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Equality for women? We’re not done fighting yet
Friday, March 11th, 2011
Mar. 10, 2011
To be a woman in the 21st century is to live with layers of contradictions. You can be anything you want, until you want to be a mother. You can do anything you want, but make sure you look terrific doing it… some privileged women and men decreed that the fight for equality and against sexism has been won and therefore we western women should all just shut up and stop our whining… Well-behaved women – women who don’t whine – are not the ones who make history or policy. They’re not the ones who got us this far. Take nothing for granted. Equality is never a done deal.
Tags: ideology, participation, rights, standard of living, women
Posted in Equality Debates | No Comments »
A government in contempt, no doubt
Thursday, March 10th, 2011
Mar. 09, 2011
… it is the idea that the government would ask Canadians and their elected representatives to go blindly into the future that is disturbing. As Mr. Milliken said, it “goes to the heart of the House’s undoubted role in holding the government to account.” If the government is so uncomfortable with its law-and-order agenda that it has to hide the costs, it might as well scrap the program. It is unacceptable that the government needs to be lectured by the Speaker on how to live within the rules of Canadian democracy.
Tags: budget, ideology, participation, rights
Posted in Governance Debates | No Comments »
Health system ‘makes a mockery’ of medicare values
Thursday, March 10th, 2011
Mar. 09, 2011
Dr. Turnbull, co-founder of the Ottawa Inner City Health program, stresses that investing in education, poverty reduction and social housing are essential elements for population health. About one-fifth of all health spending is attributable to socioeconomic disparities, so we all pay for inequity… Medicare has a foundation of sound principles: Universality, accessibility, comprehensiveness, portability and public administration. “Our health care system today makes a mockery of those principles, both in letter and in spirit,” Dr. Turnbull says.
Tags: budget, Health, mental Health, standard of living
Posted in Health Delivery System | No Comments »
On the road to the Harper government’s tipping point
Wednesday, March 9th, 2011
Mar. 08, 2011
In keeping with its obsession with secrecy and control, we recall the PMO’s muzzling of the public service and the diplomatic corps, its suppression of research containing data countering its ideology, and its efforts to impede the functioning of the access-to-information system… The government’s arc of duplicity is remarkable to behold. And there are more revelations to come. It may not happen in the next election, but there will be a tipping point and the PM and his ministers will pay the price.
Tags: ideology, participation, rights
Posted in Governance Debates | No Comments »
Access-to-information woes grow ever more absurd
Tuesday, March 8th, 2011
March 8, 2011
Many people have grown tired of delays in the treatment of Access to Information requests. That frustration is set to grow as the government has now decided to sacrifice some files in a bid to put the best possible face on the massive backlog in the system… That process, however, leaves some files sitting in the system, because they have already been deemed to be failures and no amount of work can restore their status. “Once a file is late, it’s late.
Tags: ideology, participation, rights
Posted in Governance Delivery System | No Comments »
Homeless patients cost $2,500 more per hospital stay, study finds
Tuesday, March 8th, 2011
Mar. 08, 2011
The study… found that homeless patients arrived at the hospital with more health problems and stayed longer, often because there was nowhere to send them after they no longer needed acute care. Dr. Hwang’s past research found that homeless people land in hospital more often, with 23 hospitalizations per 100 homeless people in one year versus five hospitalizations per 100 people in the general population.
Tags: budget, Health, homelessness, poverty, standard of living
Posted in Health Policy Context | No Comments »
Our knowledge-based economy can’t afford to be smug
Monday, March 7th, 2011
March 7, 2011
Globalization is no longer just about factory jobs moving to Asia. It’s affecting everything – resources, banking, high-tech services, the whole shebang. Everything is getting bigger, faster and cruelly cost efficient. Fibre-optic cables spanning the continents have made geography irrelevant… Globalization isn’t going away, and it shouldn’t. Its benefits to the enrichment of human life around the world have far outweighed its costs. But the sooner Canada embraces the possibilities of globalization, the further ahead of the curve we’ll be in creating the yet-unnamed jobs and industries of tomorrow.
Tags: economy, globalization, ideology, standard of living
Posted in Policy Context | No Comments »
The withering of the state
Monday, March 7th, 2011
March 7, 2011
The welfare state, Prof. van Creveld said, peaked in 1977, when governments realized the only way to expand programs was to pay for the expansion with borrowed money… the welfare state was effectively destroyed by its own success… “The shrinking of the state,” he said, “will affect every living person, producing upheavals as profound, and probably as bloody, as the upheavals that propelled humanity out of the Middle Ages.” The state responded by swapping sovereignty for economic growth… It adopted free-market economics to generate faster growth – and to capture more tax revenue. It began to break its promises.
Tags: economy, globalization, ideology
Posted in Governance History | No Comments »
Employment equity policy: one size doesn’t fit all
Monday, March 7th, 2011
March 7, 2011
Members of visible minorities earn less than other Canadians… an article written by Professor Krishna Pendakur and Professor Ravi Pendakur… provides… detailed, breakdowns of earnings by ethnic group… Canada’s current employment equity policy inspires anger and resentment… As long as it ensures equity in employment for some designated groups – instead of all Canadians – it will continue to do so.
Tags: multiculturalism, participation, rights, standard of living
Posted in Equality Debates | No Comments »
Fund pathways to education, not to prison
Sunday, March 6th, 2011
Mar. 05, 2011
For $5-million a year, the Conservative government has made an investment in young people that makes spectacular sense. It also undermines the logic of the government’s U.S.-style prison expansion, which will cost Ottawa nearly $1-billion a year, and the provinces about the same amount… Pathways to Education, which will receive $20-million over four years, is a remarkable program devised by a community health centre in Toronto’s inner city… Its results are astonishing. It cut the dropout rate among 700 students from 56 per cent to 12 per cent
Tags: crime prevention, ideology, participation, poverty
Posted in Education Debates | 1 Comment »
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