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Leaner government, less crime
Saturday, December 17th, 2011
Dec. 16, 2011
… the key is income inequality. The only three cities in the country with double-digit violent crime increases were all boom towns… where the influx of wealth drove up criminal opportunity… Every other city saw declines, because they suffered more economically over that period than they benefited. Less disposable income equals less vice, equals less gang crime, equals fewer homicides… The only two other cities with increases at all – both single digit – were… both economically devastated… (They) demonstrate that economic desperation — true poverty — drives people to crime.
Tags: crime prevention, ideology, poverty, standard of living
Posted in Equality Policy Context | No Comments »
Toronto’s rainy day is now
Tuesday, December 13th, 2011
Dec 12 2011
Mayor Rob Ford’s administration seems in full retreat from its destructive plan to kill school nutrition programs feeding 14,000 hungry children…. Imagine going from “guaranteeing” there would be no service cuts, as Rob Ford did on the election trail, to suggesting that this municipality — quite literally — take food from the mouths of children. Imagine if that was actually allowed to happen. That the largest city, in one of the richest countries in the world, let kids go hungry out of an unwillingness to spend about $380,000 from a $139-million surplus.
Tags: budget, featured, ideology, poverty, standard of living, tax, youth
Posted in Governance Delivery System | No Comments »
Harper government misguided in its tough-on-crime approach
Tuesday, December 13th, 2011
Dec. 12, 2011
Canada is heading to that awful place that the United States has just inhabited for 20 years – a place of longer and longer prison sentences, of a futile “war on drugs,” of mandatory minimum sentences for nearly everything (including six months for growing as few as five marijuana plants) that remove judges’ discretion. The financial and social costs in the U.S. were incalculable, and just as the U.S. is coming to its senses, Canada is losing its own.
Tags: budget, corrections, crime prevention, ideology
Posted in Child & Family Debates | No Comments »
Job inequality leads to income inequality
Saturday, December 10th, 2011
Dec. 8, 2011
The cause of income inequality is… technology and changes in the labour market… The solution… is highly paid employment… The real story is not about transfers, social spending and taxing the rich. It’s about jobs, skills and education. These should be the main thrusts of public policy… Ensure that Canada has the most ambitious, tech-savvy, knowledgeable and experienced workers, equipped with skills that cannot be easily outsourced, and income inequality will fade into insignificance.
Tags: economy, globalization, standard of living, tax
Posted in Policy Context | No Comments »
A $2 daily head tax on children
Thursday, December 8th, 2011
Dec 07 2011
Ford and his penny-pinching backers insist Toronto is in a financial crisis and has no alternative but to cut costs, raise taxes and impose higher fees. At the same time, city hall is looking at an estimated surplus of almost $140 million at the end of this year. And it has no intention of using that to save services or spare the public from painful new costs. Money isn’t what’s ultimately lacking at Toronto city hall. What’s absent is a fundamental respect for public services and the benefits they provide.
Tags: budget, child care, poverty, standard of living, tax
Posted in Child & Family Delivery System | No Comments »
Time to purge child poverty
Friday, December 2nd, 2011
Dec. 2, 2011
Canadians have to keep their politicians’ feet to the fire on this shameful reality. Campaign 2000, a coalition of anti-poverty groups, issued its latest report card last week on the progress made to eradicate child poverty in the country. And it isn’t encouraging… the number of children living in poverty in Canada has dropped by only 20 per cent in the last 20 years, in spite of the fact the economy itself has more than doubled in that time, in spite of the pledge made by the House of Commons in 1989 to eradicate child poverty by the year 2000, and in spite of a further pledge in 2009 to eradicate all poverty. Clearly talk is cheap.
Tags: budget, economy, ideology, poverty, standard of living, youth
Posted in Social Security Policy Context | 1 Comment »
Legal Education Reform
Sunday, November 27th, 2011
November 25, 2011
Instead of a curriculum taught largely through professors’ grilling of students about appellate cases, some schools are offering more apprentice-style learning in legal clinics and more courses that train students for their multiple future roles as advocates and counselors, negotiators and deal-shapers, and problem-solvers… Some are exploring ways to reduce tuitions and make themselves more sustainable. Potential business models include legal degrees based on two years of classes, followed by third-year apprenticeship programs.
Tags: participation, rights, standard of living
Posted in Education Policy Context | No Comments »
New tactics in an old fight [child poverty]
Sunday, November 27th, 2011
Nov 26 2011
The child poverty rate has gone down — from 11.9 per cent in 1989 when Parliament passed an all-party resolution pledging to eliminate child poverty by the turn of the millennium, to 9.5 per cent in 2009. But most of the drop is due to economic growth… Policy improvements reinforced these gains. The National Child Benefit, the federal working income tax credit and Ontario’s child benefit helped to ease the plight of low-income parents. What’s still missing are the two things that struggling parents need most: Affordable housing… Affordable child care
Tags: child care, housing, poverty, standard of living
Posted in Inclusion Debates | No Comments »
Stéphane Dion’s not-so-crazy idea [seats in parliament]
Saturday, November 19th, 2011
Nov. 19, 2011
Instead of expanding the Commons by 30 seats – 15 in Ontario, six each in Alberta and B.C. and three in Quebec – the Liberals would take three seats from Quebec, dropping its contingent to 72, then take two more from each of Saskatchewan and Manitoba and one each from Nova Scotia and Newfoundland, and give those nine to Ontario (four), Alberta (three) and B.C. (two)… This doesn’t deal effectively with the gross over-representation of the smallest provinces… (or) the underrepresentation of our three fastest-growing provinces. (But) it would be worth debating before the Tory law is passed.
Tags: budget, participation, rights
Posted in Governance Debates | No Comments »
Shed light on abuse cases [seniors]
Friday, November 18th, 2011
Nov 17 2011
The 77,000 Ontarians who live in long-term care homes are some of our most vulnerable citizens. We cannot tolerate a culture of secrecy inside these homes. There are no “judgment calls” when it comes to reporting abuse. It is not acceptable to deal with problems internally. And staff should never be punished for speaking out… Ontario’s new inspection system is far better than what preceded it. But it relies on resident complaints…
Tags: crime prevention, privatization, rights, standard of living
Posted in Child & Family Delivery System | 2 Comments »
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