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Minimum wage hike key to cutting poverty
Sunday, December 18th, 2011
Dec 17 2011
“The government says the best route out of poverty is a job… But people working full time earning minimum wage are still having trouble paying the bills… And enforcement is key to ensuring workers get what they are owed. “Any initiative the government takes to alleviate poverty for low wage workers has to be backed up by enforcement”… The report urged Ontario’s labour ministry to proactively target employers in high-violation industries such as hospitality, cleaning, retail and construction, which attract newcomers, young workers, visible minorities and other vulnerable workers.
Tags: economy, ideology, poverty, rights, standard of living
Posted in Delivery System | No Comments »
Harper’s unlikely social breakthrough [family caregiver tax credit]
Sunday, December 18th, 2011
Dec 15 2011
Approximately half a million caregivers — people who voluntarily look after infirm spouses, frail, elderly parents and children with serious health problems — will soon get Canada’s first Family Caregiver Tax Credit. It is extremely modest: less than $1 a day. It is regressive; high-income caregivers get maximum credit, low-income caregivers qualify for little or nothing. And it is selective; 82 per cent of the 2.7 million Canadians who sacrifice their income, career prospects and sometimes their health to care for loved ones, aren’t eligible.
Tags: budget, disabilities, ideology, standard of living, tax, women
Posted in Child & Family Delivery System | No Comments »
Price of moving from welfare to work? $400
Saturday, December 17th, 2011
Dec 14 2011
… his college dreams of training to become a firefighter were dashed when Seneca insisted he make a $400 tuition down payment by Friday or forfeit his place in class. St Clair’s monthly welfare cheque is just $565 and he had already spent more than $300 of that on December rent for the subsidized apartment he shares with his mother… The welfare office wouldn’t help because tuition is covered by OSAP. But his OSAP loan won’t be available until he starts classes on Jan. 9… “I really want to get off welfare, but I don’t think I can do that unless I go back to school,” he said.
Tags: budget, ideology, participation, poverty, rights
Posted in Social Security Delivery System | No Comments »
Reducing both crime and imprisonment
Thursday, December 15th, 2011
Dec 14 2011
First, Canada does have too much crime. Far too many Canadians are victimized and the Department of Justice has recently estimated that the annual cost of crime is $100 billion. Second, victims are not well treated in Canada. Little is spent on victims and there have only been marginal improvements in this over the last several years, no matter which party is in power… the Conservatives are investing only token amounts in actually improving services for victims… increasing penalties and implementing mandatory minimum sentences does little or nothing to reduce crime or make Canada safer.
Tags: budget, corrections, crime prevention, featured, ideology
Posted in Child & Family Policy Context | 1 Comment »
Province needs child-care plan
Thursday, December 15th, 2011
Dec 14 2011
Education Minister Laurel Broten says she won’t declare a moratorium on new for-profit child care because some communities don’t have any non-profit providers. The minister can’t just throw up her hands and declare it’s up to the market. If Ontario had a real plan for child care, municipal centres wouldn’t be gutted. If Ontario had a real plan for child care there would be planning in place that ensured decent access for families across the province. If Ontario had a real child-care system, big box companies wouldn’t be able to take advantage.
Tags: budget, child care, ideology, privatization, standard of living
Posted in Child & Family Delivery System | No Comments »
Progressive taxes will get us out of recession
Thursday, December 15th, 2011
Dec 14 2011
Since the private sector is unwilling to invest now in job-creating activity, surely it is up to the government to do so… Surely then is the time to raise the taxes on the upper income levels and on corporations to obtain the capital for the needed investment. The country cries out for investment in infrastructure: roads, bridges, public transit, high-speed railways, aboriginal problems. Our medical services are strapped, and working women lack affordable child care, etc. As Keynes taught us, times of recession require the stimulation of effective demand for goods and services, to create jobs.
Tags: economy, ideology, standard of living, tax
Posted in Policy Context | No Comments »
Outsourcing justice for fear of offending the police
Wednesday, December 14th, 2011
Dec 14 2011
I can’t recall as craven a display of intellectual dishonesty, political cowardice and legal myopia as in the last couple of years of rudderless stewardship at the attorney general’s ministry… In his latest report, Ombudsman André Marin details how Bentley failed to grasp his role as defender of the public interest — bending over backwards to protect the police from criticism and scrutiny… Leadership and justice are about more than taking the path of least resistance. We don’t elect politicians so they can hide under the skirts (or robes) of judges, or retired judges, every time police turn up the heat.
Posted in Child & Family Policy Context | No Comments »
On More Street Politics
Tuesday, December 13th, 2011
Dec 13 2011
Star Columnist Rick Salutin says democracy isn’t something that happens just at elections. The most important fights take place between votes.
Tags: ideology, participation, rights, standard of living
Posted in Governance Debates | No Comments »
Toronto’s rainy day is now
Tuesday, December 13th, 2011
Dec 12 2011
Mayor Rob Ford’s administration seems in full retreat from its destructive plan to kill school nutrition programs feeding 14,000 hungry children…. Imagine going from “guaranteeing” there would be no service cuts, as Rob Ford did on the election trail, to suggesting that this municipality — quite literally — take food from the mouths of children. Imagine if that was actually allowed to happen. That the largest city, in one of the richest countries in the world, let kids go hungry out of an unwillingness to spend about $380,000 from a $139-million surplus.
Tags: budget, featured, ideology, poverty, standard of living, tax, youth
Posted in Governance Delivery System | No Comments »
Growing inequality damaging to society
Tuesday, December 13th, 2011
Dec 12 2011
… a less frequently reported aspect of this growing inequality is its effect on everyone in the society, not just the poverty class. A 2009 book from the U.K., The Spirit Level: Why More Equal Societies Almost Always Do Better, by Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett, “demonstrates that a whole range of social problems — from poor health to educational failure, from mental illness to obesity, from drug addiction to violence, from teenage births to the weakening of community life — share one overwhelming feature: they are all several times more common in more unequal societies”
Tags: economy, ideology, standard of living, tax
Posted in Equality Debates | 1 Comment »
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