When I became Executive Director of the CCPA in January 1994, I thought we needed to build our individual membership base, which was very small at the time. The board of directors, which then included one Ed Finn, reacted positively to my proposal that the CCPA launch a journal of…
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Ed Finn was a master of the English language, a man who lived by his principles, and a loving family man. He made a huge contribution to his birthplace of Newfoundland and Labrador, to the labour movement in Canada, and to the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives—the CCPA. Ed was…
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The first time I met Ed, he intimidated me a little bit which, to anyone who even remotely knew this incredibly kind and patient man, seems hilarious now. In my defence, I was in my 20s, in a meeting at the CCPA office that I did not yet realize was…
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The COVID-19 crisis has repeatedly demonstrated the profound inequities of our labour market and social safety net. The situation has been particularly acute for low wage, precarious workers, those with the fewest legal protections and the fewest resources to weather this storm. With 2020 drawing to a close, we compiled…
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With the recent release of the federal government’s fall economic statement, Canadians got their first official overview of the government’s fiscal response to the COVID-19 pandemic. Governments in Canada have implemented or announced $382.4-billion in fiscal measures, according to the federal government’s statement. Numbers of this magnitude are hard to…
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Five years after the negotiation of the Paris agreement, the federal government is finally starting to walk the talk on climate change. Canada’s updated climate action plan, released December 11, is the most serious piece of climate policy we’ve yet seen from this government. It comes alongside new measures announced…
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‘More explosive than any terrorist’s time bomb’ read a headline in the Ottawa Citizen on the release of the report of the Royal Commission on the Status of Women (RCSW) on September 28, 1972. Fifty years later, the recommendations of the Commission seem tame. Yet, in its day, the report…
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The federal government has promised a new climate plan before the end of the year and we expect it to be released any day now. The plan will build on the 2016 Pan-Canadian Framework on Clean Growth and Climate Change that has shaped the government’s climate agenda for the past…
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In Canada we vow to end violence against women every December, to remember the massacre of 14 young women studying engineering at the Université de Montréal’s École Polytechnique. It’s a mission that won’t succeed, however, until we speak plainly and in the active voice about “violence against women.” Call it “intimate…
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Ed Finn was a supporter and board member of the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives since its earliest days in the ‘80s. But in 1994, he became the editor of a publication intended to communicate with the CCPA’s 196 individual supporters and attract new ones (narrator’s voice: It worked brilliantly). …
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