments that yield a higher return. The government is not a household, and suggesting otherwise is a political statement meant to fear-monger; no household can raise income or access credit the way a government can, nor does any household bear the same societal responsibilities. The simplistic argument that a government should not spend beyond its annual means and should shrink its deficit or significantly lower its debt by cutting or not expanding services leaves households to fill the gaps. It subjects households increasingly to the whims of the market, with little protection and increasingly unsustainable personal debt loads. The government has the fiscal room, with debt-servicing costs at historic lows and a debt-to-GDP ratio that signals its ability to continue investing in critical infrastructure and public programs. The government claims we can only manage the deficit through cuts, but we know those cuts will weaken the foundations needed to address affordability. We can strengthen our fiscal situation by building a stronger, more inclusive, green, and caring economy.

A more balanced and sustainable path could be taken

The Nova Scotia Alternative Budget 2026 offers a more balanced, sustainable path.

As outlined in the NSAB, instead of austerity, the government could:

• Improve tax fairness;
• Invest in the caring economy;
• Strengthen local economic development;
• Reduce household costs, and;
• Support stable long-term green growth.

By improving tax fairness and investing in the caring economy, including child care, housing, health care, transit, and education, Nova Scotia can improve affordability while supporting inclusive economic growth.

This or that: Benefiting the few or supporting the many

The Nova Scotia government recently celebrated the largest tax cut in the province’s history, costing $500 million in foregone revenue. But who really benefits? Our analysis shows that families in the lowest-income group (household income of $26,000 or less) save only $194 in 2026 compared to 2024, while those in the highest-income group (household income of $209,000 or more) save $2,234 in 2026 compared to 2024; for those families who would be considered in the middle-income group (households between ($61,000-78,000), the fifth decile, the tax cut averages $687.

The government should be more transparent about how its budgetary decisions benefit Nova Scotians, and which Nova Scotians. Some Nova Scotians are not suffering because of the affordability crisis. Rather, because this crisis is driven by price increases due to greed-flation, higher interest rates have also increased profits, stocks, and dividends for some Nova Scotians. 

We urge the government to make our tax system more progressive, invest what is needed for non-market housing, reduce poverty, and expand access to child care, health care, and public transportation. As we illustrate below, these tax changes, even in one year, would bring in just over $724.25 million, and we know that the investments we have costed would also bring in at least another $760 million based on Statistics Canada multipliers. Beyond GDP growth and revenue growth, the investments we outlined also reduce poverty, food insecurity and housing insecurity. 

Key taxation changes

Key investments needed 

The following investment recommendations are drawn primarily from the Nova Scotia Alternative Budget 2026, which includes a fully costed plan. The evidence is mounting on what inaction on many of these recommendations means, whether for children living in poverty who are more likely to experience life-long impacts, every year that the government does not lift their families out of poverty. Similarly, there are rising costs of neglecting to build public housing and provide enough funding for other nonmarket–non-profit/cooperative housing. This permanently affordable housing would have cost significantly less even five years ago, when we released our Housing for All report, let alone decades ago, when we first called for it to be a priority. 

1. Prioritize local economic development and inclusive labour market

Investment in “skilled trades,” including funding targeted at women and those underrepresented in the labour market, needs to continue. It is past time to recognize the value of all the skilled work and workers in this province, especially those long undervalued, such as persons with disabilities and Indigenous peoples. Governments have often overlooked the skill of caring because they have perceived it as women’s work, undervalued and underpaid, and a significant portion (221 million hours per year) remains unpaid—care that the government counts on to fill gaps left by underinvestment. Instead of creating good, green jobs that respond to local needs, the government relies on strategies to attract the next big company by providing payroll rebates, which have proven to result only in short-term job gains at a substantial cost. 

We recommend that the bulk of those payroll rebates be redirected, and that the government concentrate investment in local sustainable economic endeavours, including by: 

• Creating the Nova Scotia Cooperative Investment Corporation, prioritizing import replacement and local procurement initiatives, and supporting new co-operative businesses;
• Creating a Labour Market Planning Commission; 
• Expanding and enforcing pay equity to the private sector;
• Proactive enforcement staff for Labour Standards, and;
• Proactive protection of working and living conditions for Temporary Foreign Workers.

2. Housing: End the crisis

The housing crisis in Nova Scotia is solvable, but it requires bold action. The Nova Scotia government must:

• Build at least 3,500 non-market units each year for the next 10 years: Invest in deeply affordable housing owned and operated by public, non-profit, and co-operative sectors;
• Expand rent supplements: Provide immediate support to reach 20,000 households at risk of losing their homes;
• Enforce tenant protections: Establish a Compliance and Enforcement Unit (CEU) for the Residential Tenancies Act to investigate violations and ensure landlords meet their obligations;
• Create a rental housing registry and licensing program: Ensure all rental properties meet minimum safety and livability standards through proactive inspections;
• Hire 40 additional housing support workers, and;
• Implement vacancy control: Strengthen the current rent cap to prevent significant rent increases when units are vacated and limit the growth of the rent subsidy program’s support.

3. Support local farmers: Food sovereignty and import replacement

Rising food costs and unsustainable farming practices are leaving Nova Scotians hungry and farmers struggling. The Nova Scotia government should:

• Support non-profit grocery stores: Offer affordable, fresh, local food while supporting small-scale farmers;
• Fund 10 new community food hubs: Teach people how to grow and prepare their own food, fostering food security and sustainability;
• Ensure fair prices for farmers: Ensure farmers receive fair compensation for their work, creating a more resilient food system;
• Establish an Agricultural Land Trust, and;
• Expand farm water infrastructure grants.

4. Environment, energy security and energy renewables in the public interest

We need to accelerate the just renewable energy transition. Offshore wind power could transform Nova Scotia’s economy, but transparency and public benefit must come first. The Nova Scotia government should:

• Issue a public bid process: Determine the true costs of developing offshore wind resources and ensure transparency in the bidding process;
• Prioritize local benefits: Focus on energy projects that benefit Nova Scotians, and in particular, Indigenous people, not foreign corporations, ensuring meaningful consultation and respect for treaty rights;
• Ensure energy security for generations: Develop an Energy Bill Affordability Program to provide affordable, renewable energy for the province;
• Reverse changes to the Heating Assistance Rebate program (back to $600 and household income up to $75,000);
• Modernize building code: no fossil fuels for new builds, allow balcony solar, and institute a rebate program;
• Support grassroots initiatives to address the harms of environmental racism;
• Establish an Electric Car and Bicycle Purchase Rebate Program, while cancelling the additional fee for electric vehicles, and;
• Invest in 15 new community wells and water stations, while instituting stronger regulation to protect public water.

5. Health care crisis: Expanding community health centres among key solutions

Nova Scotians deserve accessible, community-focused public health care. The NSAB outlines key steps to improve the system that the Nova Scotia government should:

• Expand community health centres: Transform “health homes” into democratically run Community Health Centres that prioritize patient needs;
• Invest in mental health: Move toward the World Health Organization’s target of 12 per cent of health spending on public (not for-profit private) mental health services;
• End privatization: Bring privatized services, like virtual care, back into the public system;
• Pharmacare for all: Expand pharmacare for all Nova Scotians, starting with universal, free contraception, hormone therapy and diabetes drugs and monitoring equipment;
• Improve staffing ratios in long-term care and fund recruitment and retention;
• Advance disability-inclusive care (assistive and long-term supports; accessible communication and service delivery);
• Eliminate ambulance fees; 
• Invest in strategy of supports for recruitment and retention of paramedics;
• Increase funding in 2SLGBTQIA+ health, including gender-affirming care;
• Extend public health insurance to refugee claimants, migrant workers and international students, upon arrival;
• Expansion of home care/home support services;
• Invest in community-based harm reduction services and supports, and;
• Invest in voluntary and evidence-based drug treatment programs.

6. Reduce poverty and improve income security 

Nova Scotia should develop a poverty elimination strategy, and immediately aim to reduce poverty in the next budget by:

• Substantially increasing income assistance household base rates to lift people out of poverty (apply full rent to people living in tents);
• Improving incentives to work: Further decrease earnings clawback to income assistance and stop clawing back Employment Insurance;
• Offsetting increased living costs for low-income people: Increase the Affordable Living Tax Credit and equalize it for all persons in the household ($3217 per person), and expand eligibility;
• Making Income Assistance available to refugee claimants, and;
• Increasing disability supplement.

7. Arts, culture and heritage

Government should be investing in (not defunding) arts, culture and heritage, because they “contribute to community well-being, education, tourism, and economic development.”

Even if you want to consider only narrow economic arguments, Statistics Canada data estimates that in 2023, Nova Scotia’s arts and culture sector contributed just over $2 billion to GDP and supported 16,000 jobs. The Nova Scotia government should:

• Fund artist-run centres, facilities and capital projects;
• Reverse the cuts and increase project grants and operating funding provided by Arts Nova Scotia;
• Invest in core operations assistance to cultural organizations;
• Increase investment to archives, museums, and libraries to support maintenance and expansion of programs, and;
• Reinstate the Publisher’s Assistance Fund.

8. Active, accessible and sustainable transportation

Nova Scotians need to get to work, drop off children at child care, run errands, visit family and friends, and attend community events. Unfortunately, the cost of transportation and the lack of accessible, available public options are blocking the connections Nova Scotians need to make daily. The Nova Scotia government should: 

• Create Nova Scotia Transit Corporation;
• Fund long-range bus routes within Nova Scotia;
• Provide core funding to make HRM, CBRM and Kings Transit more affordable and accessible, and;
• Continue building an active transport network.

9. Public education (pre-primary to Grade 12)

Government needs to strengthen publicly-funded education because it is losing its ability to level the playing field and ensure everyone has an equal opportunity to achieve their potential. To do this, the government should:

• Hire additional teachers to enable smaller class sizes;
• Hire additional educational support staff, while increasing funding to support retention and recruitment;
• Hire additional administrative support (photocopying, calling attendance, data entry, etc.), and;
• Invest in air quality by installing carbon monoxide detectors to monitor air quality and adding HEPA filters.

10. Early learning and child care

The most significant support to making life more affordable for families with children has been the investment in early learning and child care. The CCPA-NS’s child care report highlights the need for systematic, centralized planning and increased federal and provincial funding to develop a non-profit, public, high-quality, affordable, accessible, and high-standard year-round child care system that meets the diverse needs of families in every community. The government should:

• Fund a workforce retention strategy and provide additional financial support to ensure fair compensation;
• Develop the Early Learning and Child Care Central Agency to oversee system planning and operational support, and;
• Provide additional capital and core staff funding for a public, non-profit, quality child care system based on need, ensuring diverse options on public school sites across the province.

11. Post-secondary education

Public colleges and universities are essential to Nova Scotia, as a new report on the value of post-secondary education outlines. These institutions are “centres of teaching, research and discovery; they drive innovation and knowledge, attract talent and investment, and challenge us to think bigger. They are also vital economic assets.” Underinvesting in them is short-sighted and has long-term negative impacts. With the highest tuition fees in the country, university has become a significant barrier, leaving many students in debt. We urge the Nova Scotia government to:

• Freeze university tuition fees and offset the loss of revenue to universities ;
• Reduce NSCC Tuition by 50 per cent;
• Convert Nova Scotia Student Loans to grants;
• Increase post-secondary core funding tied to decreasing senior administrative positions;
• Increase Nova Scotia Student Assistance Grants by $150/month;
• Support for Indigenous Learners;
• Create a dedicated Sexual Assault Post-Secondary Support Resource Fund, and;
• Stop charging interest on all outstanding student loans.

12. Community services

Nova Scotia’s social safety net has major tears. Social worker caseloads, especially in child and family services, are out of control. Courts are backlogged. Prisons are overcrowded. The government should quickly plug holes and fix gaps while working toward more permanent solutions:

• Increase child protection social work staffing levels to meet the Canadian standard caseload, and;
• Follow through with the Child and Youth Advocacy office and include funding for its policy advocacy work.

13. Community inclusion infrastructure

The Nova Scotia government should invest in communities. We urge the government to: 

• Provide core funding to non-profits/advocacy organizations for equity-deserving groups, and;
• Increase funding to Communities, Sports and Recreation. 

14. Accessibility plan acceleration for persons with disabilities

The Nova Scotia government should invest to accelerate the implementation of the Accessibility Plan for Persons with Disabilities, accompanied by enforceable standards, timelines, and accountability mechanisms, including:

• Mandatory accessibility compliance timelines by sector (housing, transportation, digital services, health care, and education);
• An independent enforcement body with inspection and penalty authority;
• Annual public reporting on compliance, disaggregated by disability type, and;
• Ongoing co-governance with disabled people and disabled-led organizations.

15. Consumer protection, advocacy and support and public insurance

Nova Scotians pay some of the highest insurance rates in the country. The Nova Scotia government should:

• Create a Public Insurance Company of Nova Scotia to offer affordable options for:
  • Auto Insurance: Reduce costs by removing corporate profits,
  • Home Insurance: Provide affordable coverage, especially as climate change drives up private insurance rates,
  • Pet Insurance: Offer better coverage at lower costs for pet owners, and;
• Establish an Office of the Consumer Advocate.

16. Immigrant and migrant Services

• Increase core funding for immigrant/migrant support service organizations;
• Enhance settlement services;
• Proactive protection of working and living conditions for Temporary Foreign Workers;
• Create a province-wide Newcomer Family Support Resource Centre, and;
• Make Income Assistance available to refugee claimants.

17. Justice services

The Nova Scotia government should properly fund Legal Aid services to improve access to justice for low-income people and reduce court wait times. Expand access to various alternative court programs, restorative justice and reintegration initiatives as follows:

• Expand investment in the Wellness Court Programs; 
• Invest in alternative and restorative justice programs; 
• Invest in community and prison-based offender reintegration initiatives;
• Expand Family Violence Court to other sites;
• Increase investment to expand Legal Aid Services (Nova Scotia and Dalhousie), and;
• Invest in core funding for non-profits providing support for individuals engaged with the justice system.

Conclusion

The government undervalues the impact of investments in public services, universal programs, and redistributive policies on Nova Scotians. Quality public services remove cost as a barrier to access services, while also creating public sector jobs that are more likely to be unionized, well paid, and provide benefits like pensions and health insurance. Expanding public services means paying less out of pocket for essential goods, but it also helps create economic security. 

The government should ensure that budgetary decisions on taxing and spending promote inclusion and are designed using a feminist, intersectional, anti-colonial, and anti-racist approach. An intersectional lens affirms disability inclusion as a matter of human rights, dignity, and justice, not conditional participation. Budgetary measures should seek to address discrimination rooted in gender stereotypes about women’s skills, abilities, aptitude, and gender roles in our society. Instead, we see spending and taxation decisions that will exacerbate gender inequity; broad tax cuts benefit men and higher-income earners more, and cuts to public sector jobs and services negatively affect women and low-income earners more than men and higher-income earners.  

The care economy is a powerhouse of the economy, “generating at least 12 per cent of GDP and 21 per cent of all Canadian jobs. A well-functioning care economy is key to the functioning of all the other parts of the economy.” The budgetary consultations that the government undertook this Fall only treated government spending as something that cannot be increased with no positive effect on economic growth, but what we know is that investments in the care economy “stimulate the economy and safeguard our health in ways that allow us to maximize our human potential while generating higher public revenues.” 

The government’s narrow focus on tax cuts, privatization, and resource exploitation may increase short-term economic growth for some. Still, it will also harm communities, the public good, the environment, and future generations. 

In contrast, a focus on “the caring economy” shifts the focus from supporting the few who benefit from economic expansion to supporting the many who want a more equal, democratic, and sustainable society.

The affordability crisis has emerged alongside growing prosperity for some. Now is the time to make our tax system fairer by ensuring everyone contributes according to their ability, generating enough revenue to lead us toward shared prosperity. We outline tax and spending choices that support a provincial budget that benefits the many, not just the few, and call on the government to adopt them. 

About CCPA-NS

The Nova Scotia office of the CCPA opened its doors in 1999. With the help of our loyal supporters and research associates, we continue to raise debate and propose policy alternatives that will get us closer to achieving a more economically and socially just—as well as environmentally sustainable—province and Atlantic region. The Nova Scotia Alternative Budget (NSAB) is a collaborative effort involving stakeholders from various sectors of our province, including frontline service organizations, other non-profit organizations, and academics with diverse expertise. The NSAB presents a compelling case for using taxation and public spending to advance social, economic, and climate justice. 

The post A Budget for the Many: CCPA-NS Submission to Nova Scotia Budget 2027—28 appeared first on CCPA.

On Oct. 14, federal Health Minister Marjorie Michel announced a one-year extension of federal funding for home and community care, mental health and substance use services, worth $1.2 billion to provinces and territories, on the eve of the federal-provincial-territorial health ministers’ meeting in Winnipeg.

Good evening. Thank you, Noah, for that introduction, and thank you to Darlene Jackson and Michael Redhead Champagne for the invitation, and for everything the Manitoba Health Coalition does.

I’m honoured to be here on Treaty 1 territory and the homeland of the Red River Métis.

I bring warm greetings from Jason MacLean, the chair of the Canadian Health Coalition, and from our board, our staff and our member organizations across the country. Many of them, like the Manitoba Nurses Union, are in this room tonight.

Before I begin, I want to ask something of you.

In October of last year, a 22-year-old university student named Rodiyat Alabede went to a paid-plasma centre on Taylor Avenue, here in Winnipeg. During her donation, the machine sounded alarm after alarm. She went into cardiac distress, and about an hour later she died in hospital.

She should be alive today. I’d like to dedicate my remarks tonight to her memory, and to her family, who are still asking for answers.

Any Maritimers in the room tonight? I knew it. You’re everywhere.

I was born in Fredericton, and I come from a medical family. My grandmother was a nurse with the Victorian Order of Nurses. My mother was a nurse at the old General in Saint John. And my late father was a pharmacist. He ran Staples Drugstore in Fredericton, where the teenagers came in for sodas.

Growing up Gen X in a medical house was not easy. If you were sick, good luck finding an aspirin. We were sent to school with colds. A fever was the only thing that kept you home.

But I learned two lessons at that kitchen table. First, respect the power of medicine, because it will be there when you need it. And second, health care is not just about fighting disease. It’s about helping people.

Those lessons served me well. I went from the peace movement in Vancouver in the 1990s, to the streets of Seattle against the World Trade Organization in 1999, to what I call twenty years of hard labour in Ottawa, starting with Maude Barlow at the Council of Canadians.

And along the way, I had the privilege of meeting the remarkable Shirley Douglas, the daughter of Tommy Douglas, the premier of Saskatchewan and the father of Medicare.

Shirley once took me to lunch at the Kit Kat on King Street in Toronto. And she told me something her father used to say: “In America they have hawks and doves. But in Canada, we have a lot of parrots.”

I think about that a lot these days. The pressure to copy the United States has always been with us, especially when it comes to privatizing health care. And there are a lot of parrots out there right now.

You may remember that in 2004 the CBC asked Canadians to vote for the Greatest Canadian. And who won? Tommy Douglas. Not a hockey player. Not a prime minister. The man who gave us Medicare.

People sometimes ask me: why does a national coalition spend so much time on the federal government? Isn’t health care provincial?

The provinces deliver the care. But Ottawa sets the rules and pays a big share of the bill.

In the early 1980s, doctors in many provinces billed patients extra on top of what Medicare paid. It was getting out of control. Organized nurses, unions and community groups pushed back, and in 1984 Parliament passed the Canada Health Act unanimously.

The deal was simple. Ottawa sends money through the Canada Health Transfer. In return, every province runs a public plan that covers medically necessary care for everyone, on the same terms, with no extra billing and no user fees. Care based on need, not on your ability to pay.

When we talk about privatization, it helps to separate two things.

The first is private, for-profit delivery: a corporation running the clinic or the lab, even if your health card pays the bill.

The second is private payment: pulling out your Visa for care that should be covered. That is the line the Canada Health Act was written to protect. And that is the line Alberta has just crossed.

Alberta’s Bill 11 lets doctors work in the public system and, at the same time, charge patients privately for the same medically necessary surgery. No other province allows this.

You don’t need a metaphor to understand how it works. Dr. Braden Manns, a physician and health economist at the University of Calgary, explained it at a press conference with us. His public patients, he said, can wait nine months to see him. Under dual practice, he could hold back two or three appointment slots for people who’d waited only a week or two, “if they’re willing to pay four times as much.”

Every one of those slots comes out of the public line. Dual practice doesn’t add a single surgeon or a single operating room. It just moves them to the people who can pay, and everyone else waits longer.

And Manitobans don’t have to imagine it, because this province has already lived it. In the 1990s, Manitoba let eye surgeons do cataract surgery for both public and private-pay patients. People who paid privately waited about four weeks. Public patients of surgeons who worked only in the public system waited about 10 weeks. But public patients of surgeons who did both waited 23 weeks. When Manitoba ended the practice, the gap disappeared. Manitoba learned that lesson the hard way. Alberta is about to learn it all over again.

Our lawyers at Goldblatt Partners looked closely at the law. Their opinion is that there are very strong and compelling arguments that Bill 11 violates the Canada Health Act: its principles of universality, accessibility and comprehensiveness, and its ban on extra-billing and user fees.

Here’s the good news. Together with Friends of Medicare and our allies in Alberta, we have already forced Premier Danielle Smith to delay putting Bill 11 into effect twice. She even admitted she’s looking for “latitude” from Ottawa.

And she is losing the argument with Albertans. In our national Abacus Data poll this summer, 56 percent of Albertans opposed Bill 11, including more than a third of her own party’s voters.

We must be doing something right, because Alberta’s health minister is now publicly accusing the Canadian Health Coalition of fear-mongering. Friends, if telling people the truth about two-tier health care is fear-mongering, then I plead guilty.

This isn’t only Alberta’s problem. Across the country, 74 percent of Canadians are worried that policies like Bill 11 will spread to other provinces. And they’re right to worry. Your neighbour to the west, Saskatchewan Premier Scott Moe, has already mused about following Alberta’s lead. If it can happen in Edmonton, it can happen in Regina, and it can happen in Winnipeg.

So what has Ottawa done?

We did persuade federal Health Minister Marjorie Michel to say publicly that she doesn’t know how dual practice can work within the Canada Health Act. That matters. But she has not used the tools the Act gives her: formal consultations and penalties on the health transfer.

Why not? The trade war, the push for a united front with the premiers, and the separatist threat in Alberta all seem to be keeping the Prime Minister from backing his own minister. We’ve even heard reports that Liberal MPs, including doctors, have been told to keep their concerns about Bill 11 to themselves.

And it’s not just Bill 11. Look at the money.

The federal agreements that fund home care, mental health and addictions services, and drugs for rare diseases all expire on March 31 next year. That’s less than six months away. The premiers call it a fiscal cliff. Ottawa still won’t say whether the money will be renewed. Health Canada’s own plan projects its spending will fall by more than $3 billion over the next three years. And this government has introduced new co-payments on health care for refugees and asylum seekers.

You can’t run a mental health program, keep staff, or plan a waiting list on a maybe. Manitoba’s own health minister has said it plainly: longer-term, stable funding is what provinces need to plan, hire and deliver services.

Now I want to give credit where it’s due.

When the Pharmacare Act passed in 2024, Manitoba was the first province to sign a pharmacare agreement with Ottawa. Because of that, people in Manitoba can get contraception and diabetes medications free or at low cost. That’s real. That’s people not having to choose between their insulin and their groceries.

But here’s the problem. Since the 2025 election, Ottawa hasn’t signed a single new pharmacare agreement. Newfoundland and Labrador has written letter after letter asking to join and has been shut out. Only four provinces and territories are in, which means only about one in five Canadians benefit.

Our own board member, Dr. Joel Lexchin, one of the country’s leading experts on drug policy, put it bluntly last week. He said national pharmacare is “dead in the water” unless the government’s priorities change.

Well, that’s what we’re here to do: change those priorities. Because 80 percent of Canadians support a universal national pharmacare program. Manitoba showed the way. Now the rest of the country deserves the same.

Which brings me back to Rodiyat Alabede.

Grifols, a Spanish multinational, runs paid-plasma centres in partnership with Canadian Blood Services. Unlike Canadian Blood Services, it pays people for their plasma. And it advertises how much money you can make by selling it.

Three donors have died after donating at Grifols sites here in Winnipeg since 2018. In August, as the pressure built, Grifols paused collection across the country. Then, two weeks ago, Health Canada suspended the licence of the Taylor Avenue centre. It was the first time Health Canada has ever suspended a blood establishment licence.

That’s a start. But Grifols is already planning to reopen. Meanwhile, the company cut its official count of serious reactions and deaths among donors from 25 to six, and Health Canada accepted it. Ms. Alabede’s family is still asking for an investigation.

So our demands are clear. Keep every Grifols centre closed. End the contract between Canadian Blood Services and Grifols. And hold an independent public inquiry into these deaths. Canada’s plasma supply can be secured the way it should be: through voluntary donation. Blood is a gift, not a commodity.

So how do we win? The same way we always have: in Ottawa, and in the streets.

Our national campaign against two-tier, U.S.-style health care is doing both. On September 1, people rallied at more than 30 Liberal MP offices across the country. When MPs came back to Parliament last month, a billboard truck circled Parliament Hill to welcome them. This week, we’ve written to every health minister meeting here in Winnipeg, asking them to stand up for the Canada Health Act, to end the funding uncertainty, to restore pharmacare, and to end paid plasma.

And the Manitoba Health Coalition has been right there. 

The polling tells us Canadians are with us. 91 percent are worried about the future of public health care. Eighty-five per cent say care based on need, not money, is a core Canadian value. And 80 percent believe our public system can meet our needs if governments invest in it.

But public opinion doesn’t win on its own. People do. So I’m inviting you to join us in Ottawa in February for our Parliament Hill Lobby, when about 200 of us will meet MPs and senators face to face. And between now and then, come out to the Manitoba Health Coalition’s town halls and actions, and bring a friend.

I’ll leave you with something I found in the Canadian Health Coalition archives.

Our coalition was founded in 1979, and Tommy Douglas was at our founding conference. In the archives, I found a speech he gave in the early 1980s, just before the Canada Health Act was passed. It’s called “We Must Go Forward.”

He was worried that extra-billing was spreading, and listen to what he said would happen. Doctors would favour the patients who pay extra. And then, in his words: “The well-to-do who can afford it will have one standard of health care and those less fortunate will have to accept a lower standard of health care.”

That was more than forty years ago. He could have been describing Bill 11.

He was in his late seventies when he gave that speech. And he said: “I helped to establish the first Medicare program in Canada, and even at my age I’ll trek this country from the Atlantic to the Pacific to stop this program from being destroyed.”

From the Atlantic to the Pacific. From Ottawa to the streets.

In the same speech, he told the room that Medicare was only the first step. He called for home care, for denticare, and for “pharmicare.” Forty years later, we finally have a national dental care plan. And Manitoba was the first to sign on to pharmacare. Tommy’s to-do list is getting shorter, but we’re not done.

He ended with words I want to leave with you tonight: “You can’t stand still. You can’t go back and you must go forward.”

So let’s go forward. Please give generously to the Manitoba Health Coalition tonight. Every dollar you give helps keep this fight going, here in Manitoba and across the country.

Thank you.

The post The fight for public health care, from Ottawa to the streets appeared first on CCPA.

Not in Toronto. Ultimately it was the veteran politician Olivia Chow, former city councillor, former MP, wife of deceased NDP Leader Jack Layton, who won re-election as mayor. Her organizing chops seemed to win the day in the final stretch as her volunteers flooded the city to get out the vote. Her early lead seemed to evaporate into a neck and neck race, but she pulled away in the last week of the campaign, and won with 54 percent of the vote to Bradford’s 41 percent.  

This was Bradford’s second run for mayor. In the 2023 by-election, caused by the resignation of former mayor John Tory, Bradford won only 1.29 percent of the vote and Chow sailed to victory. His campaign this time was more professional and effective. He organized campaign-style events long before the official start, he showcased his lovely young family and he went after Chow relentlessly. He focused on three key issues: congestion, cost of living and cleanliness of the city, criticizing the current city while pointing to a brighter day in the future under his leadership. His pitch was effective with many voters. 

Practically, he was both for and against bike lanes, budget cuts and taxes. Like B.C. premier-elect Lorne Doerkson, he pledged to hire 1,000 more police. In a late campaign stumble, he pledged to turn Toronto’s water, by some accounts the best in the country, into a corporation in a bid to cut residential water bills and instead hold debt for new water infrastructure. Chow enlisted environmental icon David Suzuki to warn that this was a bad idea likely to lead to the privatization of the public water supply. Torontonians weren’t willing to risk their health to potentially save a few bucks in the short term. 

Chow pledged a steady as she goes campaign, promising to continue her work and finish what she started. She promised to maintain a cap on transit fees, maintain extended library hours and ways to increase transit safety, brought in a school food program, and supported tenants by introducing a law to stop renovictions while increasing the number of rental building inspectors.

While Chow’s first term saw more unhoused people move out of encampments and into shelters or housing, there remain people without care on the streets, some of whom require serious support for addiction and mental health issues—an issue that creates a sense of unease in the general public. While these are national issues that appear in cities large and small across Canada, they manifest at the municipal level—so local governments, the least well funded, end up trying to solve them. Supportive housing is the key, but Chow will need to convince other levels of government to assist with funding.

Progressives won all four open seats in Toronto. Community housing activist Diana Chan McNally, Chow’s stepson Mike Layton, former MP Nate Erskine-Smith, and school trustee Sara Ehrhardt all join council as expected allies of Chow. 

In addition, for tenant activist Chiara Padovani, it was third time successful in York South-Weston, who defeated Frances Nunziata, the longest serving councillor. Padovani had lost in 2022 by just 94 votes. This time she won with 39 percent and Nunziata came third with 21 percent. Community worker Curran Stikus defeated sitting councillor Chris Moise.

Council is, of course, a mix of the political spectrum, with Chow’s support predominantly from the old city of Toronto, the waterfront and Scarborough. But Chow has shown herself adept at building bridges across differences, such as in a 2023 deal with Premier Doug Ford to transfer ownership of two highways to the provincial government in exchange for almost $2 billion for city priorities like housing, transit and infrastructure. She will no doubt forge alliances on council to get practical things done, like improving transit, reducing traffic congestion and building more affordable housing.. 

 The limitations of municipal governments are quite strict—municipalities have severely limited powers compared to other levels of government. But even with those limitations, Chow can be boldly progressive in her second term. She has four years to show that she can leave a progressive legacy for the city. 

Will she ban or put guardrails on data centres (she’s pledged a moratorium)? Will she take more housing out of the housing market with coops and not for profits? Will she navigate Trump’s trade war to expand manufacturing and create more jobs in Toronto? Will Torontonians be able to afford to enjoy the great things Toronto has to offer? With more working people squeezed out of the city, she can show them that governments matter, and that working together Torontonians can create a more liveable and affordable place to call home. 

The post The municipal left wins in Toronto: What’s next? appeared first on CCPA.

Canada is moving quickly to build the infrastructure for an emerging AI economy, with governments invoking digital sovereignty, economic competitiveness and the need to build up Canadian technology firms to compete in the global ‘AI race’.

This report identifies the following emerging trends in Canada:

The economic benefits of data centres are uneven and often overstated. Construction can generate significant short-term employment, but once operational, data centres require relatively few workers and often rely on contracted or lower-wage labour. At the same time, governments and communities can be left to absorb infrastructure, power, environmental and other costs, particularly where developers receive tax incentives or other subsidies.

Claims of digital sovereignty do not necessarily align with who owns or controls Canada’s data and digital infrastructure. The majority of data centres in Canada are backed by foreign firms and capital. Increasing domestic ownership alone does not address the broader issue of foreign jurisdiction under the United States CLOUD Act or Canadian reliance on American big tech platforms.

Alberta is emerging as a major destination for new hyperscale data centres. This is due to Alberta’s abundant natural gas supply and streamlined approval process. Partnerships between data centre developers and Alberta natural gas companies (such as Capital Power and Meta) point to a growing relationship between AI infrastructure and fossil fuels in Canada.

Emissions from data centres fossil fuel use are immense. The majority of data centres in North America are powered by natural gas. Data centre growth could produce approximately 2.5 billion metric tons of CO₂ equivalent emissions globally through 2030. In Canada, hard won emissions reductions from Alberta’s coal phase out are at risk of being erased due to their new hyperscale data centres.

Technology solutions can reduce some environmental impacts while creating others. Closed loop cooling uses less water but more energy, which results in greater indirect water use. Similarly, pairing data centres with wind or solar power can reduce reliance on fossil fuels but requires large quantities of critical minerals. Rapidly directing scarce minerals toward data centres and the energy systems that support them risks competing with other decarbonization priorities, while reinforcing the environmental and social impacts of mining.

Community opposition in Canada is growing and so is the data centre lobby. Communities are raising concerns about water and land use, noise, pollution and the pace of development. The data centre industry is organizing to secure favourable regulatory conditions and delay restrictions (successfully reversing a moratorium in Hamilton, Ontario). Community benefit agreements can help secure local benefits, but they do not substitute for the ability of communities to determine whether a project should proceed in the first place.

Canadian governments are developing policies to facilitate data centre investment faster than they are establishing enforceable public interest protections. The federal government has introduced the Responsible Data Centre Development Principles, but these remain voluntary and establish no binding limits on resource use, operational impacts or setbacks from residential communities.

We argue that Canada faces a closing window to establish rules and regulations before data centres create sunk costs, infrastructure dependencies and greater political pressure to accommodate the AI industry. The Appendix provides a detailed catalogue of policies and regulatory tools, with examples, where possible, from the United States and European Union. These examples demonstrate that governments at all levels have policy options beyond facilitating investment for the AI sector and relying on vague industry commitments.

The post Data centre regulation in the public interest: A closing window of opportunity in Canada appeared first on CCPA.