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Search results for: “site/Pat Armstrong”
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Persistent inequality in Ontario’s labour market along racial, gender lines largely unchanged since 2006
READ THE FULL REPORT HERE. TORONTO—Ontario’s labour market shows stubborn patterns of employment and income inequality along racial and gender lines, according to new research from the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives’ Ontario (CCPA-ON) office. The report, Persistent Inequality: Ontario’s Colour-coded Labour Market, presents a portrait of the province’s racialized…
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July 2007: The Fateful Summer of ’62
Medicare’s foes fail to stop its birth in Saskatchewan This is the 40th anniversary of the establishment of national public health care in Canada, with the passage of the Canada Health Act in 1967. But Medicare was actually born five years earlier, in 1962, when the first public health care…
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Pharmacare plan would improve health and lower costs: report
READ THE FULL REPORT HERE. OTTAWA—Implementing the first phases of a national pharmacare program would significantly lower costs to taxpayers, while improving health outcomes and access to care, says a report released today by Canadian Doctors for Medicare (CDM) and the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives (CCPA). Canada is the…
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Fast Facts: Can a Housing First Initiative Work?
Homelessness is a major problem in Winnipeg. In 2014 the Winnipeg Poverty Reduction Council estimated that at any time approximately 350 individuals stayed in one of Winnipeg’s homeless shelters, 700-1,000 individuals were in single room occupancy hotels, and 1,400 stayed with friends or family in order to avoid living on…
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Fast Facts: Responding to the Fentanyl crisis
Constructing better drug policy in Manitoba First published on CBC online Dec 3, 2016 Increasing tragic deaths from Fentanyl are raising calls to deal with this crisis. Evidence shows that controlling supply and criminalizing drug users does not address the root causes of addictions, which are complex and multi-faceted. Research…
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Fast Facts: Searching for fairness in Manitoba’s Carbon Tax
Last month our office released a report authored by Harvey Stevens that found the federal carbon tax will reduce more greenhouse gases than the proposed Made in Manitoba Climate and Green Plan. The Premier responded that the federal escalating carbon price will hurt Manitobans (Federal carbon plan seen by think…
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British Columbians will pay the LNG industry’s power bills
In his Tyee article BC’s LNG Fraud, Andrew Nikiforuk pointed out that the government’s new eDrive policy—under which BC Hydro will supply electricity to LNG plants at the standard industrial rate, instead of the much higher rate that government had determined was needed for BC Hydro to recover its costs—will result in…
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Work Life: Honouring Ellen Olfert, founder of SAFE Workers of Tomorrow
Honouring Ellen Olfert, founder of SAFE Workers of Tomorrow In 1995, 19 year old Stephen Nicholson was on the job site working in a paint booth. He was working on the exhaust system and had been lowered into the vent when suddenly paint residue ignited and engulfed Stephen in flames.…
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Brendan DeBrincat / Flickr” style=”border-radius:0px;–objectFit:cover;–imagePosX:50%;–imagePosY:50%” decoding=”async” srcset=”https://www.policyalternatives.ca/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/pn_aug2018_CommunityBenefit-300×133.jpg 300w, https://www.policyalternatives.ca/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/pn_aug2018_CommunityBenefit-768×341.jpg 768w, https://www.policyalternatives.ca/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/pn_aug2018_CommunityBenefit.jpg 900w” sizes=”(max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px” />Community Benefits Agreements add value to public infrastructure projects
The BC government recently announced that major new public infrastructure projects, such as the Pattullo Bridge, will be subject to a “Community Benefits Agreement.” The agreement requires that public benefits flow not only from the outcome of a project, but also from the process of building it. The move was…
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Is it time for a Canadian “daddy month”?
What makes for happy families? It turns out parents and policy makers could learn a lesson or two from their kids. Lesson one: share. OK, I’ll admit it, there is one thing you can’t share—those nine awesome months of heartburn and swollen ankles. But the day your bundle of joy arrives,…
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Fracking has no place near critical dams or reservoirs
Last year, a dubious record was set when a magnitude 4.6 earthquake was triggered near Fort St. John during a natural gas industry fracking operation. The tremor was just the latest to be linked to the controversial brute force gas extraction technique, and almost certainly was noted at BC Hydro’s…
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The Union of BC Municipalities Convention: a potpourri of policy
For people who follow local policy issues the annual meeting of the Union of BC Municipalities (UBCM) is always chock-a-block with material. Last week’s meeting in Vancouver, which saw hundreds of mayors and councilors along with most of the Cabinet, much of the BC opposition and dozens of groups selling…
Brendan DeBrincat