Melodi's blog

“Paying taxes is a noble enterprise.”

These words spoken by Neil Brooks, professor of tax law at Osgoode Hall Law School, served as a leitmotif of the Tax Fairness Summit in Ottawa, March 29-30, organized and run by Canadians for Tax Fairness.

As Brooks and other speakers at the Summit pointed out, this motif resonated a few decades ago when the concept of a social contract still held significant weight, but sounds counterintuitive in public discourse today where taxes are discussed as though they were an affliction rather than a virtuous contribution to the common good. Read more »

Some weeks I find politicking especially hard to stomach. The recent response to the situation in Attawapiskat makes it one of those weeks.

When the community of Attawapiskat declared a state of emergency, they weren’t asking for a cyclical public debate about who is to blame. They weren’t asking to be a tool to shame or prop up certain political parties. And they certainly weren’t asking to be painfully reminded of Canada’s colonial attitudes in the arrival of a third-party manager.

They were asking for survival. For water, blankets, shelter. Read more »