« Older Entries | Newer Entries »
What worked, and what didn’t
Monday, December 13th, 2010
Dec 13 2010
… there appear to be better ways of creating jobs during a recession than small construction projects. Training seems to work. Programs such as Ontario’s Second Career succeeded in getting laid-off workers back into the job market. Enhanced employment insurance seems to work. The extension of jobless benefits and working agreements helped keep many families afloat… modest improvements in the national child benefit supplement and the working income tax benefit put spending money in the hands of struggling families.
Tags: budget, economy, ideology
Posted in Debates | No Comments »
Native children also have the right to parents
Monday, December 13th, 2010
December 11, 2010
Native children are languishing in state care in unthinkable numbers… Canada remains so traumatized by the “sixties scoop,” the widespread adoption of native children into white homes, that it allows the native children of today to grow up without a permanent home of their own… Striving to avoid the wrongs of the past, we have inflicted new wrongs, of temporariness and a lack of nurturing, on the most vulnerable children. Unless we insist on the right of these children to permanent parents, future premiers may find themselves apologizing again, for lives ruined by yet another public policy failure.
Tags: child care, Indigenous, multiculturalism, rights
Posted in Child & Family Debates | No Comments »
Child support too low a priority
Saturday, December 11th, 2010
Dec 11 2010
Ontario’s Auditor General Jim McCarter has found that the Family Responsibility Office works actively on less than one-quarter of its total cases each year. Even if a person is lucky enough to have her case make it to the top of the pile, there is no guarantee she will get timely help. The office waits four months after a case goes into arrears before it even starts enforcement action. Remarkably, more than 80 per cent of the calls to the FRO call centre never get answered.
Tags: child care, poverty, standard of living, women, youth
Posted in Child & Family Debates | No Comments »
Auditor’s report: A remedy for ailing hospitals
Tuesday, December 7th, 2010
Dec 07 2010
Emergency rooms are overcrowded with people waiting to been seen by a doctor — often because beds are full with patients waiting for admission to other hospital wards. Yet, at the same time, 50,000 Ontarians spent more days in hospital beds than they needed to last year because of delays in discharging them and accessing community services, such as a long-term care beds… At a time of deficits and continually soaring health budgets, the government must get the most from the health care system.
Tags: budget, Health, standard of living
Posted in Health Delivery System | No Comments »
Welfare reform: Breaking the cycle of poverty
Saturday, December 4th, 2010
Dec 04 2010
What we have now is a punitive, rules-bound system that not only humiliates and demoralizes recipients but also impedes their transition to the workforce and self-sufficiency. It senselessly forces people into complete destitution before they can apply for benefits; restricts their access to educational opportunities once they are receiving assistance; and urges them to work but strips them of the financial benefits that come with employment. Ultimately, this all costs taxpayers more, not less, and it undermines the province’s goal of breaking the cycle of poverty.
Tags: featured, ideology, poverty, standard of living
Posted in Social Security Debates | No Comments »
Diet supplement: Patchwork on program
Thursday, December 2nd, 2010
Dec 02 2010
Under the new rules announced this week, numerous medical conditions will no longer qualify for the special diet allowance. But many of the remaining conditions, such as diabetes and hypertension, will qualify for larger amounts to enable people to manage their illnesses with healthier diets. That’s important for them and for our health care budget… As a temporary solution, the changes are not bad.
Tags: Health, ideology, poverty, standard of living
Posted in Social Security Debates | No Comments »
Ontario housing strategy: Won’t reduce long wait lists
Tuesday, November 30th, 2010
Nov 30 2010
Claiming it needed “the time to get it right,” the Liberal government at Queen’s Park long delayed releasing a long-term affordable housing strategy. That’s what makes what was released Monday – three years after it was first promised in the 2007 election campaign – all the more disappointing. The housing strategy is little more than a series of regulatory changes that reduce red tape, simplify convoluted rules and provide municipalities more flexibility to cater to local needs
Tags: homelessness, housing, poverty, standard of living
Posted in Inclusion Debates | No Comments »
Guaranteed income: an idea worth rethinking
Sunday, November 28th, 2010
November 27, 2010
Such handouts, the assumption runs, would create a work-resistant underclass prepared to milk the state for all it’s worth. But the time has come to rethink the idea, without preconceptions. A guaranteed annual income (GAI) might well allow us to sweep away the burdensome, confusing, inefficient, intrusive, overlapping tangle of current federal and provincial programs for income support. And a number of pilot studies seem to suggest that the disincentive to work is not enormous, while immediate benefits, notably in improved nutrition and health, are significant for the individuals and for the whole economy.
Tags: budget, featured, ideology, poverty, rights, standard of living
Posted in Social Security Debates | No Comments »
Welfare rules: A smack down, not a hand up
Tuesday, November 23rd, 2010
Nov 23 2010
This is hardly a system that encourages people to “find and keep a job.” It is, as Premier Dalton McGuinty has acknowledged, a system of counterproductive rules that “stomp” people into ground, hurting them and our economy. In a paper for the Metcalf Foundation, John Stapleton, a former social services bureaucrat, argues that these rules make the move to self-reliance almost impossible. He’s right… Bartolucci is set to release Ontario’s long-term affordable housing strategy shortly.
Tags: budget, featured, ideology, poverty, rights, standard of living
Posted in Social Security Debates | 1 Comment »
Poverty strategy: Tories display apathy on issue
Sunday, November 21st, 2010
Nov 21 2010
What Canadians can’t afford is to continue ignoring poverty. Indeed, to drive home that very point, the report references a food bank study that pegged the annual cost of poverty to the economy at more than $72 billion. Those costs include increased spending on social services, health care and criminal justice, as well as lost productivity and tax revenue from the underemployed… a Senate subcommittee — with Conservative Hugh Segal as its vice-chair — recently concluded that many of our existing programs are so badly designed that they actually hold people down.
Tags: featured, ideology, poverty, standard of living
Posted in Social Security Debates | No Comments »
Recent Comments