Archive for the ‘Inclusion Policy Context’ Category
Private foundations sit on billions of dollars while charities struggle
Thursday, February 9th, 2023
We don’t need more tax breaks for charitable giving — Canada already has among the world’s most generous charitable tax breaks, and we are overflowing with charitable funds. It’s just that we can’t get at them. What’s needed is a major overhaul of Canada’s two-tier charity sector where private foundations controlled by wealthy families sit on mountains of idle cash while thousands of working charities are starved for funds as they struggle to deliver services to Canadians.
Tags: budget, economy, ideology, standard of living, tax
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A judge’s ruling focuses attention on the homeless crisis
Monday, February 6th, 2023
A court ruling that Waterloo cannot dismantle an encampment may oblige governments to do a better job of ensuring that people have shelter… Clearing encampments is traumatizing for those being moved, costly for taxpayers and ultimately counter-productive, since it only serves to displace unhoused individuals rather than provide lasting accommodation.
Tags: Health, homelessness, ideology, poverty, rights
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Ontario court rules encampments can stay if there’s a shortage of shelter beds
Monday, January 30th, 2023
In a precedent-setting decision that will have implications across the province, the Ontario Superior Court of Justice has denied a municipality’s request to remove a homeless encampment on the basis that doing so – when there is no adequate indoor space – would violate the residents’ Charter rights.
Tags: homelessness, ideology, rights
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Something really, really must be done: an urgent plea for the Canada Disability Benefit to become law in 2023
Monday, January 16th, 2023
The Canada Disability Benefit, a proposed federal disability benefit to complement the inadequate provincial supports, is essential to ending disability poverty… it is also essential that, with the implementation of CDB, there are no clawbacks, that health benefits, transportation allowances, adaptive equipment, employment supports and other in-kind benefits, available from provincial and territorial governments, must remain intact.
Tags: disabilities, featured, ideology, jurisdiction, participation, poverty, standard of living
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It’s good the government has promised a Canada Disability Benefit. Here’s how to fix the flawed bill
Saturday, November 12th, 2022
The CDB shouldn’t be restricted to “working age” people. The bill should set a mandatory minimum CDB amount, indexed to inflation, and a mandatory start date for paying it… The bill must set specifics on things like eligibility, requirements that cabinet’s regulations can clarify but can’t contradict… It should require that none of the benefit will be clawed back by federal, provincial or territorial programs.
Tags: budget, disabilities, ideology, participation, pensions, poverty, standard of living
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Warehousing disabled people in long-termcare homes needs to stop. Instead, nationalize home care.
Thursday, January 13th, 2022
It is clear that regardless of ownership — by private corporations or public agencies — the warehousing, caging and incarcerating of older and younger disabled people is an act of violence… We must support disabled people’s call to abolish LTC and develop a national home care, palliative care and pharmacare system that robustly funds and prioritizes disabled older and younger people’s desire to live in community.
Tags: featured
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Canadians with disabilities fell through the cracks in the pandemic response. Here’s what needs to change as Omicron surges
Tuesday, January 11th, 2022
… living with a disability is one minority group that anyone can join. Disability Without Poverty is led by people with disabilities and came about around the end of 2020 in response to gaps in how the government served their communities during the pandemic and to push for a national disability benefit, which has been slowly moving through Parliament and would provide support besides existing provincial programs.
Tags: budget, child care, disabilities, ideology, participation, poverty, rights, standard of living
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Its critics call it ‘birth tourism.’ But is the practice real? COVID-19 is providing clues
Friday, December 17th, 2021
Griffith estimates that the percentage of “tourism births” has now reached one per cent of all births in Canada in an average year. “This is really a question of the integrity of the citizenship program… This is legal but it’s still a loophole that allows basically fairly affluent women and families to shortcut the process, find a backdoor entry and without going through the standard process of becoming a Canadian citizen.”
Tags: economy, ideology, immigration, jurisdiction, rights
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CERB helped Canadians during COVID-19 — but not the most vulnerable
Friday, December 10th, 2021
CERB is an example of a liberal welfare policy that distinguishes between the deserving and undeserving. Benefits were limited to $2,000 per month and taxable. Benefits were only available to people who earned a minimum of $5,000 in the previous year and whose work was directly affected by COVID-19… Like many limited means-tested programs that emphasize work above all else, CERB left out the most vulnerable in our society.
Tags: disabilities, ideology, participation, poverty, standard of living
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How to repair long-term care in Canada
Wednesday, September 15th, 2021
… the earliest victims of the pandemic were residents of LTC, our most fragile and vulnerable elders. Surely one key lesson from the pandemic is the urgent task to improve LTC so residents can live, and die, with dignity… [Charitable] foundation funding is best directed at supporting knowledge and advocacy rather than subsidizing the operation of LTC homes, a government responsibility… support for research and advocacy would be a more effective avenue for foundations to support… [or] “venture philanthropy” – specifically to demonstrate and evaluate new models of LTC care.
Tags: Health, housing, philanthropy, Seniors, standard of living
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