November 22 is marked as National Housing Day across Canada – commemorating the day in 1998 when then-Toronto Mayor Mel Lastman and the mayors of Canada’s biggest cities adopted a Declaration from the Toronto Disaster Relief Committee to declare homelessness a national disaster. The mayors, invoking their power to declare a state of emergency, called […]
Archives for 2013
Poverty in Toronto: Moving Toward Elimination
Almost a quarter of Torontonians live in poverty, and an even larger share of recent immigrants and youth. Poverty creates real problems at the municipal level. David Hulchanski’s Three Cities Within Toronto report showed that poverty is creating an unequal and divided city. Ontario has had a Poverty Reduction Strategy in place since 2008 and […]
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Moving Beyond Ford, Investing In A Healthier Toronto
It is time to move beyond the controversy surrounding Mayor Ford and return the focus to policy. Next week, the 2014 budget will be launched. It will be the Ford administration’s final budget of this term. Our new report Investing In A Healthy Toronto compares Mayor Ford’s capital budgets over the last three years with […]
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Food Banks are a Symptom of Poverty. Let’s Fight the Disease
833,098 Canadians used food banks in March of 2013. Half of food bank users reported social assistance as their primary source of income, a quarter were single parent families, 11 percent were First Nations, Métis or Inuit, and 11 percent were recent immigrants. These Canadians come from a broad range of backgrounds, but they all […]
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Toronto Exec okays plan to negotiate affordable homes in waterfront condos
Toronto City Council’s Executive Committee has adopted a proposal to negotiate an inclusionary zoning deal with a private developer that could lead to 71 affordable rental homes in a waterfront condominium project. The only dissenting voice on Executive was Mayor Rob Ford, who was quoted in a media report as saying “you don’t use your waterfront […]
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Shadow Economies: Infographic
Shadow Economies Infographic
Accessible Recreation For Better Health For All
As we start a debate about scrapping recreation fees there are lots of things to consider. Getting rid of the fees would cost the City $30 million per year, but the question that we need to ask is, what are we willing to spend for a better, more participatory, and healthier city? Alternately, what does […]
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Toronto Wait List Sets New Record, As FCM Calls For Housing Action
Toronto’s affordable housing wait list hit an all-time high in September – 90,157 households, or 165,977 women, men and children. The record-breaking wait list is just one of a growing number of indicators of deep and persistent housing insecurity in Toronto and across Canada. The Federation of Canadian Municipalities launched a new national campaign on […]
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The Children’s Fitness Tax Credit: Nice Idea, Shame about the Inequities
In 2007, the federal government implemented the Children’s Fitness Tax Credit (CFTC) with the goal of promoting physical fitness and reducing obesity among children. Parents with children aged up to 16 can claim a non-refundable income tax credit up to a maximum of $500 for each child if they register them in an eligible fitness […]
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Letter from Wellesley Institute Co-Chairs
To: Friends of the Wellesley Re: Moving forward with an exciting future: The transition plan Dear Friends, As you are aware from previous correspondence, our CEO has accepted a new challenge and we thank him for his contribution over the past eleven years. Rick will continue to work with the WI until the end of […]