Child benefits have significant potential to reduce homelessness and the need for emergency shelter beds by putting more money into the hands of low-income parents. They also can (and do) reduce child poverty, though not always as much as governments claim. And because they do not carry the same stigma…
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Here are 10 things to know: Since taking office in 2015, the NDP government of Premier Notley has undertaken important steps that will almost certainly reduce poverty. These include the implementation of the Alberta Child Benefit (which will lift approximately 19,000 households out of poverty), substantial increases in funding for…
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Days after the 2015 federal election, a Globe and Mail opinion piece pointed out something many anti-poverty advocates already knew: “Every province and territory but British Columbia has a poverty reduction strategy in place or in development. Many cities and towns do, too. Until now, the big missing piece has…
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This fall, Canada’s Parliament will debate a recent proposal to expand the Canada Pension Plan (CPP).[1] Indeed, since the 2008-2009 world financial crisis, Canada has witnessed a renewed public debate on the CPP. Two factors have prompted this. First, as a result of the crisis, employer-sponsored pension plans lost substantial value….
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We are in the midst of a historic opportunity to strengthen our democracy. Our federal government has committed to making the 2015 election the last under the first-past-the-post (FPTP) electoral system, and an all-party parliamentary committee has been consulting experts and the public on how to make our elections fairer…
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The Ontario government has announced some modest reforms to lower the outrageous interest rates charged to customers of payday loan companies. Many people who rely on payday loans have no other place to turn in a financial emergency and over the past 20 years, the payday loan industry has been…
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In the latest edition of How Ottawa Spends, we have a chapter titled “The Federal Government and Old Age Security: Then, Now, and the Future.” The focus of our chapter was the potential impact of the Harper government’s decision to move the age of eligibility for Old Age Security (OAS)…
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Anywhere between 30,000 and 200,000 people are homeless in Canada, with another 1.7 million unable to afford adequate, suitable shelter. Winnipeg in particular has a history of housing shortages and inner-city poverty. In 2015 it was estimated that on a given night in the city there were at least 1,400…
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