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A century of women’s rights: A struggle that continues
Tuesday, March 8th, 2011
Mar 08 2011
The struggle for women’s political and economic rights was big news in Old Toronto, 100 years ago. British suffragist Emmeline Pankhurst and her daughter Sylvia were drawing sizable crowds… editors at the Toronto Daily Star devoted much of the front page to eldest daughter Christabel Pankhurst’s stunning declaration in London that the suffragists had embarked on a “real war” to claim women’s rights.
Tags: ideology, participation, rights, standard of living, women
Posted in Equality History | 3 Comments »
Fund pathways to education, not to prison
Sunday, March 6th, 2011
Mar. 05, 2011
For $5-million a year, the Conservative government has made an investment in young people that makes spectacular sense. It also undermines the logic of the government’s U.S.-style prison expansion, which will cost Ottawa nearly $1-billion a year, and the provinces about the same amount… Pathways to Education, which will receive $20-million over four years, is a remarkable program devised by a community health centre in Toronto’s inner city… Its results are astonishing. It cut the dropout rate among 700 students from 56 per cent to 12 per cent
Tags: crime prevention, ideology, participation, poverty
Posted in Education Debates | 1 Comment »
A simple way to help Canada’s poorest seniors
Thursday, March 3rd, 2011
Feb. 28, 2011
Pension income-splitting does absolutely nothing to help single seniors or even the poorest elderly couples who pay no tax. Some senior couples have enjoyed a tax reduction, but the measure is regressive — the higher their income, the bigger the tax break…. There is a far fairer and more effective way to spend that $733 million — use it to boost the guaranteed income supplement for the poorest seniors. The increase should be targeted to single recipients because they have a much higher poverty rate than elderly couples.
Tags: budget, ideology, pensions, standard of living, tax
Posted in Inclusion Debates | No Comments »
The Conservative crime agenda sells, until the bill arrives
Thursday, March 3rd, 2011
Feb. 28, 2011
… even if the public would like tougher sentences, there appears to be no wish to pay a tab in the billions each year (in combined federal and provincial costs). The federal corrections budget alone is set to rise by $861-million, or 36 per cent, by 2012-13 over 2009-10. The provincial costs will probably rise by at least that much, because of federal sentencing changes. Ottawa’s position is either that Canadians want a get-tough approach at any cost, or that they aren’t entitled to know what the cost will be.
Tags: budget, corrections, crime prevention, ideology, tax
Posted in Child & Family Debates | No Comments »
Natives still suffer shameful stereotypes
Sunday, February 27th, 2011
Feb. 25, 2011
Canada’s urban natives, who now comprise half of all Métis, first nations and Inuit, feel they are viewed negatively by the larger society, even as they display a high level of tolerance for other cultures… according to a study by Environics Institute, many non-aboriginals recognize their comic-book characterization of natives, and acknowledge that real discrimination exists. The federal government, the provinces and aboriginals themselves need to broaden this unsophisticated image, which focuses only on the social challenges natives face, while obscuring the many success stories.
Tags: Indigenous, multiculturalism, poverty, standard of living
Posted in Equality Debates | No Comments »
Begging for Care: Keeping seniors healthy and at home
Wednesday, February 23rd, 2011
Feb 23 2011
A woman exhausted from providing round-the-clock care for her mother-in-law, who suffers from dementia, begs for the help of a personal support worker. She qualifies for just three hours a week. The province has increased funding to Ontario’s Community Care Access Centres… But what of seniors who wind up in a hospital bed because the medical and personal support they needed to keep them healthy at home was not available? … the only hope of taming the growth in Ontario’s health care budget… is to keep seniors healthy at home for as long as possible.
Tags: budget, Health, ideology, poverty, standard of living
Posted in Child & Family Debates | No Comments »
If we are a northern nation, support our northern peoples
Monday, February 21st, 2011
Feb. 21, 2011
The isolation and sparse population of many communities in the Yukon, Northwest Territories and Nunavut make it more difficult to deliver health and educational services. And yet Ottawa has a responsibility to ensure a minimum standard of self-governance exists, and that residents of the North can experience a quality of life that is at least comparable to that in the South. Unfortunately, this is not the case – especially in the eastern Arctic, where people have abysmal high-school graduation rates, high unemployment and some of the world’s worst health outcomes.
Tags: economy, Health, Indigenous, poverty, rights, standard of living
Posted in Inclusion Debates | No Comments »
Spaces must be affordable
Monday, February 21st, 2011
Feb 21 2011
…some Toronto neighbourhoods have no child-care spaces available at all; others have spaces that no one can afford. There are 17,000 kids waiting for the chance to get one of the city’s 24,000 child-care subsidies… The last time Toronto comprehensively addressed the problem was in 1997 when an expert panel recommended that “quality, regulated child care should be available to all parents who need it.”… But ultimately, the property tax base will never stretch to cover the expansion in affordable service that is so desperately needed. Queen’s Park and Ottawa must come to the table for that.
Tags: budget, child care, ideology, participation, standard of living, women
Posted in Child & Family Debates | No Comments »
Let’s build opportunity, not prisons
Sunday, February 20th, 2011
Feb. 18, 2011
Even if all of the government’s criminal justice bills were sensible, taken individually (and frankly, we have no philosophical objection to Truth in Sentencing), the costs need to be known and weighed, on their own merits and against other uses for that money. If Canada has money for an expansion of the jails, which is doubtful, it should think instead about ambitious ways of investing in productivity and people.
Tags: corrections, crime prevention
Posted in Child & Family Debates | No Comments »
Don’t let Canada be jailed for debt
Thursday, February 17th, 2011
February 17, 2011
Parliament… is failing to live up to its basic responsibilities, because it doesn’t know what the financial implications are of the government’s many crime bills… To the extent Canada allows for untrammelled (and unnecessary) growth of the prisons, it will have less money available to invest in people and productivity… Mr. Page told the committee he does not accept the government’s contention that the costs are a “cabinet confidence.”
Tags: budget, corrections, crime prevention, ideology, rights
Posted in Governance Debates | No Comments »
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