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Supreme Court ruling gives Canadians with mental disabilities full equality in court
Wednesday, February 15th, 2012
Feb 14 2012
The law is finally fair. In a landmark judgment last week, the Supreme Court ruled that Canadians with mental disabilities have the same right to testify in court as everyone else… It also said adults with mental disabilities should be subjected to no higher test of truthfulness than any other witness: Can they tell their story coherently and do they swear to tell the truth?
Tags: disabilities, mental Health, rights
Posted in Equality Delivery System | No Comments »
Prime Minister Stephen Harper boasts about Canada’s economic performance while jobs vanish and pensions shrink
Friday, February 10th, 2012
Feb 09 2012
What we are seeing is a power shift. Governments and corporations are limiting their risk exposure at the expense of their citizens and employees. This trend is not new, but it accelerated sharply in 2012. We knew Harper had no intention of bolstering public pensions. But no one imagined he would make life harder for seniors, without any warning or public discussion.
Tags: budget, economy, globalization, ideology, pensions, standard of living
Posted in Debates | No Comments »
Harper’s pension reform moves breed needless resentment
Friday, February 3rd, 2012
Feb 02 2012
Harper doesn’t want ideas. He wants a quick, made-in-Ottawa solution… He has a parliamentary majority. What he can’t do is stop Canadians from questioning his rationale (numerous actuarial reports show Old Age Security is affordable); questioning his motives (streamlined environmental rules would help oil producers); and questioning his trustworthiness (despite his claims to the contrary, immigrants fear he will restrict the intake of “non-productive’ newcomers such as grandparents, siblings and refugees.)…
Tags: immigration, participation, pensions
Posted in Governance Debates | No Comments »
Old age benefits now slated for cost-cutting by Stephen Harper.
Wednesday, February 1st, 2012
Jan 31 2012
Harper had never mentioned changing the terms of old age security (OAS) in Parliament or any of his public speeches… The Prime Minister may have thought debt-enfeebled Europe, with its cradle-to-grave social programs, would be the perfect backdrop to signal a shift in policy. He might have assumed the economic logic of his stance would be self-evident to Canadians. What he apparently forgot was that he sought a mandate to govern for the next four years last May without telling voters that re-electing him meant their pensions were vulnerable.
Tags: budget, ideology, pensions, standard of living, tax
Posted in Social Security Debates | No Comments »
Canada chops employment insurance staff, leaving jobless in the lurch
Monday, January 30th, 2012
Jan 29 2012
An applicant who provides all the information required by Service Canada is supposed to get his or her first benefit payment within 28 days. But thousands of laid-off workers say they’ve been waiting months. It’s impossible to get though to Service Canada; the phone lines are jammed. It takes hours to get an appointment with a claims officer when they go to the office in person. And when their turn finally comes, they’re often told their claim is “spooling” or “churning” in the computer and won’t be retrievable for three weeks… Why is the federal agency failing to keep its part of the bargain?
Tags: economy, ideology, rights, standard of living
Posted in Policy Context | No Comments »
Disabled children get left out
Thursday, January 26th, 2012
Jan 24 2012
… preschool children are generally well-served by community agencies and elementary schools do their best to include children with disabilities in classroom activities. But around Grade 5 or 6, these kids fall by wayside… Those who manage to finish high school have enormous difficulty getting the training they need to qualify for a job… smaller communities don’t have resources for these children with disabilities. But even in major cities parents don’t know what services exist… There are solutions to these problems, but they require money and leadership.
Tags: disabilities
Posted in Inclusion Delivery System | 1 Comment »
Tax breaks leave gaping hole in federal budget
Friday, January 13th, 2012
Jan 12 2012
Every year Ottawa gives up billions of taxes in deductions, exemptions, deferrals, credits, rebates and concessions. Because no money actually goes out the door, these tax breaks don’t count as spending. But they cost the federal treasury billions… here is the value of all the tax expenditures in the 2011 report, released this week: $152 billion. To put that in perspective, the government’s total program spending in 2011 amounted to $248 billion.
Tags: budget, ideology, standard of living, tax
Posted in Education Delivery System, Governance Delivery System | No Comments »
Payroll taxes go up but jobless relief deteriorates
Saturday, January 7th, 2012
Jan 05 2012
Most of the jobs available now are part-time, short-term or casual. They seldom last long enough to provide workers with the hours they need to qualify for EI benefits… Rates of coverage vary widely across the country. In Ontario, less than 40 per cent of the jobless receive EI benefits… Successive governments have pared EI benefits… The rate-setting mechanism no longer functions as intended… surpluses cannot be accumulated in good years to use in lean years… (so) that when the economy slumps EI premiums go up, forcing workers to pay more when they can least afford it.
Tags: economy, ideology, rights, standard of living
Posted in Policy Context | 1 Comment »
Parliament fails native women
Wednesday, January 4th, 2012
Jan 03 2012
Three days before the House of Commons rose for its Christmas recess, a parliamentary committee quietly tabled a shocking report. It was called Ending Violence Against Aboriginal Women and Girls. But it wasn’t a plan of action. It wasn’t even a commitment to do better. It was a self-congratulatory compendium of existing programs… The Conservative government, which controls Parliament, can do as it wishes. It is clear it does not consider the disproportionately high rate of violence against aboriginal women a priority.
Tags: Indigenous, rights, standard of living, women
Posted in Inclusion Delivery System | No Comments »
David Pecaut was ‘a popcorn machine of ideas’
Friday, December 30th, 2011
Dec 29 2011
…the Pecaut Centre for Social Enterprise… will have three purposes. • Its primary objective will be to develop Toronto’s next generation of social entrepreneurs… • Its second objective will be to act as a knowledge hub for the not-for-profit sector. It will grapple with one of the biggest challenges they face: How to measure the value (or in business terms, the return on investment) of what they do… • Its third objective will be to take promising social enterprises from startups to sustainable ventures… (as) the not-for-profit sector must be part of a strong, creative, compassionate Canada.
Tags: ideology, multiculturalism, participation, standard of living
Posted in Inclusion Debates | 2 Comments »
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