Canada’s housing ministers held their first national meeting in almost three years on Wednesday evening in Ottawa, at the invitation of federal housing minister Monte Solberg. The provincial and territorial ministers left the meeting disappointed. Not only did they fail to get any specific commitments from the federal minister regarding the expiry of the three […]
Blog
Federal, provincial, territorial housing ministers meet today
Canada’s federal, provincial and territorial housing ministers meet today for the first time since September of 2005. After that meeting, the ministers issued a joint communique promising that they were accelerating work on developing a comprehensive Canadian Housing Framework to address the needs of the four million Canadians who are officially classified as being in […]
Continue ReadingFederal, provincial, territorial housing ministers meet today
UPDATE: Housing ministers' meeting back to Wednesday
A senior official in the office of federal housing minister Monte Solberg has now confirmed that the federal, provincial and territorial housing ministers are meeting on Wednesday in Ottawa (not Thursday, as previously reported based on information that came from an Ontario official).
Continue ReadingUPDATE: Housing ministers' meeting back to Wednesday
UPDATE: Housing ministers set to meet Thursday
New information from a senior Ontario housing official has confirmed that federal, provincial and territorial housing ministers will be meeting this week in Ottawa. However, there is new information to correct the news we reported on the weekend: The meeting will take place on Thursday, April 3, and it will last for 90 minutes (not […]
Continue ReadingUPDATE: Housing ministers set to meet Thursday
Breaking news: FPT housing ministers finally set to meet!
Federal, provincial and territorial housing ministers are set to meet on Wednesday for the first time in more than two and one-half years, according to several reports. Provincial and territorial housing ministers met in early February in Vancouver, and had invited federal housing minister Monte Solberg to join them. Minister Solberg decided to boycott that […]
Continue ReadingBreaking news: FPT housing ministers finally set to meet!
Housing rights bill gets first reading in Ontario Legislature
Bill 47, the Right to Housing Act, was tabled and received first reading in the Ontario Legislature on March 27, 2008. This historic legislation, introduced by Cheri DiNovo, the MPP for Parkdale – High Park, would enshrine in provincial law the international right to adequate housing. In mid-March, as the United Nation's Human Rights Council […]
Continue ReadingHousing rights bill gets first reading in Ontario Legislature
WI backgrounder: 15 times more money for roads than for homes?
Ontario’s 2008 Budget is long on language, but short where it counts the most: The dollars fall short of the words. Budgets are about choices and, fundamentally, budgets are about dollars. The real choices are revealed in the spending and revenue columns. When it comes to housing, Finance Minister Dwight Duncan has offered the millions […]
Continue ReadingWI backgrounder: 15 times more money for roads than for homes?
Five questions for Ontario Finance Minister Dwight Duncan
As Ontario Finance Minister Dwight Duncan rises in the Ontario Legislature today (Tuesday, March 25, 2008) to deliver the 2008/09 provincial Budget, here are five key questions from the Wellesley Institute on housing and homelessness issues: ONE: Will Minister Duncan commit the funds to close Ontario’s billion-dollar housing deficit? In 2001, the Ontario government signed […]
Continue ReadingFive questions for Ontario Finance Minister Dwight Duncan
Canada's home ownership markets plummet…
Home ownership in Canada is at its most unaffordable level since the “housing recession” of 1990. That’s the grim news today from RBC Economics and its latest quarterly housing affordability report. Outside of Alberta, housing affordability has deteriorated in every market and for every type of housing. Most low, moderate and many middle-income Canadians live […]
Health inequalities gap widening in the UK
Health inequalities (the differences in health between the rich and the poor) are growing wider in the United Kingdom. That’s the sobering news in the latest status report from the UK Department of Health titled “Tackling Health Inequalities” (released on March 13, 2008).