The story of child poverty in Canada is very much an urban story. One out of every 10 children living in urban areas was poor in 2010, compared to one in 20 children living in non-urban areas. Three quarters (or 76%) of all poor children in Canada lived in one of the urban centres shown in the chart below.* Child poverty isn’t a question of jobs: the cities with worst child poverty only had middle-of-the-pack unemployment rates (out of the 19 cities, St. John’s, NL was 8th highest and Vancouver, BC was 11th highest). Similarly, the cities with the (Read more…)
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There are some people who, in the prime of their lives, cannot conceive of getting old. They imagine that only other people have babies with disabling conditions. They champion independence and despise infirmity. Those people might believe that if anything catastrophic ever DID happen to them, then surely the government or some agency or other would step in to help. Wrong. Families living in the trenches of caregiving know only too well that there is not enough help (if any at all). Day programmes, respite care, supported housing options, home nursing are all just pie in the sky dreams for (Read more…) As a retired teacher, I am well familiar with the works of Charles Dickens. Although his literary legacy is one of predominantly lengthy works, he is probably best remembered for his shortest one, A Christmas Carol, the story of Ebeneezer Scrooge, a nasty man consumed by the cost of everything but unable to recognize the value of anything. His redemption comes when he realizes the perversion of his life perspective. Yesterday we went to Niagara on the Lake for a reading of the tale by some Shaw Festival actors who graciously invited my daughter, who has been very involved . . . → Read More: Politics and its Discontents: A Christmas Message Human resources minister Diane Finley announced this new thing this week – social impact bonds wherein the federal government contracts with a charity or NGO to provide some sort of service and floats a bond tied to the project. Socially minded investo… . . . → Read More: cmkl: Social impact bonds: totally whack A new report by the Canadian Medical Association provides a timely reminder that money buys better health, even in a country with a universal public healthcare system. A poll commissioned by the CMA found a large and increasing gap between the health status of Canadians in lower income groups (household income less than $30,000) and their wealthier counterparts (household income over $60,000). The fact that income affects health is hardly a surprise. A large body of research has shown that both globally and in Canada, income (and socioeconomic status more broadly) is closely related to virtually all health outcomes that . . . → Read More: The Progressive Economics Forum: To address health inequalities, look beyond the role of individual responsibility On June 7, I gave a keynote address to the Alberta Union of Provincial Employees Education Sector Conference. My PowerPoint presentation (with full references) can be found at this link. Points I raised in the address include the following: -Canada’s economy has been growing quite steadily over the past three decades, even when one adjusts for inflation, and even when one accounts for population growth. The exceptions, of course, occur during recessions. -Yet, since the early 1980s, the federal government has been spending less, relative to GDP. Since that time, it has spent less on both “program expenses” and debt-servicing . . . → Read More: The Progressive Economics Forum: Canada’s Self-Imposed Crisis in Post-Secondary Education 
 bc, competition, Conservative government, corporate income tax, debt, demographics, Education, fiscal federalism, fiscal policy, household debt, income distribution, Income Tax, inequality, macroeconomics, Newfoundland and Labrador, P3s, part time work, post-secondary education, Privatization, productivity, public infrastructure, quebec, rankings, regulation, Role of government, social policy, student debt, student movement, taxation, user fees, working time, young workers The government of Prince Edward Island has introduced a Social Action Plan to Reduce Poverty, found online at PEI CSS. This Action Plan follows community consultations, including face-to-face meetings and written submissions by community groups. The government of PEI seems to take very seriously a Social Determinants of Health approach to poverty reduction, and so has exempted departments of health, education, and social services and seniors from broad government ‘belt-tightening’ designed to bring the provincial budget back to balance. In fact, these departments will see minimal new investments of $4 million over three years. Given that Christine Saulnier and I . . . → Read More: The Progressive Economics Forum: Missed Opportunity for PEI Poverty Strategy Last year, my daughter, Hannah, 11 months old at the time suffered through a respiratory illness, commonly known as the common cold, but dangerous to those under the age of one. It was likely contracted from her two older school aged brothers. This illness, Respiratory syncytial virus, forced her into a general hospital, an hour and a half away from our rural home, for a week, and the week before Christmas, no less. We were discharged on December 23rd. The best Christmas gift, was her health mostly returned. Luckily, she was old enough to not have sustained any lasting damage, but (Read more…) In the context of student protests over Quebec tuition fees, my friend Luan Ngo has just written a very informative blog post on Quebec’s fiscal situation. While I encourage readers to read his full post, I do want to use the present space to make mention of three important points he makes: -On a per capita basis, Quebec spends more on government programs than most other Canadian provinces. -Residents of Quebec pay more personal incomes taxes than any other province. -Quebec’s debt-to-GDP ratio is significantly higher than that any other Canadian province. He argues that, in light of the . . . → Read More: The Progressive Economics Forum: Quebec Tuition: Between a Rock and Hard Place?
Bank of Canada, Budgets, Conservative government, corporate income tax, debt, deficits, economic crisis, economic growth, economic literacy, economic models, economic thought, Education, equalization, financial crisis, fiscal federalism, fiscal policy, heterodox economics, inflation, interest rates, macroeconomics, monetary policy, post-secondary education, progressive economic strategies, quebec, social policy, student movement, user fees A recent article by Stefani Forster, of the Canadian Press, suggests that the Quebec student protests may be starting a larger social movement outside of Quebec. According to the article: In the last few days, Quebec’s student protests have received coverage in French news outlets like Le Monde and Agence France-Presse, in Australia, in New Zealand, and in the U.S., including on CNN. A New York Times blog suggested tuition fees and student debt could become a key theme in President Barack Obama’s bid for re-election as the president tries to energize young voters. The “French-Canadian students” Simon Tremblay-Pepin, an emerging social policy scholar, has recently blogged here (in French) about Quebec tuition fees. He points out that, when one adjusts for inflation, Quebec tuition fees are headed into uncharted territory. Indeed, contrary to some recent spin from the Charest government, Tremblay-Pepin makes two important observations: 1. When one takes an average of Quebec tuition fees over the past45 years (using constant dollars), current Quebec tuition fees are significantly higher than the 45-year average. 2. The tuition-fee increases being proposed by the Charest government would bring Quebec’s tuition fees to their highest levels ever. The above Last Friday, I blogged here about the Quebec student protests. Subsequently, I was invited to appear on 580 CFRA News Talk Radio, with hosts Rob Snow and Lowell Green. I should note that Mr. Green is the author of several books, including: -How the Granola Crunching, Tree Hugging Thug Huggers are Wrecking our Country; -Mayday Mayday. Curb Immigration. Stop Multiculturalism Or It’s The End Of The Canada We Know; -Here’s Proof Only We Conservatives Have Our Heads Screwed On Straight (Rest assured that Mr. Green is no more subtle on-air than when choosing titles for his books.) . . . → Read More: The Progressive Economics Forum: Discussing Quebec Student Protests on Talk Radio On CBC’s The National last night, Rex Murphy weighed in on Quebec’s student protests; the transcript can be found here, and the three-minute video here. He calls the protests “short sighted,” points out that Quebec already has the lowest tuition fees in Canada, and suggests the students’ actions are “crude attempts at precipitating a crisis.” He says they are the “actions of a mob,” are “simply wrong,” and should be “condemned.” I am glad to learn that Mr. Murphy does not feel inhibited when it comes to expressing himself. However, I think his analysis would be stronger if . . . → Read More: The Progressive Economics Forum: Rex Murphy’s Naive Take on the Quebec Student Protests A few years ago, I wrote an opinion piece on “pathway colleges”—i.e. private companies that recruit students from other countries and then ‘bridge’ them into Canadian universities by providing pre-university courses, including English as a Second Language. A recent CBC News article underlines how perilous such recruitment of post-secondary students from abroad can be, and why it is important that lines of accountability be clear. The article reports on how a “University of Winnipeg recruitment agent” overcharged students who had recently been recruited from China. The students were charged as much as $3,000 per month for room and board. The students in . . . → Read More: The Progressive Economics Forum: When a University Recruits Abroad, Who’s in Charge? Pretty soon asking even the most basic social policy questions will require huge amounts of investment in primary research. Regularly published statistical reports and summaries are disappearing by the minute. The elimination of the National Council of Welfare in the Budget means that we will no longer be getting Welfare Incomes, a more or less annual publication which allowed one to compare provinces with respect to social assistance benefits by family type. Good luck pulling that information together on your own from provincial web sites. While one can still quite readily get data on the incidence, depth and duration of . . . → Read More: The Progressive Economics Forum: Social Statistics: Ignorance Is Bliss Last Monday, BC teachers held a Day of Action in communities across the province to protest the BC government’s decision to legislate a contract and put an end to their collective bargaining process. I was invited to speak to teachers at the Surrey rally, where I had the opportunity to share some of my analysis of the BC Budget (which readers of the PolicyNote blog are familiar with) and debunk some myths around the economic and fiscal context in which the teachers’ bargaining process is taking place. It was an honour to show support to teachers in my adoptive country . . . → Read More: The Progressive Economics Forum: BC isn’t broke: putting teacher bargaining in perspective Carleton University’s Ted Jackson teaches a graduate seminar course on post-secondary education in Carleton’s School of Public Policy and Administration. Earlier this month, I was invited to give a guest presentation to Professor Jackson’s class. I focused the presentation on affordability challenges faced by students wanting to pursue post-secondary education. My slide presentation can be found here. <em>This guest blog was written by Mike Marin and Anouk Dey. It originally appeared in the Toronto Star on February 24. The authors are part of a team that produced the report Prospering Together (in English http://bit.ly/z4GQx5 and in French http://bit.ly/yabiK2) </em> <em></em>What do the Occupy Movement and Canadian software giant OpenText have in common? Most people, including the campers and coders themselves, would probably say very little. But, while the message coming out of Robson Square and St. James Park last fall was about economic justice, it is highly relevant to economic growth as well. Canada’s high . . . → Read More: The Progressive Economics Forum: New Generation of Thinkers Link Inequality, Innovation and Prosperity John Stapleton has an opinion piece out on Prime Minister Harper’s proposed changes to Old Age Security (OAS) and the Guaranteed Income Supplement (GIS). I find the following quote from Stapleton to be particularly troubling: By providing OAS and GIS at age 65, Canada has greatly reduced the incidence of poverty among seniors. By moving the age of eligibility for OAS to 67, absent any other measures, the Conservative government will place a whole new age cohort into risk of poverty. My own estimate is that almost 50,000 social assistance recipients, most of them persons with disabilities, would be forced December marked the three-year anniversary of Ontario’s Poverty Reduction Strategy. While I believe there is much to celebrate, much remains to be done. The Strategy surprised a lot of observers, especially in light of the fact that it was announced in December 2008, just as Ontario was entering a recession. Its focus was almost exclusively child poverty, and, at full implementation (i.e. 2013), it will result in $300 million in new annual spending. This is equivalent to 0.3 percent of total provincial spending in Ontario, which is roughly $100 billion. One stated goal of the Strategy is to . . . → Read More: The Progressive Economics Forum: Ontario’s Poverty Reduction Strategy It’s no secret that a major priority of Canadian universities is to recruit substantial numbers of international students, who in turn pay very high tuition fees once they arrive in Canada. Recent evidence suggests that insofar as Canadian universities want to continue doing so, they should work with senior levels of government to reduce to cost of both housing and public transit for students. A recent article in The Pie News looks at the recent decrease in international-student recruitment at Australian universities. An industry analyst quoted in the article blames the decrease in large part on the “high costs of student accommodation and public transport . . . → Read More: The Progressive Economics Forum: Tips on Recruiting International Students An article in yesterday’s Village Voice looks at the rising costs of post-secondary education (PSE) in the United States. It points to research suggesting that the “biggest single factor” contributing to the rising cost of PSE for both private and public institutions is the cost of employee health benefits. I would infer from the above that, insofar as Canada moves towards increased privatization of its health care system, our own PSE institutions will face increased financial challenges. Very likely, this would result in both tuition fees and student debt rising even faster than is currently the case. Here’s the difference between a province that is successfully tackling the challenge of labour shortages compared to one that is hopelessly adrift. Saskatchewan is open to people from anywhere. In Newfoundland and Labrador, meanwhile, the emphasis in every discussion seems to be on keeping local people in or figuring out – as with apprentices – in how to lure them back. Check that article from the Telegram – first in a series – and notice how face they turn to talking about a labour shortage. That’s really code for “there won’t be enough of ‘us’ to get the work. . . . → Read More: The Sir Robert Bond Papers: All I want for Christmas is a paradigm shift #nlpoli Last week, I was in Yellowknife, where I released results of new research on affordable housing in the Northwest Territories (NWT). The research project was sponsored by the Social Economy Research Network of Northern Canada, and was a collaboration with the Centre for Northern Families. Research findings include the following: -Housing indicators suggest that the state of housing in the NWT (especially in small communities) is much worse than in the rest of Canada. While 2% of Canadians report living in “crowded conditions,” that figure is 8% for rural NWT. And while 8% of Canadian households report living in housing . . . → Read More: The Progressive Economics Forum: Housing in the Northwest Territories |
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