Wellesley Institute works in research and policy to improve health and health equity in the GTA through action on the social determinants of health.
December 10th is marked annually around the world as Human Rights Day. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which grew out of the terrible devastation of the Second World War, was adopted by the United Nations in 1948 and is widely viewed as the start of the modern era of human rights. Canadian law professor […]
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 […]
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 […]
Continue ReadingToronto Exec okays plan to negotiate affordable homes in waterfront condos
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 […]
Continue ReadingToronto Wait List Sets New Record, As FCM Calls For Housing Action
Toronto’s affordable housing wait list has grown to a staggering 90,060 households as of the end of August, according to Toronto Housing Connections (which maintains the list). Those households include a total of 165,723 women, men and children – an increase of 4% in the past year. If the Toronto affordable housing wait list was […]
Continue ReadingToronto Housing Wait List Passes 90,000 Households, 165,723 People
Friday, August 9 is recognized globally as International Day of the World’s Indigenous Peoples. United Nation’s Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon has issued a special message stating: “We highlight the importance of honouring treaties, agreements and other constructive arrangements between States, their citizens and indigenous peoples. Such consensual arrangements enable better understanding of their view and […]
Continue ReadingHonour International Day For Indigenous Peoples By Honouring Treaties
Toronto’s homeless population continues to grow, according to the interim findings of the city’s Street Needs Assessment 2013. Toronto reports 5,219 people who were homeless in 2013, up slightly from the 5,169 in 2009 and up 5% from the 4,969 people reported homeless in 2006. In percentage terms, the biggest increase in homelessness is in […]
Continue ReadingToronto’s Homeless Population Continues To Grow: Latest City Count
The Premiers of Canada’s provinces have made a strong commitment to negotiating a comprehensive, long-term national housing plan with the federal government. The new commitment came on the final day of the Council of the Federation meeting in Niagara-on-the-Lake on July 26. The millions of Canadians living in more than 1.5 million households that are […]
Continue ReadingPremiers make strong, new commitment to housing for all Canadians
The City of Toronto and Toronto Community Housing have launched a new campaign designed to re-engage the federal and provincial governments in financial support of social housing. ‘Close the housing gap’ builds on the work of City Council’s special commission on TCHC housing chaired by Councillor Ana Bailao. The new initiative was launched on the eve […]
Continue ReadingToronto to provincial and federal governments: Time to close housing funding gap
Eight senior business leaders visited a series of community-based social enterprises in London, Ontario, as part of the national roll-out of the Prince’s Seeing is Believing (PSiB) initiative. PSiB was developed by HRH The Prince of Wales as a practical platform to engage senior business leaders in vital community issues. It is being developed in […]
Continue ReadingBusiness meets community in London PSiB social enterprise tour
We wish to acknowledge this land on which the Wellesley Institute operates. For thousands of years it has been the traditional land of the Huron-Wendat, the Seneca, and the Mississaugas of the Credit. Today, this meeting place is still the home to many Indigenous people from across Turtle Island and we are grateful to have the opportunity to work on this land.
Revised by the Ceremonial Committee at the University of Toronto Office of Indigenous Initiatives in April 2021.