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For troubled teens, a visit to a place called hope
Monday, June 27th, 2011
Jun. 25, 201
Governments and established institutions are almost incapable of starting innovative programs such as this. They’re too risk-averse. They don’t have the drive or vision, and the cost of failure is far too high. A Pine River can only come from social entrepreneurs such as Ms. Minden – people with passion, imagination and perseverance. … The kids come from every social class… Pine River’s program is designed to help them reconnect with people and thrive in a new ecosystem – one that’s positive, instead of toxic.
Tags: Health, mental Health, youth
Posted in Child & Family Delivery System | No Comments »
If we don’t stand in the way, we can help native youth
Friday, June 24th, 2011
Jun. 24, 2011
Chronic disparities in funding for health, education and social services for more than 700,000 first nations people are the product of entrenched discriminatory policies. But the discriminatory thrust of such policies can be challenged now, under the Human Rights Act… Disparities in essential services to first nations people are well documented… As of June 18, people can file complaints against first nations governments as well as the federal government if they believe they have been discriminated against in relation to services that affect their daily lives.
Tags: economy, Indigenous, participation, standard of living, youth
Posted in Equality Delivery System | No Comments »
Pension plans: Why all the fuss?
Friday, June 24th, 2011
Jun. 24, 2011
… even if investments work out as hoped for, the new defined contribution pension plans being offered by Air Canada and Canada Post, for example, should not be expected to result in benefits as large as the defined benefit plans they want to close… So, the benefits being negotiated are important and real. Management will continue to try to pass the pension risks over to the workers by using defined contribution plans, and workers will try equally hard to retain their defined benefits.
Tags: economy, pensions, rights, standard of living
Posted in Debates | No Comments »
In a world without ‘socialism’
Wednesday, June 22nd, 2011
Jun. 21, 2011
The central challenge for governments today is how to manage and reform the institutions we’ve created, not to create new ones. Sure, the New Democrats can promise to “preserve” medicare. But that promise is worthless unless they have some realistic notion of how to keep health-care costs from crowding out every other social expenditure. The Liberals are in the same fix. Their basic problem isn’t leadership or infighting. Their basic problem is that they have no vision for how to fix the modern liberal nation-state… The party that gets this will own the future. Everything else is hot air.
Tags: economy, featured, ideology, rights
Posted in Governance Debates | No Comments »
New Statscan survey aims to pinpoint where the jobs are
Wednesday, June 22nd, 2011
Jun. 22, 2011
The agency will start an official index in the autumn that will track vacancies by province and industry and, eventually, how that changes over time… Statscan has also just completed a pilot project that gathered detailed data on job openings and, starting in the fall of 2012, plans to release an annual study that explores job vacancies by occupation, labour shortages and hard-to-fill positions.
Tags: economy, participation, standard of living, youth
Posted in Delivery System | No Comments »
Ontario must get with the times on transparency, watchdog says
Tuesday, June 21st, 2011
Jun. 21, 2011
“People want information on what their government is doing, they want it to be easy to find and understand, and they want it now,” he said… Mr. Marin has been urging the McGuinty government for several years to open up the so-called MUSH sector – municipalities, universities, school boards and hospitals – to scrutiny… In his sixth annual report, Mr. Marin is going one step further by asking the government to make information available without the public having to ask for it.
Tags: ideology, participation, rights, standard of living
Posted in Governance Debates | No Comments »
Aboriginal Canadians get a fuller share of rights
Monday, June 20th, 2011
Jun. 19, 2011
… practices like sexual harassment in the workplace; denial of an apartment because of someone’s background; or dismissal from a job because of a family feud. Previously, aboriginal Canadians could not use the complaint mechanism in the Act to appeal to the Canadian Human Rights Commission if they faced this kind of unacceptable discrimination. Now, they can… The most obvious new challenge that the extension of the Human Rights Act will allow – over access to band offices and other on-reserve facilities for people with physical disabilities – might also be the most visible and costly one.
Tags: Indigenous, rights
Posted in Equality Debates | No Comments »
A pollster’s painful reckoning…
Monday, June 20th, 2011
Jun. 17, 2011
Election 2011 revealed a voting fault line delineated by a generation gap. On one side of the gap: Canadians over 45 enthusiastically favouring the Conservatives, with a likelihood of voting starting at about 60 per cent and rising with age to more than 80 per cent. On the other side: younger Canadians generally disliking the Conservatives, but with a voting likelihood of at most 40 per cent, decreasing to about 30 per cent for the youngest electoral cohort, those under the age of 25… if under-45 Canadians had voted in the same proportion as over-45 Canadians, there would have been no Conservative majority but more likely an NDP-led coalition.
Tags: ideology, participation, rights, youth
Posted in Governance Debates | No Comments »
Stop shafting undergrads, get profs back into the class
Sunday, June 19th, 2011
Jun. 18, 2011
In provincial politics, universities are of little interest to vote-seeking politicians. They are interested, it would seem, only in increasing access. They promise and brag about how many more spaces they have created, without worrying about what the people who occupy those spaces learn or receive as part of their education experience. The largest number of those spaces is occupied by undergraduates who have been getting the shaft or, to put matters less crudely, have not been receiving fair value for their increasing fees.
Tags: budget, standard of living, youth
Posted in Education Delivery System | No Comments »
The high-tech rebirth of Canada’s textile industry
Sunday, June 19th, 2011
Jun. 18, 2011
The industry… has been clobbered by unfettered foreign competition, a high Canadian dollar and eroding free-trade benefits for much of the past decade. Between 2005 and 2009, for instance, textile shipments plummeted 43.5 per cent, while manufacturing as a whole only sank 18.1 per cent, according to Statistics Canada. The firms that have survived this dramatic contraction are generally smaller and more nimble than in the industry of old.
Tags: economy, globalization, standard of living
Posted in Delivery System | No Comments »
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