Posts Tagged ‘participation’
Canada disability benefit severely underfunded in Budget 2024 and Canadians with disabilities will pay the price
Thursday, April 25th, 2024
One-in-seven people who access food banks nationally rely on provincial disability income support. In many provinces, that means living more than $800 below the poverty line each month… it was never about seeing just another income support program come into effect. It was about extending the type of tangible support to Canadians with disabilities living in severe poverty, helping them overcome its relentless cycle.
Tags: budget, disabilities, jurisdiction, participation, poverty, standard of living
Posted in Inclusion Debates | No Comments »
Ontario pays $320K in legal fight over its cancellation of basic income program
Monday, April 22nd, 2024
After battling five years against a class-action certification process, the Ontario government has paid $320,000 to the law firm spearheading a lawsuit against the Ford government over its decision to cancel a guaranteed basic income pilot project… One-third of respondents reported that the pilot gave them enough money to go to school. One in five said it funded their transportation to work. Almost three-quarters said they started eating better and nearly three in five said they managed to improve their housing. A large majority felt less stress, anxiety and depression.
Tags: ideology, jurisdiction, mental Health, participation, poverty
Posted in Social Security History | No Comments »
Ottawa puts up $50M in federal budget to hedge against job-stealing AI
Sunday, April 21st, 2024
“There is a significant transformation of the economy and society on the horizon around artificial intelligence”… Some jobs will be lost, others will be created… AI is an issue “across sectors, but certainly clerical and customer service jobs are more vulnerable… two types of skills it makes sense to focus on in retraining — computational thinking, or understanding how computers operate and make decisions, and skills dealing with data.
Tags: budget, economy, participation
Posted in Debates | No Comments »
Federal government goes big on housing—is it enough?
Wednesday, April 17th, 2024
2024 federal budget makes biggest investments in housing, care economy in generations with its second-to-last budget before an election… “This government has done more for housing than previous, more recent federal governments…” it will impose a higher tax on capital gains above $250,000 a year… “While the pharmacare program is still quite limited in scope… Combined with dental care, the confidence and supply agreement has driven major changes in the health care landscape in a very short period of time.”
Tags: Health, housing, participation, pharmaceutical, standard of living, tax
Posted in Governance Policy Context | No Comments »
To solve the housing crisis, we must get government building housing again
Saturday, April 6th, 2024
Following the end of the Second World War, the federal government built or funded hundreds of thousands of nonmarket homes. But in the 1980s and 1990s, Conservative and Liberal governments pulled back… Nonmarket housing is not something that we should pursue instead of an increase in private sector construction… But the private sector alone — even freed of zoning — can’t provide relief to Canadians crying out for help… We need the government to get back into building housing.
Tags: housing, ideology, jurisdiction, participation, standard of living
Posted in Debates | No Comments »
Canada is bad at studying wealth inequality and we explain why that matters
Thursday, April 4th, 2024
Canada’s top 1 per cent owns 26 per cent of all wealth in Canada, and our top .01 per cent owns 12.4 per cent of all wealth. This is somewhat lower than the U.S. numbers, but it is much higher than official Statistics Canada numbers report… But looking only at income paints an incomplete picture because it ignores intergenerational wealth that has been inherited… wealth — or its absence — can be more important to the lives of individuals, as well as to broader social cohesion.
Tags: economy, ideology, participation, tax
Posted in Equality Debates | No Comments »
Justin Trudeau announces national school food program amid rising grocery prices
Tuesday, April 2nd, 2024
Canada is the only G7 nation without a national school food program, and ranks 37th out of 41 of the world’s wealthiest countries when it comes to providing healthy food for children… one of the reasons for that was the lack of a national school food program… “We’ll finally be able to level the playing field”… the government plans to work with provinces, territories and Indigenous groups to expand existing programs, some of which are funded by under-resourced organizations.
Tags: child care, Health, participation, poverty, standard of living
Posted in Child & Family Delivery System | No Comments »
Our cost-of-living crisis: In just three years rent has doubled, groceries are up nearly 40 per cent. There are solutions
Sunday, March 24th, 2024
… a new model of economic governance… would… strengthen the social safety net with universal basic income (UBI) and “living wages,” which pay workers according to the cost of living in their localities… Bottom line: The cost-of-living crisis is real, will not go away on its own, and threatens to stoke social unrest… there are solutions to it
Tags: ideology, participation, poverty, standard of living
Posted in Debates | No Comments »
Under Doug Ford, Ontario’s tribunals are under severe attack
Thursday, March 21st, 2024
When Premier Doug Ford announced he wanted to appoint “like-minded” judges, critics were quick to condemn the assault on judicial independence. In contrast, a similar assault on the independence of adjudicative tribunals has flown almost entirely under the radar… In fact, connections to the Ford government or the federal Conservatives seems a much more valuable asset than experience or expertise.
Tags: ideology, jurisdiction, participation
Posted in Governance Delivery System | No Comments »
Ontario needs to pony up more cash for colleges and universities
Friday, March 8th, 2024
A short-term, piecemeal funding plan won’t work. The Ford PCs won’t be able to solve decades of chronic post-secondary underfunding in a year or two or three. But they can begin the process of instituting stable, predictable, and sufficient funding… It’s the smart thing to do. It’s the right thing to do. And in the long run, the money the government invests in education today will return more than it’s worth.
Tags: budget, ideology, jurisdiction, participation, standard of living
Posted in Education Debates | No Comments »
Recent Comments