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Mental health crisis teams are a first step to ending tragic deaths
Thursday, January 28th, 2021
People calling for help in the midst of a medical crisis need appropriate help, not an armed response. Not only are police not needed for the vast majority of mental health crisis calls, they have proven, time and again, that they don’t have the right skills for them… A team of specially trained civilians is clearly the better response. But these crisis teams are not a magic bullet to ending bad experiences and tragic deaths of people in the throes of a mental health crisis at the hands of police… people need access to mental health services, not just a more successful response to a crisis call.
Tags: ideology, mental Health, standard of living
Posted in Health Delivery System | No Comments »
A blueprint for action on long-term care
Monday, January 11th, 2021
… commit to vaccinating all long-term-care residents, staff and caregivers by Feb. 15… Ontario and Ottawa each to provide $100 million in emergency funds to hire additional long-term care staff and increase their wages… mandatory weekly inspections of long-term-care facilities and a rapid response task force of specialized health-care workers to respond to emergencies in homes… [and] dedicated provincial and federal ombuds to review all complaints from residents, their families and staff and to oversee strict new long-term-care standards that will ensure humane care for residents.
Tags: budget, Health, housing, ideology, standard of living
Posted in Child & Family Policy Context | No Comments »
Focus on real problem with federal sick-leave benefit: not enough workers are using it
Tuesday, January 5th, 2021
In Canada, less than half of all workers have access to paid sick leave through their employers. The vast majority of them tend to be low-paid front-line workers who can’t do their jobs from home and can’t afford to miss even a single paycheque. The last thing any of us should want is for them to go to work sick, putting their coworkers and the broader community at risk.
Tags: economy, Health, participation, standard of living
Posted in Policy Context | No Comments »
The Ford government says it’s committed to poverty reduction. That’s hard to believe
Tuesday, December 22nd, 2020
… this is the government that killed the planned rise to $15 in the minimum wage as soon as it was elected. It also rolled back two-paid sick days for all workers, equal pay for exploited temporary agency workers and other measures to protect precarious workers from being misclassified and stripped of their labour rights… The government cut funding for specialized school programs that provided after-school jobs for needy teens, classroom tutors and supports for racialized youth, calling it “wasteful spending.” … Soon after coming to power in 2018, the government also cut in half a planned 3-per-cent increase to social assistance.
Tags: featured, ideology, participation, poverty, standard of living
Posted in Social Security Debates | No Comments »
Deliver on national child-care this time, please
Sunday, December 6th, 2020
For now, all the Trudeau government has put up for a national child-care system is a down payment and a promise… The down payment includes $420 million to help provinces train and retain qualified early-childhood educators and $20 million over five years to fund a secretariat to craft its national “child care vision.”
Tags: budget, child care, economy, featured, ideology, jurisdiction, participation, standard of living, women
Posted in Child & Family Debates | No Comments »
Care, not profit, must come first in long-term-care homes
Tuesday, November 17th, 2020
It’s up to the government to set long-term-care standards that are high enough to ensure quality and dignified care for seniors and back it up with an enforcement system tough enough to ensure those standards are met… Ontario’s requirements for long-term-care homes, which are too lax already, aren’t even always followed… It’s time government held up its end of the bargain and ensured quality care in long-term care, no matter who owns the homes.
Tags: disabilities, housing, ideology, privatization, standard of living
Posted in Child & Family Policy Context | No Comments »
What more is needed for the Ford government to do the right thing on long-term care?
Tuesday, October 27th, 2020
The Ford government chose a commission over a public inquiry. Then it set a narrower mandate for the commission than what’s needed to truly fix a system that often warehouses seniors more than it helps them live in dignity. And the immediate changes it has made to long-term care fall short of the need.
Tags: budget, disabilities, Health, housing, standard of living
Posted in Child & Family Delivery System | No Comments »
Ottawa now has a road map to rein in digital giants
Thursday, October 22nd, 2020
… an Australian-type regime in Canada would allow news publishers to recover about $620 million in ad revenue a year that’s now going to swell the bottom lines of Google and Facebook. That would make up most of the revenue losses the publishers are expected to suffer in the next few years. And it would be enough to save the jobs of an estimated 700 journalists (and all the content they produce), along with some 1,400 others in the news industry alone.
Tags: budget, economy, globalization, ideology, rights
Posted in Governance Debates | No Comments »
Ontario needs to step in and protect workers
Wednesday, October 7th, 2020
Too many companies have built business models that maximize profit by exploiting workers, largely by finding ways to avoid treating them as employees… Business exploiting lax labour laws to the detriment of workers is a concern in the world of temp agencies and their increasingly unscrupulous money-making tactics, the misclassification of workers as independent contractors to strip them of basic employment rights, and the expansion of temporary and part-time work that comes with few benefits.
Tags: economy, Health, ideology, rights, standard of living
Posted in Debates | No Comments »
Ontario should make pay hikes for personal support workers permanent
Monday, October 5th, 2020
The pay increase for PSWs announced last week is long overdue but, now that it’s here, let’s at least make it permanent… the premier has repeatedly admitted that these workers are “overworked”… That would mean setting — and funding — daily care standards so the important work of caring for our vulnerable seniors can be done well and safely for everyone. The pandemic has shown us all how essential much low-paid, undervalued work really is.
Tags: Health, ideology, standard of living, women
Posted in Health Delivery System | No Comments »
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