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But can money buy happiness?
Wednesday, November 24th, 2010
November 23, 2010
… the Ontario Task Force’s research arm, the Institute for Competitiveness & Prosperity collaborated with the Centre for the Study of Living Standards (CSLS) to analyse recent results of Statistics Canada’s Canadian Community Health Survey. CSLS analysis of the 83,000 respondents’ reported life satisfaction and their characteristics yielded valuable insights into the drivers of life satisfaction… factors that consistently increased individuals’ reported happiness included perceived better mental and physical health, higher income, being married, being born in Canada, a high sense of belonging to a local community, and not being stressed.
Tags: economy, ideology, standard of living
Posted in Child & Family Policy Context | No Comments »
Capitalism is local
Monday, November 15th, 2010
November 14, 2010
… “business interests” cannot be what we live for. The primary purpose of life cannot be the accumulation of wealth… Still, wealth trumps penury. And, capitalism feeds, whereas socialism starves… Scope must be provided for the trial and error of individual enterprise… Free markets create conditions of plenty, in which starvation does not become an issue; socialism imposes material constraints and dysfunctions which finally necessitate “population control.”
Tags: economy, ideology, standard of living
Posted in Governance Policy Context | No Comments »
Retirement homes should receive government subsidies: top geriatrician
Tuesday, September 21st, 2010
September 20, 2010
Governments should consider subsidizing the cost of privately run retirement homes as an antidote to overcrowded hospitals and a backlog in nursing-home admissions… A recent study commissioned by eastern Ontario’s health authority found that many seniors are on the waiting list for nursing-home beds not because they need round-the-clock nursing care, but because they can’t afford retirement homes.
Tags: budget, disabilities, Health
Posted in Child & Family Policy Context | No Comments »
Scrapping mandatory census ‘mindless,’ government warned
Saturday, August 28th, 2010
August 26, 2010
Canada will pay a huge price for the Harper government’s “short-sighted” decision to scrap the mandatory census, say leading U.S. statisticians. “This decision will lower the quality and raise the cost of information on nearly every issue before Canada’s government,” Stephen Fienberg at Carnegie Mellon University and Kenneth Prewitt at Columbia University say today in the journal Nature.
Tags: ideology, participation, rights, standard of living
Posted in Governance Debates | No Comments »
Unhealthy situations [poverty]
Saturday, August 28th, 2010
August 23, 2010
… women in poorer households were significantly more likely to develop Type 2 diabetes than other women, even when other contributing factors, such as weight and ethnic origin, were factored in. This is the second major report linking poor health outcomes in Canada with poverty in the past month… We know the problem, but haven’t found the solution… What is certain, though, is that health literacy is crucial… education itself is a kind of preventative medicine. A well-educated society is a strong society, in more ways than one.
Tags: Health, poverty, standard of living
Posted in Health Debates | 1 Comment »
On the street, you can see the harm caused by drug laws
Friday, July 30th, 2010
July 29, 2010
Our country has one of the finest health-care systems in the world, but our laws surrounding drug use result in unnecessary disease and death. In this context, the recent announcement of the Vienna Declaration has bolstered my conviction that drug prohibition is a national policy failure… The declaration calls for a “full policy reorientation.” This should not be misconstrued as an endorsement of drug use. It is simply a recognition that drug law enforcement is not an effective deterrent… Drug prohibition increases the rate of HIV infections.
Tags: crime prevention, Health
Posted in Child & Family Debates | No Comments »
How the federal government can really defend privacy
Friday, July 23rd, 2010
July 23, 2010
Hard-core conservatives have long seen the census as the foundation of left-wing social engineering. And not without some justification. Programs like employment equity couldn’t function without census data. Stephen Harper would love to scrap such programs but he wouldn’t dare under current circumstances. And so, as he did with the gun registry, he is making an administrative change that he hopes will cripple the program. And slowly strengthen the case for doing away with it entirely.
Tags: ideology, rights
Posted in Governance Debates | No Comments »
Why our drug policy is ‘inconsistent’ with all available evidence
Friday, July 23rd, 2010
July 23, 2010
– “The evidence that law enforcement has failed to prevent the availability of illegal drugs, in communities where there is demand, is now unambiguous. Over the last several decades, (there has been) a general pattern of falling drug prices and increasing drug purity — despite massive investments in drug law enforcement.”… – “Billions of tax dollars (have been) wasted on a ‘war on drugs’ approach ….” [but] … the government of Canada felt free to categorically reject the Vienna Declaration because it is “inconsistent” with its policies.
Tags: crime prevention, Health
Posted in Health Debates | No Comments »
The Tories exposed
Friday, July 23rd, 2010
July 23, 2010
… all the efforts to appear moderate, flexible and impartial are now discredited, as a result of the war Stephen Harper has declared on the census. The census is the mechanism by which the government gathers the hard facts — social, economic, demographic — needed to formulate effective public policy. The Conservative plot to destroy the census represents the most vivid blow yet in its war against empirical data. Ideologues don’t just ignore research. They actually abhor it, because it gets in their way. It interferes with their cosmology.
Tags: featured, ideology, participation, rights, standard of living
Posted in Governance Debates | No Comments »
Changes distort the census
Friday, July 9th, 2010
July 9, 2010
If people are free to answer the census or not… bias will creep back in: People of a certain education level may be more likely to respond than others, or people of a certain age, people of a certain ethnicity, whatever. The bias may not be obvious but it will be there… Apparently, the long mandatory survey was scrapped because it offends the staunch libertarian principles of the Harper government… requiring citizens to fill out a form which is absolutely essential to sound public policy and social science? An outrageous violation of individual liberty.
Tags: ideology, rights
Posted in Governance Debates | No Comments »
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