Search results for “site/human rights”

  • Fast Facts: Building a community of opportunity and hope

    Lord Selkirk Park Recent events in Gilbert Park have cast Winnipeg’s North End public housing complexes in a negative light. An opposition politician has called Gilbert Park a “ghetto” and “crime incubator”. Some poverty ‘experts’, in statements attributed to them by the media, have implied that conditions in public housing…

  • Manitoba Research Alliance

    Fast Facts: The Tough on Crime Strategy Has Not Made Our Communities Safer

    Crime rates in Canada have been steadily declining for more than a decade, yet prison populations have been increasing in recent years. Commentators have attributed this disconnection between dropping crime rates and rising incarceration numbers to the Harper government’s tough on crime strategy. Since 2006 the Harper Conservatives have implemented…

  • The Wild West? Come on! Put your emotions in check

    The on-line newsmagazine, The Tyee, recently ran an opinion piece of mine under the headline “The Wild West and Dysfunctional BC Politics: Fracking and sour gas deserve debate, but get cartoon treatment from the Clark government.” My special thanks to Tyee editor David Beers or whoever it was who chose…

  • UNSPUN: Manitoba’s Pension Record

    Pensions and the retirement security concerns of Canadians have been in the news in a big way in recent years. With two-thirds of Canadian workers not covered by a workplace pension plan and a majority of citizens not contributing to RRSPs (almost $1 trillion in unused contribution room) many look…

  • Fast Facts: “Mean Streets” society coming

    The election this month of a majority Conservative government will change Canada’s political landscape in ways that will be detrimental to most Canadians. Cuts to public spending will be severe and will cause much human damage. Deliberately crafted attempts to shift Canada’s political culture will not only make dissent, but…

  • April 2006: The Topic of Cancer

    It’s sick to make sickness essential for making profits If we view the health care delivery system as a social system, it becomes amenable to sociological analysis. In analyzing social systems, it is very important to understand the world view or belief system that guides their behaviour and tends to…

  • From The Missing Issues File: Poverty Reduction

    Seems odd that Harper would crow about his economic management, even while about 1.5 million Canadians remain unemployed. Nor would the government be well-advised to draw attention to our persistently high rate of poverty. Yet isn’t dealing with such issues at the heart of what we look for in economic…

  • Corporate Mapping Project

    Canada’s Carbon Conundrum and the Difficult Path Forward

    Since the first oil well was drilled in 1859 humans have been on a roll. Global population has increased more than six-fold and energy use per capita has grown more than nine-fold. Accompanying this explosive growth in energy use was unprecedented economic expansion— since 1965 global GDP has grown 6.8-fold…

  • Good Economy Project

    Where do provincial by-election candidates stand on employment standards?

    The February 2 by-elections in Vancouver-Mount Pleasant and Coquitlam-Burke Mountain offer an opportunity for candidates to clarify their parties’ positions on an important, often neglected, area of government policy – employment standards legislation. The BC Employment Standards Act governs the conditions in which people do paid work, and it is…

  • Canadian military spending higher than any time since WWII: study

    OTTAWA—Twelve years of budget increases have left Canadian military spending higher than at any time since the end of the Second World War, says a study released today by the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives (CCPA). According to the study, by Bill Robinson, Senior Advisor with the Rideau Institute, Canada…

  • UNSPUN: Supporting Refugee Resettlement Beyond the Syrian Rufugee Crisis

    The Syrian refugee crisis has attracted unprecedented political attention and, arguably, corresponding political will in Canada.  In November 2015, the Province of Manitoba publicly stated it could welcome 1,500 to 2,000 of the 25,000 Syrian refugees that the federal Liberal government promised to resettle in Canada over a short period…

  • Climate Justice Project

    Climate damages litigation could cost Canadian oil & gas companies billions: study

    OTTAWA—Canadian oil and gas companies could be liable for billions of dollars of damages for their contribution to climate change, according a study released today by the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives (CCPA) and West Coast Environmental Law (West Coast) that analyzes scenarios in which the legal landscape concerning climate…