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Payouts to parents are a sorry replacement for investing in Ontario’s schools
Tuesday, October 25th, 2022
The Ontario Ministry of Education has chosen to spend $365 million in one-time, nontargeted $200 payouts to parents across the province. This money will not address any of the challenges in Ontario’s schools and could be better used for targeted, in-classroom supports proven to be effective.
Tags: ideology, jurisdiction, participation, youth
Posted in Education Debates | No Comments »
Why voting for municipal action on affordable housing is in everyone’s interest
Monday, October 24th, 2022
Many people with mental illness and addictions, older adults, people with disabilities and victims of violence can only maintain housing with help. Encampments are a symptom of inadequate supportive housing. And demonstration projects have shown that supportive housing for high-need clients is cost effective, reducing service use in other sectors like hospitals, emergency services, policing and the criminal justice system. But this type of supported housing is woefully undersupplied.
Tags: housing, poverty, standard of living
Posted in Governance Debates | No Comments »
The toll of police work
Monday, October 24th, 2022
Due to tears in the social safety net, many vulnerable people fall through the cracks, and it then falls to police to pick them up. Police therefore become, by default, de facto doctors, nurses and social workers, as they have to deal with issues for which they’re neither qualified nor equipped: homelessness, addictions and mental illness. This adds enormously to operational stress — and to trauma — for overpoliced, vulnerable people who need care, not cops.
Tags: crime prevention, homelessness, ideology, mental Health, poverty
Posted in Child & Family Delivery System | No Comments »
Tackling the opioid crisis
Tuesday, October 11th, 2022
… statistics point us to two solutions: First, we need to regulate, rather than criminalize, all psychoactive drugs, and second, we ought to provide a safe supply of drugs to users. Those two solutions were, respectively, the “core” and “urgent” priorities identified by an expert task force last year, but so far, Ottawa has done relatively little toward making them a reality.
Tags: corrections, Health, homelessness, ideology, jurisdiction, mental Health, pharmaceutical, standard of living
Posted in Health Policy Context | No Comments »
Ontario science table details plan to improve primary care
Wednesday, October 5th, 2022
… family doctors want to work as part of a primary care team, with other healthcare professionals such as nurses, pharmacists and social workers. The brief urges a comprehensive strategy to deal with some of these concerns, suggesting primary care delivery is currently a patchwork. And it urges action to develop primary care teams.
Tags: featured, Health, ideology, jurisdiction
Posted in Health Delivery System | No Comments »
The new villain? Workers fighting for better wages. Don’t fall for it
Wednesday, October 5th, 2022
This is an important chapter in the history of workers’ struggles for decent work, a moment of fighting not only inflation but long-standing systemic inequalities. It has the potential to pit unionized worker against non-unionized worker, and private sector worker against public sector worker. Or it has the potential to pave the path toward decent work, through fairness and equity
Tags: economy, ideology, standard of living
Posted in Debates | No Comments »
Seeking clarity on Ontario’s autism therapy
Monday, October 3rd, 2022
According to the government’s own statistics, more than 56,000 kids are now registered with the program, and the vast majority have not received funding for core clinical services… Given the understandable lack of trust families have in the program, it’s important the government seek to repair the relationship by increasing, rather than decreasing, transparency and outreach.
Tags: disabilities, Health, ideology, jurisdiction, participation
Posted in Health Delivery System | No Comments »
Ontario weakened its $10-a-day child care funding rules. Now the federal government is demanding answers
Saturday, September 24th, 2022
…the federal government… raised worry that some taxpayer money won’t be used for its intended purpose of reducing parent fees and improving child care services… Ontario revised its guidelines in August, removing a provision that would have limited “undue” profits, eliminating some “ineligible expenditures,” and relieving some of the financial reporting requirements.
Tags: budget, child care, jurisdiction
Posted in Child & Family Delivery System | No Comments »
Boost social assistance
Thursday, September 22nd, 2022
The Doug Ford government raised ODSP payments by five per cent this month… and will index them to inflation. There was no increase to Ontario Works payments… It’s painfully clear that the base amounts for both programs are simply inadequate given the sharp rise in housing and food costs over the last year… More financial help is needed.
Tags: budget, disabilities, ideology, jurisdiction, participation, poverty, standard of living
Posted in Social Security Debates | No Comments »
One in six households in Ontario is now struggling with food insecurity. Here’s why it’s going to get worse
Wednesday, September 21st, 2022
The chattering classes have embraced a new economic theme: government efforts to fight inflation will trigger more inflation. They’re wrong… Ontario was the only province where more people were food insecure in 2021 than in 2020… Last week the Trudeau government introduced $4.6 billion in federal aid to be spent on inflation relief until the end of 2023, almost every penny for those with low incomes.
Tags: economy, poverty, standard of living
Posted in Debates | No Comments »
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