Recent Blog Posts

Glen Pearson, Member of Parliament for London North Centre, has a post on his blog The Parallel Parliament reflecting on Barack Obama’s election. Pearson argues that Canada doesn’t so much need a transformational figure like Barack Obama, but someone who can rise above partisan and regional conflicts to call us back to our shared values. Former MP Bill Blaikie, who retired from federal politics, also reflected on the nature of Canadian Parliament, in the Canadian Parliamentary Review. Blaikie, who is ordained in the United Church of Canada, notes “What is needed and what is missing, I would argue, is a sense of forgiveness.” Read more »

As Karri noted on this blog, when the new cabinet was appointed, Diane Finley replaced Monte Solberg as the Minister for HRSDC.

But a change in ministers is not all that occurred: the government also changed the title of Minister Finley from Human Resources and Social Development to Human Resources and Skills Development. Read more »

The election of Barack Obama as President of the United States last Tuesday was a historical event, and has in many ways ushered in a new era of relations between Canada and the U.S. This was evident only the day after the election, when Ottawa announced its intention to seek a climate-change pact with our American neighbours. Read more »

Last night was definitely a historic occasion for our neighbours to the south. The United States has elected its first African-American president in an election campaign that inspired and engaged Americans in new ways, creating a renewed belief in the possibility of change and hope for the future. Barack Obama even captured the imaginations of many outside the US, including many Canadians. Read more »

While there is growing interest in guaranteed livable income (GLI) around the world, only two jurisdictions currently have such a program. Here's an update on Alaska and Namibia. Read more »

Last week, Maclean’s blog Megapundit had this interesting post on definitions of poverty. Chris Selley’s interest was piqued by the recent Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development report which noted the rising inequality in Canada and other OECD countries.

Selley's post points to the need for an official definition of poverty in Canada.  But he also misunderstands some of the poverty measurements we currently use. Read more »

On Tuesday October 28th, CPJ hosted a highly successful event that featured a lecture by Dr. Jonathan Chaplin at the Institute for Christian Studies (ICS) in Toronto. Read more »

Canwest has a story today reporting comments by Preston Manning that climate change is too important to be politicized by partisan debate. He argues that nobody wants to destroy the environment or to destroy the economy, so arguments that portray opponents as wanting to do that are simplistic and unhelpful. Read more »

Prime Minister Stephen Harper named his new 38-member Cabinet this morning. This new Cabinet is larger and contains more women than the previous Cabinet; it also contains a younger roster of Ministers, many in their 30s or early 40s. Diane Finley, MP for Haldimand-Norfolk was named Minister for Human Resources and Social Development Canada. Read more »

On October 27, 2008, the Growing Gap project of the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives (CCPA) released Ready for Leadership: Canadians’ perceptions of poverty. This report, written by Trish Hennessy and Armine Yalnizyan, reflects on national polling data collected by Environics Research this fall and provides some encouraging news regarding the Canadian public's readiness for government action on poverty.  Read more »

This week’s web feature deconstructs some of the assumptions that underlie concerns about guaranteed livable income (GLI) and work disincentive. There is another good reason for not being scared off of GLI by work disincentive though – research demonstrates that the impact is actually rather small. Read more »

The National Post had two excellent and thought-provoking articles on the environment this weekend. Read more »

Over the last few weeks, I have had the opportunity to speak with a number of journalists about CPJ’s poverty work. Despite the short time frame, the context of each of these conversations was unique: the federal election campaign, the International Day for the Eradication of Poverty, and, most recently, the release of the OECD report, “Growing Unequal.” The question that comes up again and again is: why is poverty an issue in Canada? Read more »

CPJ supporter Harold Jansen has a post on his blog about the recent election results and why they mean Canada's electoral system should be replaced.  Read more »

Because the environment and poverty did not seem to be “ballot questions” in last week’s election, there is a risk that political parties will view that as evidence Canadians are not concerned about these big issues and will not vote for political parties on the basis of these issues. Understanding the reactions of Canadian voters to these is thus important to understanding how to address them in the future. Here's my list of suggested reasons why poverty and the environment weren't big issues in this election. Read more »