I came of age as an activist and researcher when Mike Harris blustered his way into power in the 90s. His education minister, John Snobelen, famously a high school dropout, was much more comfortable referring to students as “clients,” parents as “customers” and teachers as “front line service providers,” and…
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The idea of a Green New Deal—a radical and comprehensive transformation of the economy to cut greenhouse gas emissions while tackling inequality—has been gaining steam over the past few decades as an organizing principle for the environmental and social justice movements, but it wasn’t until 2019 that the GND exploded…
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“Papa, you had a whole decade and this is all you did with it?” Reflecting on the start of the second decade of this millennium, I shudder with heart-sinking shame at the thought of my daughter asking me such a question in January 2030. She will be a few…
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With virtually no prior warning, the Ontario government announced on Monday, December 16—five days ago—that they had cancelled the Hamilton Light Rail Transit (LRT) project, a long-planned 14-km rapid transit line running east-west across Hamilton between McMaster University and Eastgate Square. Adding insult to injury, Ontario Transportation Minister Caroline Mulroney…
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The federal government’s commitment to extend employment insurance (EI) sickness benefits from 15 weeks to 26 weeks is a welcome and overdue expansion of the Canadian social safety net. In our 2018 report On the Mend, we recommended doubling the available benefits from 15 to 30 weeks, but 26 weeks…
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There has been no shortage of talk about race and racism in Canada of late. In September, revelations about the Prime Minister’s past penchant for wearing blackface triggered a national conversation about the mockery, insults, bullying, and disrespect that racialized Canadians routinely face. But in discussing racism in social interactions,…
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In the past year and a half, the Ontario government has demanded that Ontarians sacrifice many vital public services to address an alleged fiscal crisis. But in a report released earlier this week, the Financial Accountability Office (FAO) shows that most of the savings from service cuts are not going…
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Canada’s population is increasingly racialized. The 2016 census counted 7.7 million racialized individuals in Canada. That number represented 22% of the population, up from 16% just a decade earlier.Unfortunately, the rapid growth in the racialized population is not being matched by a corresponding increase in economic equality. Using 2016 census…
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I was 19 and in my second year of university—with my whole life laid out before me—when the massacre at École Polytechnique happened. I now have three children, including an 18-year-old daughter in her first year of university, and a wonderful career doing work that I love. The women who…
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Alberta Education Minister Adriana LaGrange is very concerned that teachers in classrooms across the province are turning students into anti-oil zealots. Her evidence? Two multiple-choice questions from a grade 10 Social Studies test, reportedly sent by a parent, that appear to cast aspersions on oilsands development (the offending options have…
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