Blogs

The Irresistible Revolution describes Claiborne’s journey from a teenager unsure how he felt about the faith he grew up with to an ordinary radical, living in intentional community and practicing love, hospitality and simplicity.

At its core, the book is a challenge to embrace faith in radical but simple way: living out God’s commands to love God and love our neighbour as ourselves in every aspect of our lives. This is putting faith into action in a very immediate way. It is not only seeing what God can do to “create beauty from the messes we make of our world,” but being willing to be used by God to that end. Or, as Claiborne puts it, finding out where God is at work and joining in. Read more »

Ontario’s Poverty Reduction Strategy, released December 4, places significant emphasis on the province’s children, stating that “the best way to combat poverty is to break the intergenerational cycle that makes poverty such an insidious problem.” The strategy also includes the intention to legislate the provincial commitment to poverty reduction in the spring of 2009 and to continue to call for federal government action on poverty. Read more »

Human trafficking is the third most lucrative illegal industry in the world. The UN estimates up to 4 million people are trafficked annually, in complete and direct violation of their human rights. They are treated like commodities, exploited and often abused, kept in inhumane living conditions. Read more »

Ontario released its poverty reduction strategy today. We'll have some more commentary tomorrow, as there are some strong and some not-so-strong elements in the strategy.

However, of immediate interest, it's worth noting that the government intends to introduce legislation in 2009 to make Ontario's commitment to poverty reduction permanent. Read more »

The Caledon Institute for Social Policy has released an important commentary, entitled "The Forgotten Fundamentals." In it, the authors state that: "The lessons of history have taught us that, in tough economic times, social programs can act as fundamental supports for both the economy and society.” Read more »

I don’t know about everyone else, but it’s been hard to tear myself away from the drama in Ottawa over the past five days. With so many new developments constantly, it can really suck up attention.

So it was good to see this timely reminder from Roy Romanow in the Toronto Star today. Romanow points out that the big economic crisis is pushing many other pressing concerns from our public attention, including poverty.

Romanow rightly points out that Canadians are paying the costs of poverty in terms of overall health and health care. Acting on poverty is good for the health of Canadians and of our economy. Read more »

While we’re finishing up our response to the Fiscal and Economic Statement yesterday, and wondering who our government will be next week, an announcement was made with little fanfare of the new immigration criteria.

New legislation was adopted this spring that allows the Minister of Citizenship and Immigration to prioritize certain immigrants for entry into Canada. The move was a departure from the previous system, where selection criteria were set by regulation and every visa application had to be reviewed by immigration officers. Read more »

704 414 Canadians turn to food banks in an average month to help them get by. This number is in Hunger Count 2008, released by Food Banks Canada (formerly the Canadian Association of Food Banks) today.

Since 1997, the number of food bank users in Canada has not dipped below 700 000. What will happen now, in a period of economic downturn?

Echoing Campaign 2000’s report card, released last Friday, the report notes that over one-third of those who depend on food banks are children. Half of the families with children that use food banks are two parent families. Read more »

This morning, Campaign 2000 released its 2008 Report Card on Child and Family Poverty in Canada. The report card revealed that the child poverty rate in our country is almost the same as it was nineteen years ago when Parliament passed a unanimous resolution to end child poverty by the year 2000. Read more »

On Wednesday night, Mariel, Suzanne and I attended an evening organized by Oxfam Canada on “Women’s Leadership: From Participation to Real Power.” Four speakers shared different perspectives on how we can move from women’s presence in places of leadership and power to the genuine sharing of power. The issue is extremely important, as Oxfam’s Robert Fox reminded us, because ending poverty and injustice around the world requires ending inequality between men and women. Read more »