HOW TO CLOSE INCOME DIVIDE

Impose a surtax on stock-option proceeds reaped by corporate executives. At the very least, we should scrap the current stock-option deduction by which CEOs and other top executives pay only 50 per cent of the income-tax rate applied to average worker’s pay.

Subsidies for dental care and prescription drugs have long been provided to people of all ages by Britain’s pioneering National Health Service (NHS), introduced in 1948. Today, public funding covers about 75 per cent of dental-care treatment in Japan and Norway. We are years behind these countries and it’s time we caught up.

Adequate affordable daycare and housing are a prerequisite to a society of universal prosperity. And the federal minimum wage should be restored, and set at 60 per cent of the average industrial wage.

The youth jobless rate in Toronto is about 16 per cent, compared with 7.0 per cent for the general population. The Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives recommends that Ottawa set aside a portion of jobs created by infrastructure projects for young Canadians, providing them with work experience, social skills and a means of paying tuition without accumulating unmanageable student debt.

Thomas Mulcair, the NDP leader, proposes to raise the corporate tax rate to 17 per cent from 15 per cent. Actually, the rate needs to be restored to the 22 per cent level that applied in 2006 before Prime Minister Stephen Harper cut it to its absurdly low current level. (The U.S. rate is 35 per cent). Economists cannot find a link between lower taxes and enhanced job creation, household income or increased offshore investment in Canada.