The full team is back with regular hosts with Lynn, Wojtek, and Marc
On the domestic political scene, in Canada Parliament, question period in the House of Commons is always interesting and often very loud.
Opposition party members are allowed to ask questions of the government about its policies and activities. The ruling party is supposed to answer those questions, or at least provide an answer with some relevance to the question.
This week, when opposition leader Thomas Mulcair of the New Democratic Party asked questions of the government, a member of the ruling Conservative Party provided answers which had nothing to do with the question.
Because he continued to do so, Mulcair then questioned the neutrality of the speaker who allowed the non-answering to continue.
Wojtek has a report..
The Canadian government announced new standards for vehicle emmissions at a gathering just prior to the major United Nations conference on climate change.
However, it seems the new standards are not really very new. It seems that they were first announced two years ago, and basically only mimic what the US is calling for
Lynn spoke to John Bennett, national program director at Sierra Club Canada Foundation.
And there’s another wage gap that’s growing in Canada.
It used to be gender based, men earning more than women who were doing roughly the same job. That has lessened over the years, but now an earnings gap is widening between younger workers and older workers.
The Conference Board of Canada looked at this wage gap after several years of stories of university grads being stuck in low paying jobs, and even when in career entry level positions, getting stuck there longer at pay scales which have not really grown over the decades while all other prices have been going on.
This lack of earning power among younger Canadians has some worrying societal implications says David Stewart-Patterson, a vice president of the not-for profti think tank, and co-author of the report. He says it’s important for society to have a younger generation earning enough to afford decent housing and pay ever increasing taxes to support social programmes, and have discretionary income to keep the economy rolling.
Marc speaks with David Stewart-Patterson.
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