They are using mainframes from the late 70 - 80's - Technology has changed. Information exchange between Dept's is atrocious.
Budget
- Thread starter Goober
- Start date
They are using mainframes from the late 70 - 80's - Technology has changed. Information exchange between Dept's is atrocious.
No they're not.... but you go ahead and continue on in your little alice in wonderland world.
Not sure there is anything wrong with the clawback levels. I see OAS similar to CPP, if you pay into it thru taxes or by living in Canada and contributing in some manner , then you should benefit from it.
I think the real problem with OAS, is that the older immigrants that immigrate here, they can qualify for OAS as soon as they become Canadian citizens.
OAS is paid out proportionally to the length of time your in Canada,,, which is fair... BUT, the bigger issue is that these older immigrants can qualify for GIS, full amount, undiscounted for the length of time your in Canada. You can only qualify for GIS if you have qualified for OAS.
It's a bit complicated, but this is where the average Canadian fails to complain because he fails to understand, but immigrants who bring there parents here under the family unification program know exactly how to get all this easy money from the Canadian taxpayer.
There is another angle to this that i hope will never play out.If the economy goes south
in the months ahead and some are suggesting we have a lot of problems coming the
current budget will find itself deficient and the popularity of the government will plummet
just like the Borden Government did so many years ago,
the fact is Mulcair is looking more appealing to voters according to polls. The Tories
have peaked. The Liberals may not be making a huge comeback either. Politics is a
living thing and that is true regardless of where one is on the political spectrum.
Its a long way to an election, but the roads are already being paved in the upcoming
political cycle.
in the months ahead and some are suggesting we have a lot of problems coming the
current budget will find itself deficient and the popularity of the government will plummet
just like the Borden Government did so many years ago,
the fact is Mulcair is looking more appealing to voters according to polls. The Tories
have peaked. The Liberals may not be making a huge comeback either. Politics is a
living thing and that is true regardless of where one is on the political spectrum.
Its a long way to an election, but the roads are already being paved in the upcoming
political cycle.
Keep in mind a few points concerning this budget. First, it is an initiative that a Liberal government or even an NDP government would not find particularly odious. People tend to forget that the budget brought in by the Liberals in the early 1990s to repair the damage done by the Mulroney administration was much more severe. Also forgotten is that fact that in the 1990s the NDP government of Saskatchewan was the first government to restore a balanced budget; once again repairing the damage of a conservative administration. The modern Conservative Party has drifted far enough from its right wing roots that it is really a centre party. In fact if it was a US party it would be considered left wing.
Second, many of the changes do not take place for almost a decade. The likelihood that the Conservatives will still be in power at that time is remote. There is plenty of time for another party to cancel or modify many of Mr. Flaherty's plans.
Second, many of the changes do not take place for almost a decade. The likelihood that the Conservatives will still be in power at that time is remote. There is plenty of time for another party to cancel or modify many of Mr. Flaherty's plans.
Can you explain to me WHY you feel you are entitled to this money simply due to age? Unlike the CPP, where you actually pay into a pension plan for your retirement, OAS is simply a "prize" for reaching 65 or older. If you live to 64 years 364 days, sorry you don't qualify for anything. This isn't monopoly and you get a prize for getting around the board. If this is a social program, then lump all the money together and give it to the neediest group.
Besides, if $6,500 a year is such a huge burden after 65 years of age then in most cases, people did a horrible job in retirement planning. For those that truly need the money there is social assistance.
I say get rid of OAS.
You make some good points, with OAS they are just giving us our own money back. If they did scrap it altogether then we would have the money gradually over the years (from reduced taxes) to invest as we please for our retirement. The OAS is just one more good example of the Gov't wiping our noses for us! :lol:
I am in favor of getting rid of the OAS.
But I do not want to see discrimination based on income. If I have a high income at 67, and you have a low income at 67, we should both be treated equally and both get the same amount of OAS.
Btw, the clawback presently in OAS, is not a clawback back to Gov general revenue, it's a clawback by Revenue Canada. The amount that is clawed back by Rev Can shows up in your T4 OAS as Taxes paid by you. I know, I volunteer and do a number Tax returns for seniors
Federal budget poses threat to CBC, Stursberg argues
Last Thursday’s federal budget cut the CBC by $115-million. To put this in context, here are three things about the corporation that most people do not know. First, it is more successful now than it has ever been. Second, the federal budget cut is only the beginning of its woes. Third, there is a way forward, but nobody is talking about it. The CBC is at the most challenging point in its history.
Nearly every year since the 1970s, CBC’s television audiences declined. By 2004, its ratings were the lowest in its history. Almost nobody was watching. The mighty news department commanded only 12 per cent of the audience for Canadian news. The entertainment department took only 30 per cent of the audience for Canadian comedy and drama. Polls showed that Canadians found CBC television essentially irrelevant to their lives.
Starting in 2006, the CBC began to re-invent itself and re-connect with Canadians. It overhauled all its shows – entertainment, news, talk, music, everything. The results were startling. By 2010, it was clear that the CBC had been re-born. This year it is possible to say with certainty that the CBC has never been stronger.
Radio is enjoying the highest ratings in its 75-year history. The great shows – Quirks and Quarks, The Sunday Edition, As It Happens, The Current and the local shows – have never been more popular. The 10 a.m. national morning slot, once hosted by Peter Gzowski, is now home to Gian Gomeshi and Q. The audiences are larger than they were for Gzowski.
Television is in some ways doing even better. For the first time in history, the CBC has proven that Canadians can make entertainment shows that can compete with the programs made in the United States. For the last four years, CBC’s overwhelmingly Canadian prime-time schedule has beaten Global’s overwhelmingly American one.
And the shows are not pale copies of U.S. fare. They are completely and unapologetically Canadian in their stories, style and sensibility. The Rick Mercer Report, Heartland, Dragon’s Den, Arctic Air, Republic of Doyle, The Border, Little Mosque on the Prairie and Battle of the Blades were watched by millions of Canadians.
News and Current Affairs are also stronger. Marketplace often reaches a million viewers, as does The Fifth Estate. The News Network clobbers CNN and every other all-day news channel in Canada.
As the ratings have risen, Canadians attitudes toward the corporation have improved markedly. They see it now as higher quality and more distinctively Canadian.
If there ever was a Golden Age for the CBC, it is now.
And yet, in the full sunshine of its success, shadows are appearing everywhere. The federal budget cut the CBC by $115-million. This is roughly 12 per cent of the approximately $1-billion that it receives annually from the federal government. It is a very significant reduction to a public broadcaster that was already the one of the worst financed in the industrialized world. This could be made even more painful if the government decides to reduce its commitment to the Canadian Media Fund or the television production tax credits, both of which are essential to the financing of CBC documentaries, dramas and comedies.
Other possible horrors wait in the wings. It may lose another $40-million if the Local Program Improvement Fund is cancelled by the CRTC. The conventional advertising markets have been weak for years. If, as seems likely, the CBC loses Hockey Night in Canada, half of its advertising revenues will vanish and it will have to figure out how to replace more than 400 hours of prime-time Canadian programming.
If this were not enough, its great rivals at Global and CTV now have rich new parents as a result of their recent acquisitions by Shaw and Bell, respectively. They are flush with cash, and as a result of various CRTC decisions are obligated to spend a great deal more than they did in the past in the program areas that are CBC’s priorities: Canadian entertainment and news. They were formidable competitors in the past and will be even more formidable now.
The forces arrayed against the CBC profoundly threaten the gains that have been made. There is a real danger that the corporation may be forced backward into the irrelevance that characterized it a decade ago. Unless care is taken, CBC may be so badly damaged that it will be unrecognizable in the future.
And yet, there is no discussion, no serious debate about the future of Canada’s largest and most important cultural institution. There seems to be no real understanding of the problems that lie ahead. There is no public debate on what to do about the future of the corporation. Certainly there is no plan that lays out the challenges that must be faced, let alone one that proposes how to navigate them.
The way forward will be difficult. The CBC needs to transform itself from being a public broadcaster to being a public content company. It needs to abandon the notion that it is a TV or radio company and understand that in the new world of social media and on-demand programming, its focus must be exclusively on content. It needs to radically modernize its governance and financing arrangements to accomplish this. This requires a new relationship with the federal government, the capital markets and the rest of the Canadian media world.
At the end of the first chapter of Lament for a Nation, Canadian philosopher George Grant cautioned against losing those things we value and love through inadvertence or inattention. It is important that we talk about what we need and want from the CBC, so that at the very least, “Posterity may know that we have not loosely through silence permitted things to pass away as in a dream.”
Not to pass away as in a dream… It is time to talk now about the future of the CBC, before it is too late.
Richard Stursberg was executive vice-president of CBC English Services from 2004 to 2010. He is the author of The Tower of Babble: Sins, Secrets and Successes Inside the CBC, published by Douglas and McIntyre. It analyses the challenges facing the corporation and how to think about its future. It will be in book stores in early April.
Federal budget poses threat to CBC, Stursberg argues - The Globe and Mail
Last Thursday’s federal budget cut the CBC by $115-million. To put this in context, here are three things about the corporation that most people do not know. First, it is more successful now than it has ever been. Second, the federal budget cut is only the beginning of its woes. Third, there is a way forward, but nobody is talking about it. The CBC is at the most challenging point in its history.
Nearly every year since the 1970s, CBC’s television audiences declined. By 2004, its ratings were the lowest in its history. Almost nobody was watching. The mighty news department commanded only 12 per cent of the audience for Canadian news. The entertainment department took only 30 per cent of the audience for Canadian comedy and drama. Polls showed that Canadians found CBC television essentially irrelevant to their lives.
Starting in 2006, the CBC began to re-invent itself and re-connect with Canadians. It overhauled all its shows – entertainment, news, talk, music, everything. The results were startling. By 2010, it was clear that the CBC had been re-born. This year it is possible to say with certainty that the CBC has never been stronger.
Radio is enjoying the highest ratings in its 75-year history. The great shows – Quirks and Quarks, The Sunday Edition, As It Happens, The Current and the local shows – have never been more popular. The 10 a.m. national morning slot, once hosted by Peter Gzowski, is now home to Gian Gomeshi and Q. The audiences are larger than they were for Gzowski.
Television is in some ways doing even better. For the first time in history, the CBC has proven that Canadians can make entertainment shows that can compete with the programs made in the United States. For the last four years, CBC’s overwhelmingly Canadian prime-time schedule has beaten Global’s overwhelmingly American one.
And the shows are not pale copies of U.S. fare. They are completely and unapologetically Canadian in their stories, style and sensibility. The Rick Mercer Report, Heartland, Dragon’s Den, Arctic Air, Republic of Doyle, The Border, Little Mosque on the Prairie and Battle of the Blades were watched by millions of Canadians.
News and Current Affairs are also stronger. Marketplace often reaches a million viewers, as does The Fifth Estate. The News Network clobbers CNN and every other all-day news channel in Canada.
As the ratings have risen, Canadians attitudes toward the corporation have improved markedly. They see it now as higher quality and more distinctively Canadian.
If there ever was a Golden Age for the CBC, it is now.
And yet, in the full sunshine of its success, shadows are appearing everywhere. The federal budget cut the CBC by $115-million. This is roughly 12 per cent of the approximately $1-billion that it receives annually from the federal government. It is a very significant reduction to a public broadcaster that was already the one of the worst financed in the industrialized world. This could be made even more painful if the government decides to reduce its commitment to the Canadian Media Fund or the television production tax credits, both of which are essential to the financing of CBC documentaries, dramas and comedies.
Other possible horrors wait in the wings. It may lose another $40-million if the Local Program Improvement Fund is cancelled by the CRTC. The conventional advertising markets have been weak for years. If, as seems likely, the CBC loses Hockey Night in Canada, half of its advertising revenues will vanish and it will have to figure out how to replace more than 400 hours of prime-time Canadian programming.
If this were not enough, its great rivals at Global and CTV now have rich new parents as a result of their recent acquisitions by Shaw and Bell, respectively. They are flush with cash, and as a result of various CRTC decisions are obligated to spend a great deal more than they did in the past in the program areas that are CBC’s priorities: Canadian entertainment and news. They were formidable competitors in the past and will be even more formidable now.
The forces arrayed against the CBC profoundly threaten the gains that have been made. There is a real danger that the corporation may be forced backward into the irrelevance that characterized it a decade ago. Unless care is taken, CBC may be so badly damaged that it will be unrecognizable in the future.
And yet, there is no discussion, no serious debate about the future of Canada’s largest and most important cultural institution. There seems to be no real understanding of the problems that lie ahead. There is no public debate on what to do about the future of the corporation. Certainly there is no plan that lays out the challenges that must be faced, let alone one that proposes how to navigate them.
The way forward will be difficult. The CBC needs to transform itself from being a public broadcaster to being a public content company. It needs to abandon the notion that it is a TV or radio company and understand that in the new world of social media and on-demand programming, its focus must be exclusively on content. It needs to radically modernize its governance and financing arrangements to accomplish this. This requires a new relationship with the federal government, the capital markets and the rest of the Canadian media world.
At the end of the first chapter of Lament for a Nation, Canadian philosopher George Grant cautioned against losing those things we value and love through inadvertence or inattention. It is important that we talk about what we need and want from the CBC, so that at the very least, “Posterity may know that we have not loosely through silence permitted things to pass away as in a dream.”
Not to pass away as in a dream… It is time to talk now about the future of the CBC, before it is too late.
Richard Stursberg was executive vice-president of CBC English Services from 2004 to 2010. He is the author of The Tower of Babble: Sins, Secrets and Successes Inside the CBC, published by Douglas and McIntyre. It analyses the challenges facing the corporation and how to think about its future. It will be in book stores in early April.
Federal budget poses threat to CBC, Stursberg argues - The Globe and Mail
There are some targeted tax credits that are good. One example is the new one for volunteer firefighters. It requires 210 hours of volunteer time a year which is quite a bit of unpaid work when you consider the alternative would be thousands of paid union firefighters having to be hired across the country.
Not the mention "The Vinal Cafe" with Stuart MacLean and "Cross Country Checkup" with Rex Murphy.
On this I would agree to disagree.
LOL, ya fair competition is not exactly something the CBC likes.
Maybe because unfairly propping it up, with taxpayers money, isn't something people think should be on the table.
Sounds nationalistic to me.
I've actually come to enjoy the CBC, but still can't endorse the bloated funding.
I disagree. The alternative would not be thousands of paid union firefighters. We didn't have that before the tax credit and there is absolutely no reason to believe we would need it if the tax credit wasn't implemented. As a volunteer firefighter, I don't mind the tax credit but what does it actually accomplish. I don't know of a single firefighter that would base his/her decision to volunteer on the credit nor do I know of a single department that has attracted a new member because of it.
I think it would have been better to give tax credits to businesses that allow their employees to join and leave work in the case of a fire call. That is our biggest challenge. Fire departments are expected to do more and more, requiring a bigger time commitment and companies have a tough time losing employees, sometimes for a full day (and with no advanced warning).
I have no problem with the cut if it simply means getting rid of some of the sitcoms (Mercer report excluded). As long as this doesn't tamper with the news segment of the corporation. Power and Politics is too precious a program for all of us.