Recent Blog Posts

Last week CPJ submitted our pre-budget recommendations to the House of Commons Standing Committee on Finance for Budget 2011. Every year this committee invites Canadians to raise concerns and offer suggestions for the drafting of the next federal budget.

Our recommendations come at a time of economic recovery after the recent recession, when the government is facing challenges concerning how to invest Canadian revenues for the best possible outcome. CPJ recognizes that these decisions are not always easy. But in order to promote the well-being of all Canadians, the budget must be made up of responsible and caring investments.

Read the full submission below Read more »

Last week we prepared two brochures for a group of Canadian high school students who were interested in contacting and writing letters to their Members of Parliament about supporting various justice initiatives. Based on legislation currently before the House of Commons, we decided to send them information on poverty elimination and housing.

Check out these brochures below! Read more »

New Brunswick became the sixth province to adopt a poverty reduction strategy, Overcoming Poverty Together: The New Brunswick economic and social inclusion plan, at the end of 2009. The plan was finalized after a series of meetings with representatives from all over the province and from various sectors, including government, business and the social justice community. The plan was aimed at addressing the circumstances of specific communities, working at the grassroots level, but with overall support from the provincial government.

Now, several months after the plan was introduced by the provincial government and approved in the legislature, groups like the Common Front for Social Justice (CFSJ) are weighing in on the plan, the evidence of action so far, and the needs that are still very evident across the province. Read more »

I'm on maternity leave, starting next week. I'll miss having this space to comment on policy developments, share intriguing bits of research, and dialogue with CPJ members and supporters. Although maybe once sleep deprivation kicks in, I won't even remember that such a thing as effective communication exists!

I'm nervous and excited about taking on a new role as a parent, but I'll be looking forward to stepping back into the old, comfortable role of policy analyst. In the meantime, Bekah, Karri, and in September our new intern, will keep you entertained, informed and engaged here on the CPJ blog.

Thanks for reading, commenting and supporting us. So long for now!

One of the most common assumptions underlying the work disincentive is that people only work because they have to. Guaranteeing financial security without work, even at a basic level, is therefore expected to cause a labour shortage. Of course, empirical evidence doesn’t back this up – there is much more to motivation than simple economic necessity.

In addition to experiments carried out in the 1960s and 1970s, one way that social scientists research motivation and employment commitment is through the “lottery question.” This involves asking people about a hypothetical scenario in which they win the lottery: would they continue to work, even if they didn’t have to? The majority of people say yes, suggesting a high degree of non-financial employment commitment. People find paid employment to be meaningful, even when they don’t depend on its income. Read more »

During my time at Regent College in July, I was able to see many of the sites around Vancouver. This included spending a little time in the eastside of the city. Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside neighbourhood is known across Canada for its extreme poverty, homelessness and an open drug culture. Read more »

This week I’m just coming back to work after a couple weeks of vacation in Vancouver. It was a different kind of vacation because I decided to audit a two week theology class at Regent College, on the campus of the University of British Columbia.

Regent has a great reputation for integrating faith with all aspects of life, including public life and work, which I’ve talked about a lot, but also in all our daily activities, in some ways that did not really occur to me before. Read more »

Public debate about how to deal with Canada’s $53.8 billion deficit has largely focused on spending cuts. Prime Minister Stephen Harper has explicitly ruled out the possibility of tax increases (except for an increase in EI premiums), while Liberal leader Michael Ignatieff has suggested a freeze on continued corporate tax cuts until Canada is in better fiscal shape. The New Democratic Party has consistently called for the repeal of corporate tax cuts to restore government revenue. In April, nearly three-fifths of senior executives polled said they believed some kind of tax increase would be necessary to deal with the deficit. So far, however, there hasn’t been much debate about this option in Canada.

While responding to the deficit and appropriately and sufficiently investing in social security may require a rise in several different taxes, today I want to take a closer look at corporate taxation. Read more »

Now that we’ve passed the halfway point of the year, it’s a good time to check out some of the trends reported on in Bearing the Brunt, CPJ’s study of the recession and poverty. How is that recovery coming along?

Statistics reveal a mixed bag – some improving trends, and some discouraging ones. Overall, the picture is less robust than headlines about economic recovery would suggest. GDP may be growing steadily, but recovery has yet to trickle down to those who suffered most from the recession – the poor, economically vulnerable and unemployed. Read more »

Today, there was some good news on the unemployment front in Canada. For the first time since January 2009, the unemployment rate fell below 8%.

Any decrease in the unemployment rate is good news for Canadians, but does this solve the problem of unemployment brought on by the recession? What about support for the unemployed, including those currently without jobs, and in the case of future recessions? Read more »

In the past two and a half weeks, I've chronicled the impact of the recession across the country on this blog, touching on 7 of the 10 provinces. Reports on BC, New Brunswick and PEI have been published elsewhere. Here are the links if you're interested in checking them out: Read more »

Saskatchewan was spared the full force of the 2008-2009 recession, but poverty and economic insecurity in the province still increased. Job losses were comparatively low, giving Saskatchewan the lowest unemployment rate in the country. But social assistance cases still increased 8.4% over the course of the recession. Food bank use and bankruptcies also rose in 2009, as the cost of living jumped significantly in Saskatchewan. Read more »

In many ways, Quebec was spared the worst of the recession’s impact. The province had a comparatively small increase in unemployment, higher than average Employment Insurance coverage, and a relatively low increase in social assistance cases. But despite these general trends, Quebec families still found themselves confronted with greater economic insecurity thanks to the impact of the recession. Cost of living rose sharply, forcing families to stretch their incomes farther, and bankruptcies and food bank use increased. Read more »

Last week I participated in a tele-learning seminar hosted by Tamarack on the Ontario Poverty Reduction Strategy, Breaking the Cycle. This is the fourth in a nation-wide series on provincial poverty reduction strategies.

Ontario’s strategy is unique in the sense that its specific goals and targets are focused on one particular area- to reduce child poverty by 25% in 5 years. As a result much of the plan’s focus is on child-tax benefits, child care, early childhood education, and training for children and youth. Education and support for children is seen as a key element to breaking the cycle of poverty. Read more »

In many ways, Ontario bore the brunt of the recession. Over half of all jobs lost in Canada during the recession were lost in Ontario. Nonetheless, Ontario had the lowest Employment Insurance coverage in the country. Not surprisingly then, Ontario Works caseloads skyrocketed. Rising cost of living contributed to the rise in poverty, as low income families had to stretch their dollars farther in 2009. The result was an increase in bankruptcies and food bank use. Read more »