Mariel's blog

Yesterday afternoon, the Ontario government unveiled its 2009 budget. This budget has been anticipated by many for its inclusion of funding commitments to poverty reduction measures that were outlined in November’s Poverty Reduction Strategy. Read more »

On Friday, March 20, I attended a talk by David Batstone, the founder of the Not For Sale Campaign to end the global slave trade. In his talk, Batstone called human trafficking “the tragedy of the 21st century.” He presented some troubling statistics: it is estimated that there are 27 million people enslaved around the globe today. Read more »

Today, the government of Ontario announced its intention to invest in affordable housing and increase child benefits to support low-income Ontarians. Read more »

In both France and Germany, government legislation to reduce working hours has been used as a policy to help create employment. But reducing the standard workweek is also a subject where public policy and culture can both influence one another. Read more »

In my last blog, I explored some of the theoretical arguments that are for or against the implementation of a reduced work week. Now, I will examine two countries – France and Germany – where government policy has reduced the average workweek for economic and social reasons. Read more »

In my last blog, I discussed the increasing use of work-sharing by companies as a method of reducing layoffs during the current recession.The idea of a reduced work week is not new – in fact, is a topic that has been explored by economists for decades.Many social and economic arguments have been made for capping the work week at 40 hours, and even for reducing it from five days to four. Read more »

The global economy is sinking deeper into a recession and stories of layoffs at factories, plants and businesses are appearing daily in newsstands across the world.However, despite many gloomy articles, there are also stories appearing of companies and employees that are working together to come up with ways of fighting the impact of the downturn. One way of doing so is through work-sharing. Read more »

Yesterday, the government of Alberta released a ground-breaking new plan that aims to end homelessness in the province over the next ten years.The Alberta Secretariat for Action on Homelessness has created a Plan for Alberta with the objective of ending homelessness by 2019. Read more »

There are many great parts to being a CPJ intern: commenting on recent public policy decisions, learning about the federal political system and writing blogs about current events. One of the best parts of all has been having the opportunity to meet with politicians who are directly involved in the policy-making process Read more »

Since it was first announced in November’s Economic and Fiscal Update, I have been following the federal government’s proposed changes to pay equity with a mix of worry and cautious optimism.

Along with many others, I was concerned about the prospect that these changes could be passed into law and the hard-won right to pay equity in the federal public service could be reduced to little more than a bargaining chip. Read more »