The Ontario government has prorogued the provincial legislature, returning September 12 with a new throne speech.

The throne speech has been cast as government "pressing the reset button" following a recent by-election loss and ongoing controversies such as election finance scandals, hydro privatization, and high hydro bills.

Each of those controversies need to be tackled head on, but what should "pressing the reset button" look like for a government that is mid-term, purporting to be "activist" in its approach and less than two years away from a general election?

The answer starts with the question: what is the role of a provincial government in creating the conditions for decent work and reduced income inequality?

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Maybe you take the quietude of the holiday season as a time to unplug and reflect. Maybe, like me, you curl up with a pile of progressive reading that you've been meaning to catch up on.

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When it came to raising the minimum wage in this province, for the longest time the typical small business owner would serve as the penultimate elephant in the room.

You could make the case for a higher minimum wage until you were blue in the face. It keeps workers below the poverty line. It hasn't caught up with inflation or productivity. It's not enough to make ends meet.

Only to be told: it'll put small businesses out of work.

As Canada's Twitter elite (economists, pundits, partisans) broke out into a virtual policy brawl over yesterday's NDP national affordable child care pledge, I couldn't help but think the party might have hit a political sweet spot.

Of course there were the typical Twitter arguments between Liberals and New Democrats that break out every time one of them makes a political pledge.

But another line of argumentation unfolded on my Twitter news feed -- one designed to exploit class tensions. The argument advanced by a few well-off Twitterati asserts that universally accessible, affordable programs, like child care, aren't progressive because rich people can afford to pay for these services themselves.