Archive for the ‘Inclusion Debates’ Category
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With My Hand On The Doorknob: In Search of Strategic Philanthropy
Sunday, August 1st, 2010
July 31, 2010
The goal was to move from reacting to proposals for “good works” to becoming a proactive organization, working with partners to advance evidence and ideas about how the future could be more just… Faced with many choices to make and limited resources to invest, our own choice at the [Atkinson] Foundation was between doing fewer things better and doing all things less well. We chose the former and decided to make clarity of purpose our mantra… that inspired us to seek out the creation of the Canadian Index of Well-being; and more recently, to contribute to opening up space for new gains on poverty reduction policies.
Tags: participation, philanthropy, standard of living
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Making it easier to ignore the poor
Tuesday, July 27th, 2010
Jul 27 2010
We hear a great deal about the lives of the rich, much of it sympathetic and often fawning… The poor rarely get such sympathetic attention; indeed they rarely get much attention at all. And they’re soon to get even less. That is the real reason for the Harper government’s decision to scrap the long-form census matters, and why the debate over it is more than a bizarre obsession with statistics in this overheated summer.
Tags: ideology, participation, poverty, standard of living
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Scrapped mandatory census cuts even deeper for disability advocacy group
Saturday, July 24th, 2010
Jul. 24, 2010
The Participation and Activity Limitation Survey, Statscan’s major data collection on individuals with disabilities, was cut by the government department that paid for it, Human Resources and Skills Development Canada. The Harper government has told advocacy groups a census-related survey that gathers statistics about disabilities will eventually be replaced by a database culled from tax information, welfare rolls and similar databanks – but there’s skepticism about whether that information will be as reliable.
Tags: disabilities, ideology, participation, rights
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Becoming Canadian won’t be that big a change
Saturday, July 17th, 2010
July 14, 2010
… the Canada that welcomed me two decades ago is a much different nation than the Canada that surrounds me now. It was so refreshing to find myself in a country where looking after the well being of your fellow citizens — in your town, in your country, around the world — was intrinsic to the national culture… I had moved to a land of relative economic equality, from a country built on shocking extremes of wealth and poverty… but the fact is, aside from the socialized-medicine thing, y’all have become just like us.
Tags: ideology, immigration, standard of living
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The Class War We Need [U.S.]
Saturday, July 17th, 2010
July 11, 2010
The rich are different from you and me. They know how to game the system… The left-wing instinct, when faced with high-rolling irresponsibility, is usually to call for tax increases on the rich. But the problem, here and elsewhere, isn’t exactly that we tax high rollers’ incomes too lightly. It’s that we subsidize their irresponsibility too heavily — underwriting their bad bets and bailing out their follies. The class warfare we need is a conservative class warfare, which would force the million-dollar defaulters to pay their own way from here on out.
Tags: ideology, standard of living, tax
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The Right to Housing: The Red Tent Campaign and Bill C-304
Saturday, July 17th, 2010
July 14, 2010
Inspired by a similar and successful effort in France, and initiated by the innovative, Vancouver-based Pivot Legal Society and allied organizations, the Red Tent Campaign uses visually striking tents to draw public attention to homelessness and the need for a pan-Canadian housing strategy – rooted in Canada’s legal obligation under the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights to honor the right to housing.
Tags: homelessness, housing, rights, standard of living
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How the Liberal elites lost touch with Canadians
Monday, July 12th, 2010
July 7, 2010
The transformation began under Lester Pearson, when the Liberals launched huge new social programs — universal medicare and pensions — that were uncharacteristically collectivist for the party. Their central characteristic was the suspension of personal responsibility. Canadians were to be guaranteed health care and retirement income regardless of whether they had made plans and sacrifices during their healthy working years for the time when they became sick or old… In short, the Liberals have become “elitist” — because they no longer trust ordinary people to make the right choices for themselves.
Tags: ideology, participation
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Coverage of the G20 proved Twitter’s news edge
Monday, July 12th, 2010
Jul 11 2010
… there was a clear dichotomy between television coverage of events and the information available to those following the Twitter “hashtags,” essentially search terms that channel data streams… mainstream media was only writing about anarchists, about what ‘thugs and goons’ they are, how they really deserved to get the crap beaten out of them while focusing on the destruction of private property and, of course, praising the police… Journalists giving on-the-ground reports were far more accurate than those in newsrooms… there was also a phalanx of camera-wielding onlookers.
Tags: crime prevention, globalization, participation, rights
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Path to healing includes all Canadians
Friday, July 9th, 2010
July 8, 2010
By rebuilding our families, we will rebuild our communities. By rebuilding our communities, we will rebuild our nations. The healing of our families, our communities and our nations is an enormous task, and it is a task which only we can do for ourselves. No one can do it for us. But, without the truth of what happened being discussed by all Canadians, even if we must discuss such terms as “genocide” and “ethnic cleansing,” then the reconciliation required for proper healing will remain a distant and difficult goal.
Tags: Indigenous, participation
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The dynamics of U.S. poverty
Wednesday, July 7th, 2010
July 7, 2010
America suffers much more child poverty than do comparably wealthy countries – Germany, France, Canada, etc. – for two main reasons: * Our much higher levels of immigration and especially unskilled immigration, which continually add to the population of poor in this country. * Our much lower levels of social spending, which mean that poor families receive far less social support than do poor families in other countries… American freedom and individualism are important national values to be celebrated and defended. But let’s not flatter ourselves: Those values exact a social cost – and they would be easier to defend if the cost were less high.
Tags: ideology, participation, poverty, standard of living
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