Archive for the ‘Inclusion Debates’ Category
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Mentally ill endure chronic discrimination
Wednesday, January 5th, 2011
Jan 05 2011
Canada is loaded with equality laws, human rights codes, commissions and tribunals. If legal safeguards were enough to protect people with mental illness from discrimination, we’d be in great shape… Yet people with mental illness continue to be rejected by landlords; excluded from stores, restaurants, schools and gathering places, and forced to conform to workplace procedures that aggravate their condition… Looking beyond the official statistics, there is abundant evidence in the courts, in emergency rooms and prisons that people are misjudged, hospitalized and punished at a vastly disproportionate rate.
Tags: disabilities, mental Health, participation, rights
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A case study on first nations poverty
Friday, December 31st, 2010
Dec. 31, 2010
In the court case of Pikangikum v Nault is a glimpse of an answer to the age-old Canadian question of how so many first nation communities in this country continue to suffer appalling conditions and ruinous poverty even as Ottawa throws millions and millions and millions of dollars at impoverished reserves… what happens when intransigent bureaucracy (the federal Indian and Northern Affairs Canada, or INAC) meets stubborn and hypersensitive first nation… is… nothing.
Tags: budget, Indigenous, standard of living
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Replacing public policy with patronage
Monday, December 27th, 2010
Dec 23 2010
Who needs sound public policy when we can depend on the generosity and largesse of the elite? Who needs a social welfare system, when we have charitable giving from the wealthy? This attitude permeates virtually all elements of the Fords’ policy approach — whether… that an arts and culture plan can be replaced by selling tickets to galas, or the belief… that youth-oriented social programs could be replaced by football teams and cheerleading squads
Tags: participation
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Immigration funding: Tory spin doesn’t add up
Sunday, December 26th, 2010
Dec 26 2010
Ontario is bearing the brunt of cutbacks across Canada, absorbing more than 80 per cent of the funding reductions, while other provinces — notably Alberta, which just happens to have heavy representation on the government benches — will come out ahead. Quebec, too, will largely escape the budget axe. The big losers will be ethnic communities in Toronto that rely heavily on agencies that lay the groundwork for integration and citizenship among newcomers.
Tags: immigration, multiculturalism
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Dickens and true Christian values
Wednesday, December 22nd, 2010
Dec 22 2010
… capitalistic Christians can be enough to make many non-Christians cynical toward the true form of this faith… I hope society is not returning to such inhumane times as written about by Dickens; however, with the current, large gap between the rich and the poor widening, who knows? …rather than rightfully valuing people and their efforts based on each person’s needs and capabilities, capitalism seems to imply: “Are there no prisons? Are there no work-houses?”
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Hunger Inquiry Expert Panel’s Top Ten Recommendations…
Tuesday, December 21st, 2010
December 21, 2010
Top 10 Recommendations to address the dire situation illuminated through the the Recession Relief Coalition’s Hunger Inquiry, held… on November 23, 2010… These recommendations address themes that emerged from witness’ presentations… and are directed at all Canadian governments, communities and businesses in recognition that all have a part to play in ensuring that people in Canada do not have to struggle to meet a basic human need: the need for food.
Tags: budget, disabilities, economy, Health, homelessness, poverty, standard of living
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Lower taxes mean a weaker society
Monday, December 20th, 2010
December 19, 2010
… children are not getting the nutrition and basic building blocks to allow them to develop to their full potential. We are not taking care of the people who need help… Taxes are what enable governments to provide the services we all need. Businesses look for the stability of a society and the quality of its workforce as much as tax breaks. We need to bring back the concept of wealth distribution through the income tax system if we are to have a healthy, happy society. I want to return to a caring and equitable Canada.
Tags: standard of living, tax
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Best interests [aboriginal child welfare]
Saturday, December 18th, 2010
Dec. 17, 2010
It’s time Canadians deepen our analysis of this crisis. Children’s best interests lie in their right to maintain family bonds. For our families to thrive and stay together, we need freedom from poverty, affordable housing, childcare, programs for at-risk families, including those affected by drug use; we need committed legal representation to advocate for ourselves, and we need supports for parents after our children go into care.
Tags: child care, multiculturalism, participation, rights, youth
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MPs urge ‘serious’ money for mental health to keep ill people out of prison
Wednesday, December 15th, 2010
Dec. 14, 2010
The public safety committee report says the federal prison service is “not able at this time” to provide adequate treatment and support to the majority of offenders with mental illness and addiction issues. The MPs say offenders who do not receive the treatment and programs they need are more likely to commit crimes after release, compromising public safety. They make 71 recommendations, including more special courts to handle the needs of people with mental-health and drug problems.
Tags: budget, corrections, crime prevention, mental Health
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Band-Aid approaches not working
Monday, December 13th, 2010
Dec. 11, 2010
Persistent Poverty, the book released earlier this month… provides a collection of sharings by poor people in Ontario communities, large and small, urban and rural. It is compelling, provocative, distressing and disturbing… Persistent Poverty tells us there is need for educating the public that poverty is primarily a result of insensitive and uncaring public policy, and for showing that other jurisdictions have acted to reduce and in some cases almost eliminate the incidence of poverty. The book makes a case for these and more. The timing could not have been better.
Tags: budget, ideology, poverty
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