Search results for “site/human rights”

  • Ontario’s high-stakes election campaign: parties going “all in”

    Back in March, the Ontario Liberals put all of their chips on the table with their election-style provincial budget. They promised free child care, more support for dental care and drugs, and a reinvestment in health care—bankrolling it by deficit spending for the next six years. That left the opposition…

  • Ten things to know about the newly signed federal-provincial-territorial housing framework agreement

    A federal-provincial-territorial (FPT) framework agreement on housing was signed on April 10 in Toronto. It supports the Trudeau government’s National Housing Strategy, which was released last fall.Here are 10 things to know about the just-signed agreement: Though a National Housing Strategy (NHS) was released last fall, a federal-provincial-territorial (FPT) framework agreement still…

  • How to destroy a good poverty line

    More than a decade ago, the federal and provincial governments started work on a new poverty line – the Market Basket Measure (MBM). After decades of distracting and divisive debates about poverty lines, Human Resources and Skills Development Canada crafted a methodology for the MBM that passed the test of…

  • Rags, Meet Riches: Celebrating the growing gap’s real unsung heroes

    I have to admit that lately I’ve been thinking maybe some of us in the 99% have been just a teensy bit unfair. And it hurts—really hurts—to say this, but I’m wondering if the CCPA also bears some responsibility for inflaming that whole “don’t hate me because I’m beautiful—sorry, I…

  • Raising the OAS Eligibility Age Would Raise Poverty in Old Age

    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…

  • Book Review: The Strength of Women

    Indigenous women survive, flourish, work for needed change The Strength of Women: Âhkamêyimowak, Priscilla Settee, Coteau Books, Regina, 2011. * * * “There is a force among women which I call Âhkamêyimowak, or persistence, that provides the strength for women to carry on in the face of extreme adversity. Âhkamêyimowak…

  • Provincial legislature grounds in Edmonton Alberta.

    Five things to know about the 2018 Alberta Budget

    Alberta’s 2018 budget was tabled on March 22, 2018. The official name of this year’s budget is Budget 2018: A Recovery Built to Last. Here are five things to know: This was largely a status quo budget. Total estimated provincial revenue for 2018-19 is $47.9 billion, compared with $46.9 billion in 2017-18.…

  • Frack Attack

    New, dirty gas drilling method threatens drinking water A technology used by the oil and gas industry to obtain natural gas is raising major concerns across the United States and is equally suspect for areas being drilled in Western Canada. Called hydraulic fracturing (or “fracking” in the trade), it allows…

  • Homelessness and employment: The case of Calgary

    On March 8, I gave a guest presentation to students in Professor Naomi Lightman’s Sociology of Work class at the University of Calgary. I was joined by Alexander Kulakov and Amit Nade, employment coaches at the Mustard Seed.  Here are 10 things to know about homelessness and employment in Calgary: There aren’t…

  • No End To Unemployment Crisis

    The recession won’t be over till people get back to work The next time someone says the “recession is over,” ask them exactly what they mean. Because it’s increasingly clear that it means different things to different people. And it’s equally clear it doesn’t usually mean that the unemployment crisis…

  • Education Project

    The Innovation Gap and the Problem with Research Funding in Canada

    While concerns about Canada’s innovation gap have become cliché, too often these observations ignore the elephant in the room: funding for Canadian Researchers is based on a broken funding system. We hope to re-ignite a longstanding conversation in Canada about how to better use limited research dollars to support more…

  • Alternative Federal Budget

    Now is not the time for spending cuts: study

    CLICK HERE TO VIEW THE FULL REPORT OTTAWA—Given the fragile economic recovery and the weak job market, now is not the time for a sharp turn to spending cuts, says a study released today by the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives (CCPA). “It would be a huge mistake to significantly…