Archive for the ‘Inclusion Debates’ Category
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Four sparks light aboriginal fires
Tuesday, September 21st, 2010
Sep 21 2010
Recent research suggests that four factors determine whether an aboriginal group is likely to adopt confrontational strategies against the Canadian state. The first is when aboriginal and non-aboriginal goals relating to indigenous-claimed lands and resources are highly divergent… Second, the nature, scope and frequency of intrusions on aboriginal lands matter… Third, indigenous groups mobilize when they feel that the Canadian political and legal systems are unlikely to be responsive to their needs…
Tags: Indigenous, participation, rights
Posted in Inclusion Debates, Social Security | No Comments »
Can’t give money away [Rent Supplements]
Saturday, September 18th, 2010
Sep 18 2010
There are 142,000 low-income families in Ontario waiting on a list for an apartment they can afford. So one would expect that the government would have no trouble finding people to benefit from $100 a month to help pay the rent. But the province managed to design a rent supplement program that was so cumbersome and restrictive that, three years after its launch, it still hasn’t managed to spend all the $185 million that was earmarked for it. “There just weren’t the applicants,” claims the housing ministry.
Tags: budget, housing, poverty, standard of living
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Sweden bridges ideological divide
Friday, September 17th, 2010
Sep 17 2010
Not even Prime Minister Fredrik Reinfeldt, leader of a right-wing coalition that four years ago replaced the habitual governing party, the Social Democrats, is much against the state. He has dropped the old right-wing mantra of calling for lowering taxes and wants to see only “a more efficient and less conformist state and society.”… “we are not asking for a different system, just for better results.” The sense of equality goes deep down in the Swedish psyche, he explains. “The Swedish electorate don’t always look at their wallet. They do want to see other people better off, as well as themselves.”
Tags: economy, ideology, participation, standard of living
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Billionaires — To envy or raid for our benefit?
Sunday, September 12th, 2010
Sep 10 2010
The Trouble With Billionaires… is about the ethically challenged and politically coddled elite… an illustration of the growing heights of income disparity… the well-to-do, of various degrees, would never have had as much without the rest of us… McQuaig and Brooks contend the nation’s high flyers would still strive as hard for fun and country if governments claimed a majority interest in the portion of their income and estates they regard as excessive. Then, with the rich paying more toward public programs, Canada could become a happier place, with taller, healthier and better-educated citizens, they argue.
Tags: featured, ideology, philanthropy, tax
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Taxes and public services help build a better city
Wednesday, September 8th, 2010
Sep 08 2010
Successful industries need positive inputs, not an absence of taxes. Skill. Quality infrastructure. Clusters — so specialists can meet and learn from each other. Strategic supports for investment. And markets. Big markets. Toronto must do more to nurture its key tradable clusters… Collectively, we need to invest more in the things that make Toronto a great place to live (like transit, parks and culture). And invest more in addressing the growing problems that threaten to undo that successful civic recipe (like concentrated poverty, underhousing and precarious, low-wage employment).
Tags: featured, ideology, standard of living, tax
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City’s diversity should be more than a slogan
Wednesday, September 1st, 2010
Sep 01 2010
Branding Toronto as diverse — in a number of different ways — can only be the city’s strength if it can be articulated, protected, enhanced and promoted. The diversity and strength of Toronto is not just in its people. It is also resident in its businesses and neighbourhoods… “Diversity our Strength” is not just a motto — it is a statement of fact. We jeopardize the future prosperity of this city when we forget that fact and treat it only as the background buzz of any conversation.
Tags: multiculturalism, participation
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Lots of room for everybody
Monday, August 23rd, 2010
Aug 22 2010
Immigrants, rather than being a drain, very quickly create greater wealth for everyone… Our economy grows after every wave… We have the room, the resources and the ability. I believe we have the goodwill, too — it’s part of us, ever since the Underground Railroad. If only our leaders could muster the vision to fulfill this multicultural dream, instead of appealing to base fears, pandering to ignorance in search of quick votes.
Tags: immigration, multiculturalism, standard of living
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Kingston protesters stand up for their city’s prison farm
Tuesday, August 17th, 2010
Aug 17 2010
Kingston now has the prison farms fiasco — yet another example of the Conservatives’ unscrupulous behaviour. Indeed, the Tories have a talent for alienating just about everyone these days. Even small “c” conservatives have been condemning the costly, ill-advised prison farm closures… these prison farms reflect Canadian values. Paving over thousands of acres of prime farmland to erect costly, for-profit, U.S.-style super-prisons when government statistics show crime rates are down defies reason.
Tags: corrections, participation
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Mega-donations pose deep questions
Wednesday, August 11th, 2010
Aug 11 2010
American multi-billionaires Bill and Melinda Gates and Warren Buffett announced that 40 of the richest people in the U.S. had joined them in pledging to give away at least half of their wealth… Their campaign to enlist the wealthiest people in the United States began in June… Within two months, the founders had approached 80 billionaires and signed up half. They still have 320 American billionaires to contact… the kind of altruism they’re promoting bears a strong resemblance to the rank-based benevolence of a bygone era… their munificence will exacerbate three troubling trends
Tags: ideology, philanthropy, poverty, standard of living
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The long form will return. Voters won’t
Tuesday, August 10th, 2010
Aug. 10, 2010
The census debate, so provocative and so needless but for the exigencies of ideology, roused civic society as few decisions have done in recent decades. The census will lodge itself in a corner of the electorate’s collective memory as a talisman for what the Harperites might do if given a freer rein and, as such, has ruined what little chance they had of achieving a majority. Canadian democracy, in this long-term sense, has triumphed by rejecting ideology over reason. Some day, the long-form census will return.
Tags: featured, ideology, participation, rights
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