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 […]
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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 […]
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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 […]
CNA: backgrounder on the social determinants of health
The Canadian Nurses Association has done a backgrounder on the social determinants of health for its members. The Association urges nurses to build understanding the social determinants into their assessments, and treatment and follow up plans; know what community resources are available to clients; if they work with disadvantaged communities, to help people with common […]
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The Real Bestsellers
As I do every weekend I read both the Toronto Star and Globe and Mail newspapers. An interesting article appeared in the Sunday Star in the ideas section- The bestsellers for real! The article detailed a new, more reliable way of tracking the bestselling books in the country. One book stood out for me that […]
Reforming Children’s Services
Demos, a leading progressive British think tank, has published an analysis of very ambitious plans to reform children’s services in the UK: The Leadership Imperative. Reforming Children’s’ Services From the Ground Up. It will be useful to those interested in the social determinants of health and the most effective provision of social services for two […]
Follow-up memo to the Standing Committee on Social Policy on Bill 36
On January 30 Wellesley presented a brief to the Standing Committee on Social Policy on Bill 36, the enacting legislation. We were also asked for some additional research on the impact of British-type split purchaser-provider funding models and sent a follow-up memo. You can read it here. *Bob Gardner, Director – Public Policy
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Recommendations for specific amendments to Bill 36 on LHINs
Rick Blickstead and I presented a brief to the Standing Committee on Social Policy of the Ontario Legislature January 30 on the LHINs (Local Health Integration Networks). We argued that the LHINs had significant potential to provide more integrated and community-driven health care planning and delivery. But this will only be possible if they: are […]
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New federal housing policy = good jobs, good investment, good homes
Earlier this week, CIBC World Markets one of Canada’s biggest bankers delivered an important assessment of the Canadian jobs market over the past decade. The CIBC verdict: While employment growth has been reasonably strong over the past decade, the changing nature of the economy means that the new jobs haven’t been very good. The report […]
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