Planning for next year’s Community-Campus Partnerships for Health (CCPH) 10th anniversary conference, April 11-14, 2007 in Toronto is underway! We are delighted to be a partner in the CCPH conference, the first held in Canada. For those of you not familiar with CCPH, the organization is a leading champion in the U.S. for promoting health […]
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Bringing it home (Day 4 of WUFIII)
Day four (Thursday) of the World Urban Forum in Vancouver was the day to bring it all home ” literally. I joined Jean Swanson, a long-time housing and anti-poverty activist in the Downtown Eastside of Vancouver, for a community tour. The Downtown Eastside is one of those many impoverished areas in Canada that Canadian Prime […]
World Urban Forum (Vancouver) – day three
The contradictions are becoming much more dramatic on day three of the World Urban Forum III in Vancouver. The forum, sponsored by UN Habitat – the United Nations’ Centre for Housing and Human Settlements – has drawn thousands of delegates from government and non-governmental organizations to Canada’s west coast for an intense week of housing […]
World Urban Forum (Vancouver) – day two
It’s day two at World Urban Forum III in Vancouver. As the Wellesley Institute’s representative, I’m meeting colleagues working on housing, health and other urban issues from around the world. Some of the stories are sobering, some are inspiring. WUFIII is hosted by UN Habitat, the housing and human settlements agency of the United Nations. […]
Powerful energy at WUFIII
There was a powerful energy on day one (June 19) of World Urban Forum III. Joining with literally thousands of people from around the world is exciting, but the energy gets kicked up several notches when lots of delegates are on the front lines in some critical housing struggles. Our world is rapidly urbanizing. In […]
Canada fails on international stage
Canada has been under strong scrutiny in recent days as the United Nations looks at how well the federal government is meeting its international obligations. The verdict: Canada is failing to meet the basic standards in international law, and is especially failing women, Aboriginal people and the poor. The international attention will grow even stronger […]
Bill C-13
The federal finance committee is holding public hearings on Bill C-13, which is the legislation that implements much of the recent federal budget. Politically, the decision is pretty much of a foregone conclusion ” it is unlikely that the opposition parties will defeat the government at the moment. But there is considerable room around the […]
Fed budget delivers housing dollars
Wellesley update: Federal budget 2006 and housing Federal Finance Minister James Flaherty delivered the first budget of the Conservative minority government on May 2, 2006. This note examines the housing elements of the 2006 federal budget. Housing is one of the social determinants of health, and a key priority in the work of Wellesley Central […]
LA ruling bars homeless sweeps as TO gets set to count
Toronto will launch its first-ever homeless count and street needs assessment on April 19, just days after a Ninth Circuit Appeals Court ruling in California has barred Los Angeles from sweeping homeless people off its streets. Here in TO, city officials are obsessed with the idea of trying to do the impossible: they want to […]
Continue ReadingLA ruling bars homeless sweeps as TO gets set to count
Safer, healthier housing for Toronto
Extreme heat kills and smog kills. Toronto’s Medical Officer of Health has reported that, in an average year, 120 Torontonians die prematurely from heat, and another 822 die prematurely from smog (based on survey of annual death statistics from 1954 to 2000). Low-income people, the elderly, children and those with poor health are at particular […]