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A rare success in the battle against homelessness

Sunday, May 20th, 2012

May 20 2012
Woodgreen launched an ambitious fundraising campaign and began the makeover. Using private donations, in-kind contributions (flowers, bedding, pots and pans) and every source of government funding available, it transformed the Edwin from a neighbourhood embarrassment into an attractive residence for homeless men over 55. The cost was $3.8 million. It reopened in 2010. It is now a source of local pride, an architectural gem and a safe, impeccably maintained home for the 28 men who live there… A project like the Edwin is not cheap or easy… But the ideological debate is over. It is hard to argue with success.

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Toronto incubates new brand of business-charity hybrids

Wednesday, May 2nd, 2012

May 01 2012
Social enterprises are business-charity hybrids. They aim to do well in the marketplace in order to do good in the community. The concept is not new. Long before anyone was theorizing about it, Maritimers were doing it. Dairy famers built co-op creameries to cut their costs and stabilize their communities… These grassroots initiatives were one of the best anti-poverty programs ever conceived… In the ’60s, it petered out. Today’s social enterprise movement is a digital, secular, urban renaissance of that tradition.

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Greed loses its glamour, even on Wall Street

Thursday, April 26th, 2012

Apr 24 2012
… a few isolated voices — left-wing economists, academics, social activists, labour organizers, church leaders and corporate renegades — warned that Canada was becoming a highly inequitable nation… The volume went up a couple of notches last fall when thousands of young people took to the streets chanting: “We are the 99 per cent.” … Last week brought two developments that couldn’t be shrugged off or attributed to left-wing agitation. The first was a shareholders’ revolt at one of Wall Street’s biggest banks… “This is a shot across the bow of every corporate boardroom in America,”

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Hopes fade for humane welfare system in Ontario

Wednesday, April 25th, 2012

Apr 22 2012
Initially, the 880,000 people who depend on social assistance — which includes welfare and disability support — regarded Lankin, former president of the United Way of Greater Toronto, as their champion in the corridors of power. She knew they couldn’t live on the province’s meagre allowance. She knew they needed affordable housing and child care. She knew the system stripped them of their privacy and their dignity. But in recent months, doubts have set in. The commission’s discussion paper in February was vague and unsettling. Last month’s provincial budget was ominous.

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Canada’s non-profit sector invents a solution to gaps in funding

Friday, April 20th, 2012

Apr 19 2012
The recession hit Canada’s non-profit sector hard. Demand surged. Donations shrank. Foundations suspended grants to protect their endowments. Government support held up for a time as Ottawa and the provinces poured money into the moribund economy, then it too was cut… Innovative non-profit organizations shelved groundbreaking projects and went into survival mode… In 2010, the Community Forward Fund (CFF) was born. It took another two years of work — painstaking legal work — to build Canada’s first non-profit lending institution.

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Harper throws National Council of Welfare on the scrap heap

Friday, April 13th, 2012

Apr 12 2012
Since 1962, the National Council of Welfare had held up a mirror to the nation, highlighting the pockets of poverty and warning policy-makers of the consequences of neglecting those in need. It gave non-profit groups the facts they needed to speak credibly about hardship in a land of plenty. It tracked the emergence and growth of a crack in society between the comfortably well-off and the struggling. And it brought together social policy thinkers to find solutions to poverty… Now it’s gone.

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More than a budget, this a blueprint to make over Canada

Wednesday, April 4th, 2012

Mar 29 2012
The Prime Minister intends to use his parliamentary majority to redefine the role of government and rewrite Canada’s social contract. It would have helped to know all this before last year’s election. But Harper never said a word about reducing the government’s commitment to Old Age Security, capping Ottawa’s contribution to medicare or loosening environmental regulations. He never told Canadians a Conservative government would keep paring public services after the budget was balanced…. And the role of government in people’s lives will continue to shrink. They’ll have to lower their expectations, save more, demand less and stop looking to Ottawa to shield them from the rigours of the marketplace.

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Ontario budget is a requiem for a caring province

Wednesday, March 28th, 2012

Mar 27 2012
Most Ontarians accept the need for belt-tightening. What they don’t accept — at least not yet — is that this province can no longer afford to support the vulnerable. That is the premise on which Tuesday’s budget… is built… It is the small items – cutbacks imposed on those eking out a precarious existence – that raise questions about McGuinty’s values. Although the premier enacted a poverty reduction plan in 2009, he has now effectively renounced it.

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Too many needless government agencies in Ontario

Sunday, March 25th, 2012

Mar 08 2012
Ontario has 82 taxpayer-funded health agencies… Even when they’re benign, they diffuse health decisions over so many different bodies that it’s impossible for Ontarians to keep track. And they’re expensive. Many are headed by well-paid executives and provide jobs for hundreds of government appointees… at a time of austerity, Ontarians need to know why the government needs so many stand-alone health agencies… There isn’t likely to be a better time than now to cull these agencies (plus the 526 that report to other ministers)… the public is primed for belt-tightening.

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Women in the dark about massive Ontario study of female health

Sunday, March 25th, 2012

Mar 06 2012
The most useful chapters for women seeking practical guidance are: cardiovascular disease, diabetes, depression, reproductive health and older women’s health. The chapters on cancer and musculoskeletal conditions (arthritis, osteoporosis) identify gender disparities, regional disparities and socioeconomic parities, but they don’t tell women much about how to improve their odds… it could be a catalyst for change. Its research team estimates that if Ontario had a truly equitable health-care system, there would be 230,000 fewer people with disabilities and 3,373 fewer premature deaths in the province’s big cities.

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