The following remarks are excerpted from the 2018 Alternative Federal Budget press conference, featuring Gauri Sreenivasan, David Macdonald and Peter Bleyer (February 22, Parliament Hill). Today we are releasing the CCPA’s 23rd annual Alternative Federal Budget. Our Budget is a roadmap for policymakers; a set of realistic, fully costed proposals based…
Province of BC / Flickr.” style=”border-radius:0px;–objectFit:cover;–imagePosX:50%;–imagePosY:50%” decoding=”async” srcset=”https://www.policyalternatives.ca/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/pn_feb2018_FreshFromTheLockup-300×141.jpg 300w, https://www.policyalternatives.ca/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/pn_feb2018_FreshFromTheLockup-1024×480.jpg 1024w, https://www.policyalternatives.ca/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/pn_feb2018_FreshFromTheLockup-768×360.jpg 768w, https://www.policyalternatives.ca/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/pn_feb2018_FreshFromTheLockup.jpg 1280w” sizes=”(max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px” />BC Budget 2018 includes major new investments in child care, housing and infrastructure combined with significant improvements in tax fairness. This budget—the new provincial government’s first full budget—is a turning point. For too long, BC budgets have prioritized tax cuts and balancing the books over all else—preferring to sweep social,…
Corporate food charity keeps hunger off political agenda Over the past 30 years, Canadians have increasingly been led to believe that community compassion expressed through charitable food handouts is the most effective way of feeding our hungry poor and homeless. Since the establishment of the first food banks in the…
Download 360.76 KB7 pages It is estimated that the total cost of poverty in PEI is at minimum between $240 and $320 million per year, which corresponds to about $1,720 and $2,265 per person, per year. In terms of the PEI economy, the cost of poverty is between 5%-7% of…
Complacency is not acceptable, says Ontario Alternative Budget CLICK HERE TO VIEW THE FULL REPORT TORONTO— The Ontario Alternative Budget for 2006 released today by the Alternative Budget Working Group of the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives takes on poverty and income inequality as its central focus. The Alternative Budget…
READ THE FULL REPORT HERE. Ottawa–Poverty is still a women’s issue – even though people no longer seem to be talking about it. Almost 19% of adult women in Canada are poor. That’s the highest rate of women’s poverty in two decades. In A Report Card on Women and Poverty,…
Table 1: OAS/GIS Contributions to the Income of Seniors (2006) OAS OAS / GIS / Allowance Age 66 26% 34% Age 67 27% 36% Women 65-69 29% 38% Men 65-69 19% 26% All Seniors 26% 36% $5-$10,000…
Women’s Poverty and the Recession This series of fact sheets is based on the report Women’s Poverty and the Recession by Monica Townson (September 2009), and addresses the following issues: Women and child care Women and the Harper government Women and welfare Attachments Fact Sheets on Women’s Poverty: Women’s Poverty and…
In a recent editorial (“Aboriginal HIV Rates Disturbing”) the Winnipeg Free Press expressed concern about the rising incidence of HIV infection in, among other places, Winnipeg’s inner city. There, “social and economic conditions make people easy prey” for HIV infection. The editorial called for a “vigorous response” to these problems.…
Two important new voices joined the call for a BC poverty reduction plan in the last couple days. First, on Tuesday, BC Provincial Health Officer Perry Kendall released a special report entitled Investing in Prevention. The report received quite a lot of media attention. However, most of the coverage dealt…
Community work in action Thanks to community advocacy, low-income Manitobans will have more money to help pay their rent. Three years ago Make Poverty History Manitoba (MPHM) began building support for increasing shelter benefits to 75 per cent of median market rent. The provincial government responded and this July, low-income…
Rent Assist is a made-in-Manitoba solution to housing need: a province-wide rent supplement program that helps lower-income renters in the private market to afford housing at 75 percent of median market rents. Since it was introduced in 2014, it has enabled tens of thousands of Manitoba households to secure and…