Access Alliance celebrates their 20 year anniversary with a photo exhibit: Many Faces, One People: view the world through our lens.
Wellesley Institute and UforChange give an emotional performance at Migration and the City conference
There was colour, music and tears at the joint presentation of UforChange, a youth arts project for immigrant and newcomer youth, which shared preliminary findings at the Migration and the Global City conference yesterday at Ryerson University. A graduate youth from East Africa spoke about how the project had changed her life, exposing her to the world […]
Freezing welfare: The wrong decision at the wrong time
Yesterday, in advance of the Ontario 2012 Budget, Premier McGuinty announced that social assistance rates will be frozen for a year and that the scheduled $200 increase in the Ontario Child Benefit will be reduced to $100, with the remaining $100 being delayed until July 2014. These choices, which the Premier claims are not aimed […]
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Actions to address the impact of cuts to refugee health benefits
As we have previously blogged, the federal government recently cut health benefits for many refugees. In The Real Cost of Cutting Refugee Health Benefits, the Wellesley Institute argued that these cuts would have an unfair and inequitable impact on some of the most vulnerable people in Canada. It is totally predictable that the costs for […]
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Rethinking Refugee Rights on Refugee Rights Day
April 4th is the anniversary of a landmark Supreme Court of Canada decision in 1985: Singh v. Minister of Employment and Immigration. The Singh decision recognized that the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms protected the fundamental rights of refugees. International migrants make up approximately 3% of the world population (191 million in 2005). The […]
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Driving Health on the Gardiner
There has been heated discussion about the future of the stretch of the Gardiner Expressway east of Jarvis Street. The debate has focused on commute times, urban development, economic impacts and environmental concerns – all of which are important to consider. But missing from the discussion is health and health equity. How a highway overpass […]
WI hosts APA pre-conference
The Wellesley Institute hosted the 117th American Psychological Association pre-conference workshop on August 5th. The day was action-packed, informative and fun, combining historical tours of Black Creek/Jane-Finch and St James Town communities with presentations
Gaps in provincial healthcare: not just a matter of fees but a matter of coverage
Today’s article in the Globe and Mail series on Canadian healthcare highlights how a gap in fees among provinces has lead to reduced access to care for Quebec patients in other provinces. While certainly this speaks to a lack of portability of Medicare, a perhaps greater concern is the population in Canada of individuals with […]
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An action plan for fundamental change: building opportunities for young people in care
Almost 17,000 of Ontario’s children are in the care of Children’s Aid Societies: one out of every 182 children. Only 44 percent of youth in care graduate from high school. In Ontario, Aboriginal people make up two percent of the population, but 22 percent of Crown Wards. Whichever way you look at it, Ontario’s child […]
Health Equity Impact Assessment as a Policy Tool
The Institut national de santé publique du Québec (INSPQ) and the National Collaborating Centre for Healthy Public Policy publish a Public Policy and Health Newsletter. As with previous issues, the current newsletter provides a great deal of information on health impact assessment, including the just completed international conference on HIA. It also links to a […]
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