Posts Tagged ‘budget’

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Liberals and NDP both have solid plans for child care. The Conservatives do not

Saturday, August 21st, 2021

O’Toole says his plan provides “flexibility” so parents can choose whatever child care they want and offers “extra support to those who need it most.” … A tax credit helps with affordability, certainly — if a family can find a child-care space in their area and if they can afford to pay the rest of the cost.  It will not help create the hundreds of thousands of new spaces that are needed across the country to expand access to everyone who wants it. It will not bring down the high costs. And it will not boost wages for child-care workers, key to attracting the workforce to expand and stabilize the system.

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Ontario should sign on to Ottawa’s $10-a-day child care plan

Thursday, August 12th, 2021

When Ford’s PC government came to power in 2018 it killed the Wynne Liberals’ plan to provide free licensed care for preschool children in Ontario. When Stephen Harper’s Conservatives came to power in 2006 they killed a national child-care program proposed by Paul Martin’s Liberal government — even though all provinces had signed on. So it’s very concerning to hear O’Toole talk about wanting to kill the Trudeau program and replace it with more “flexible” options. In other words, not an actual child-care system at all. 

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Developing a costing for a basic income is not a neutral exercise

Tuesday, July 27th, 2021

Creating income floors for everyone in Canada is necessary and desirable, but basic income and income floor are not synonymous… Expanding and improving social assistance, increases in targeted tax credits and benefits, strengthening Employment Insurance, stronger labour standards, and investments in public services would be less costly, more effective, and have fewer negative consequences than the suggested basic income.

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Ensuring the success of Ontario’s vision for social assistance transformation

Tuesday, July 27th, 2021

The overall vision that MCCSS has laid out for service delivery transformation is encouraging. However, it is important to recognize that the vision set out in the paper can only be realized if meaningful investments are made in public services. To that end, it does not appear that the government of Ontario has a plan to enable the vision’s success. There is only so much progress and fiscal room that can be made through streamlining administrative processes.

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Violent, militarized park encampment clearings won’t end homelessness in Toronto. Here’s a human rights approach

Monday, July 26th, 2021

While encampments are not ideal, and are not a permanent solution to the crisis of homelessness, they must not be criminalized or removed until the governments can provide reasonable alternatives. When the City of Toronto cites health and safety concerns as a reason for encampment removal, we must remember that this is the result of a societal failure to provide access to housing, let alone running water, bathrooms, and other basic necessities needed to ensure the right to life — and good health during a pandemic.

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Shaking up the systems: Fighting poverty in post-pandemic Canada

Saturday, July 24th, 2021

At the core of the questions raised by the NACP was the idea that we need structural change to reduce poverty in Canada… we offer a number of policy ideas that can help systematically reduce poverty… rooted in what the evidence tells us… the idea that everyone across Canada has the fundamental human right to live in dignity and participate fully in society, and it is the duty of all levels of government to respect, protect, and fulfill these rights.

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Social Assistance Summaries 2020

Tuesday, June 29th, 2021

The Social Assistance Summaries series tracks the number of recipients of social assistance (welfare payments) in each province and territory. It was established by the Caledon Institute of Social Policy to maintain data previously published by the federal government as the Social Assistance Statistical Report. The data is provided by provincial and territorial government officials.

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‘An important beginning’: Toronto police to divert some 911 mental health calls to civilian crisis centre

Friday, June 25th, 2021

Amid growing public pressure to send social workers and health care professionals to mental health calls — not police — city council voted earlier this year to launch a separate pilot program to see civilian dispatched to mental health crisis calls where violence is not being threatened… The cost of the project, estimated to be $522,000, will be absorbed by the service’s operating budget, police said.

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Life stabilization on a welfare income is impossible

Thursday, June 24th, 2021

… people’s lives cannot be stabilized without increasing social assistance rates. While they slowly starve, recipients will be required to “participate in prescribed employment and life stabilization assistance activities.”  But there is no clear plan to show how local service delivery agents will be able to co-ordinate life stabilization services that are notoriously in short supply, such as affordable housing, counselling and mental health services. And adding names to years-long waiting lists does not stabilize anything. In fact, it can have the opposite effect.

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A global minimum corporate tax is an important step toward fairness

Monday, June 7th, 2021

The whole idea of a minimum global tax is to prevent multinationals from tax-shopping, so it will be effective only to the extent that many countries agree to it. The next step is to get the bigger G20 group on board, and then there’s the Organization for Economic Development and Cooperation… the biggest companies that have flourished during the pandemic, should pay their share.

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