The Ottawa Citizen, By Justin Trudeau Essay

The Government of Canada does a lot of things. Everything from providing us with transportation to making sure everyone has a say in parliament. This group is made up of citizens that we elect to run this country and provide the citizen with a pretty good quality of life. This is the opinion is held by most Canadians. Unfortunately, some still think that we do not live as good a life here as we could somewhere else. Yes, the Government provides and maintains a high quality of life for its citizens. Social Programs provide assistance financially and physically to people that are in need of it. As Canadians, we have an abundance of freedoms and rights to protect us and our government is run as a democracy, where everyone gets a say.

In today’s society it is unfortunate to say that a person’s income does reflect their value to society. Classism, it affects all of us. The government has classified you based on your yearly income. For example; if your income is between $18,000 - $23,000 you are classifed as a lower class Canadian. If your income is between $35,000 - $55,000 you are the average middle class Canadian. To be classified as an upper class Canadian your income would need to be anything above $55,000. The government has also classified those with combined income so if you are common - law, or married. Have you ever wondered why a doctor gets paid more than a construction worker? A doctor gets paid roughly $360,000 a year compared to the $63,000 a year income a

A nation-wide social issue in contemporary Canadian society is relative poverty. Universal basic income (UBI), or ‘basic income’, is a model which aims to eliminate it. In this response, I will argue that UBI can reduce relative poverty in Canada. Subsequently, that the reduction of relative poverty will also improve both physical and mental health as well as diminish income discrimination in Canada. Since income inequality not only creates poverty but also is a social determinant of health. To accomplish this, I briefly outline the current state of Canadian poverty, the tenets of UBI, and the benefits that can stem from its establishment. Concludingly, discussing a measuring mechanism to ensure that the relative poverty is being resolved.

The issue of economic inequality has ruined the economy of the United States completely. This issue is making its way to Canada, which is causing more of its citizens to go into poverty. When this problem first started to arise, it was strongly ignored by the government because they believed it would not cause a problem. However, over the past twenty years, it has increased rapidly which caused the gap between rich and poor to became enormous. Moreover, the wealth of the rich strongly depends on the disadvantage of the poor. The only way the rich will stay rich is if the poor stay poor. The top one percent of Canadians receive 318,000 dollars on average whereas the bottom ninety percent receive only 28,000 dollars. If the poor start getting high

Pierre Trudeau is the greatest Canadian of the twentieth century due to the fact that he declared Canada’s independence from Great Britain, he abolished the death penalty, and he created the Official Languages Act, making our nation entirely bilingual.

A great Prime Minister should always do what is right for Canada, no matter what obstacles he or she faces. Looking at the fifteen years he was in power, Pierre Elliot Trudeau did exactly that. For instance, he implemented the Official Languages Act and made bilingualism law. In another case, he put an end to the October Crisis by putting into effect the War Measures Act. Finally, Trudeau amended the Constitution which gave Canadians a Charter of Rights and Freedoms. Pierre Elliot Trudeau was a successful Prime Minister who accomplished his goals despite facing enormous opposition.

Pierre Elliot Trudeau was arguably one of the most vivacious and charismatic Prime Ministers Canada has ever seen. He wore capes, dated celebrities and always wore a red rose boutonniere. He looked like a superhero, and often acted like one too. Some of the landmark occurrences in Canadian history all happened during the Trudeau era, such as patriating the constitution, creating the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms and the 1980 Quebec Referendum. However, it is Trudeau’s 1969 “white paper” and the Calder legal challenge which many consider to be one of his most influential contributions to Canadian history.

Rob Ford has been in the spotlight of Canadian media ever since the allegations have surfaced about a video of the Toronto Mayor smoking crack cocaine. This story gained international attention while even drawing on the Mayor for comic relief. American newspaper, The Wall Street Journal, along with Canadian newspapers, The Globe and Mail and Toronto Sun each have a unique target audience whom they are writing for. As a result of the intended audience each newspaper includes diction and style relevant for the target audience.

Inequality in Canada is not as prominent as many other places around the world, although it does remain in certain segments of Canada. There are many forms of inequality in Canada and internationally, although this papers main focus is going to be the inequality of wealth. According to Steven Kerstetter “Canadians may view their country as a land of opportunity, but it is also a land of deep and abiding inequality in the distribution of personal wealth” (Kerstetter 2002). The “gaps between the rich and poor remain evident in Canadian statistics” (Kerstetter 2002), Canadians have always kept financial security as an essential element of life and have tried to obtain and sustain it within their lives. Frank Cunningham’s article, “What’s

Canada is one of the wealthiest countries in the world, however, many citizens are below the blurred poverty line. (251). The poverty line in Canada is measured by the LICO-IAT (boooook) and the MBM (253). The resources for those below the poverty line are very poor; food banks and shelters are unable to uphold the amount of people that are in need of them. (252). Among the poor, many people have paid employment, however, it is not enough.

In Robert Reich documentary “Inequality for All” he makes a compelling discussion about the serious crises that the United States faces due the widening economic gap. He looks to raise awareness of the U.S. economic gap between the rich and poor. According to Reich the widening divide in America is real and growing. Income levels at the middle and labor class is stagnant and are at it’s lowest levels compared to upper class incomes since the beginning of WWII and is growing wider each year. Reich suggests that the economy runs more smoothly when the middle class has jobs with fair wages, when unions are strong, and when middle class workers have some extra money to spend if possible when the government uses the tax policy properly and when it raises the minimum wage regularly to control the income gap between labor and management. In other words Reich argues that economically healthy middle and labor class equality is the foundation of a thriving economy and is necessary to maintaining a sound national infrastructure and educational system within

Canadian Political Culture, in a nation- state context, can be break down as beliefs and attitudes that Canadian have of political objects( Jackson, Politics in Canada.1994).

Social and economic policy decisions impact income equality, which has an effect on the health of Canadians. Those with lower incomes are directly affected while income inequality affects the health of all Canadians through weakening of social structure (Raphael, 2002). Contrary to reports of rising net worth, a new report has been released by an Ottawa-based think tank to show Canada’s inequality problem. The top 10 percent of Canadians have seen their net worth grow by 42% since 2005 to 2.1 million in 2012. However, the bottom 10 percent saw their net worth shrink by 150 percent (Flavelle, 2014). With this new report, it challenges the idea that suggests Canadians are getting wealthier laterally (Flavelle, 2014). This paper will examine

This claim is, however, tenuous at best. While their study indeed put forward evidence of middle-class families being swept into a cycle of lower wages and more precarious postindustrial work, this claim is far from new. For years, sociologists, economists, and political scientists have illustrated how Canada’s middle-class is being increasingly squeezed by the convergence of rising living costs, and lower paid and more insecure employment— particularly among those under the age of 45 (Jackson, 2014; Kershaw, 2015). With this, in stating that “the class lines of these economic pressures on families are muddied” (Duffy, Corman, and Pupo, 2015, p.226), they fail to acknowledge that the ‘traditional class analysis’ they seek to problematize has in fact been troubled for years (Clement and Vosko, 2003). The authors argue that illustrative of increasing class complexity, several interviewees who were most fearful of the future had children with university degrees who were unable to secure stable, well-paid jobs— a reality which, not long ago, would have been rare. As the authors note, “positions

In Kevin Milligan’s proposal Tax Policy for a New Era: Promoting Economic Growth and Fairness, a dual income tax system has been introduced that would boost economic growth and increase tax fairness. The new system contains a single, low rate on all capital income, coupled with a higher top tax bracket on wages. This essay, however, will focus on analyzing Miligan 's arguments in reforming the tax system. In this report, Milligan mentions two trends that raise concerns for current Canadian tax system. The first one is the increasing income concentration. More and more money was earned by relatively small portion of people. This has triggered some equity issues because the proportional tax that high earners pay does not higher that those