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  • Equality Delivery System

    Good Intentions, Not Enough Action in Indigenous Child Welfare Plan, Says Advocate

    posted June 18, 2018 / No Comments

    … many of the prevention programs the government is now pledging to fund don’t currently exist. Additional funding will be needed for capital and start-up costs for new programming to keep kids with their families… “It’s taken us literally generations to get into the circumstances that have led to a severe overrepresentation of Indigenous children in child welfare… So it’s not going to happen overnight, but we’re seeing really positive movement…”

  • Health Debates

    A Prescription for Better Health for Canadians

    posted June 18, 2018 / No Comments

    If you exercise, eat well, get good sleep and manage your stress, you are going to be healthier than if you didn’t do those things. The point is that across the population some people are much more likely, and able, to make those healthier choices than others are. There’s a need for public policy that doesn’t just tell people to make better choices, but that helps create the conditions and provide the resources that enable individuals to make those healthy choices.

  • History

    How Factories Made (and Unmade) Us All

    posted June 18, 2018 / No Comments

    … this becomes a key aspect of the factory. Its purpose is not just to make things cheap, but to make them ever cheaper. When unionized factory workers got too expensive, the companies moved to the south, and then to Mexico, and then to China… The day will surely come when Chinese brands outsource their designs to factories in Ethiopia, Madagascar, and Sierra Leone. And if they ever outsource them to the U.S. or Canada, it will be only when we can offer cheaper labour than the Ethiopians.

  • Governance Debates

    Now He’s Won, Can Doug Ford Fill Voters’ Desire for ‘Order?’

    posted June 11, 2018 / No Comments

    With economic upheavals, there is a segment of the population looking for stability and order. Not sharing in economic prosperity, they look to government to slow social change, such as those related to immigration and multiculturalism. Lacking faith in transformative change, they look to politics as a way to deliver small material benefits like a tax cut or cheaper hydro. Holding onto those voters is a fundamental challenge for Ford and his government.

  • Equality Delivery System

    Ottawa must learn from failures on Indigenous programs

    posted June 11, 2018 / No Comments

    On education, he found a significant gap in high school graduation rates between Indigenous students living on reserves and other Canadian students… On employment, Ferguson found that Employment and Social Development Canada did not collect the data it needed to assess whether programs aimed at helping Indigenous people find work were actually increasing the number of people finding sustainable jobs.

  • Governance Delivery System

    Ontario voters cheated by first-past-the-post with PC false majority by Fairvote Canada

    posted June 9, 2018 / No Comments

    Ontario’s voting system took only 40.5 per cent of the votes to manufacture a majority for Doug Ford’s PCs as voters were cheated by First-past-the-post… “That’s the way our system works, or more accurately, this is how our system does NOT work, to elect a government that reflects the views of the majority. How are voters supposed to hold the government accountable when it answers to only 40% of the voters?”

  • Governance Debates

    The Next Four Years: An Ontario election post-mortem

    posted June 9, 2018 / No Comments

    … Premier-designate Doug Ford… swept into power on a thin platform that was never fully costed. Economists estimate at least a $10 billion fiscal hole in the party’s promises. That means there will either be deep and painful cuts, a lot of unfulfilled promises, or both. Progressives who hoped Ontario was on the brink of a major expansion of social programs—universal dental care, pharmacare, child care, affordable housing—will now be tasked with turning that hope into resolve.

  • Governance Debates

    Ford’s win exposes the angry blind spot of Canadian democracy

    posted June 9, 2018 / No Comments

    … a majority of males between the ages of 20 and 55 appears to have handed Doug Ford power over the next four years, and his supporters are, by and large, anything but optimistic about the economy or, for that matter, anything else… The trigger of their discontent is that they belong to that sizeable chunk of the province’s population who have been standing still or moving backward in the economy over the past 30 or so years, and who do not see things getting better in the future.

  • Debates

    The real reason jobs left America

    posted June 9, 2018 / No Comments

    … the part of the U.S. that specialized in assembly-line manufacturing, and assembly lines are the easiest things in the world to automate… The data that strongly suggested we were heading for a mostly jobless future was available years ago, but most people ignored it. It was too hard to deal with… Most of the attempts to future-proof our politics are currently focused on developing various versions of a guaranteed basic income (Ontario’s pilot program being the biggest and boldest).

  • Governance Debates

    Young voters in Ontario should make sure their voice is heard this week

    posted June 5, 2018 / No Comments

    The main issues go well beyond health care and taxes, the perennial ones that drive older, more established voters. This time, affordable housing and daycare, cheaper university tuition, free dental care and prescription drug coverage and a higher minimum wage – all issues that directly affect a younger voting demographic — are in play… Overall, voter turnout in Ontario is among the lowest in Canada… Among voters in the 18-24 age bracket it’s believed to be closer to 30 per cent…

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