Canadian Social Research Newsletter

Welcome to the weekly Canadian Social Research Newsletter, a listing of the new links added to the Canadian Social Research Links website in the past week.

The e-mail version of this week's issue of the newsletter is going out to 1362 subscribers.

Scroll to the bottom of this newsletter to see some notes and a disclaimer.

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Official International Reserves 2005
News Release
June 3, 2005
The Department of Finance announced today that Canada’s official international reserves decreased by an amount equivalent to US$567 million during May to US$35,034 million

Where Your Tax Dollar Goes
June 2005
- multimedia presentation illustrating how federal revenues were spent in the most recent fiscal year available (2003-04), as well as the main sources of government revenue.
Did *you* know that the federal government collected $186 Billion in taxes and revenue in 2003-2004?
- requires Flash player

Housing Reform in the 80's and 90s, the Feds and the Ontario government, all on one page:

"Federal:
..1984 to 1993 –almost $2 billion cut from spending
..1993 –all new housing spending cancelled
..1996 –transfer housing to provinces / territories

Ontario:
..1995 –all new housing spending cancelled
..1995 –welfare rate cuts
..1998 –housing downloaded to municipalities."
[p. 17 from the report below]

Lord government revises welfare rules
June 1, 2005
CBC News
"FREDERICTON – The New Brunswick government is relaxing a controversial policy that discouraged people on welfare from living together to share expenses. The change will allow two single parents to live under the same roof, without having their benefits reduced."

Exemptions to Economic Unit Policy Prove Widespread Discrimination Against the Poor (Word file - 486K, 1 page)
News Release
June 1, 2005
"The Fredericton Anti-Poverty Organization says that the proposed exemptions to the province’s Economic Unit Policy that were leaked yesterday to the press only prove the widespread discrimination which prevents the poorest of the poor from living together to share their meagre resources."

Most provincial and territorial welfare allowances comprise a flat-rate amount for household support (food, clothing household and personal needs) and an amount for shelter that's equal to the actual cost of shelter paid by the welfare household, but only up to the maximum monthly shelter rate stipulated in the welfare regulations of each jurisdiction. Both amounts are paid in the same cheque. Where two welfare households share a dwelling in one of these jurisdictions, an equal share of the shelter cost is attributed to each household, and the shelter portion of both welfare cheques is adjusted so that it covers half of the actual shelter cost, up to the maximum shelter allowance in each jurisdiction. In New Brunswick and Québec, the welfare allowance is a single global amount deemed to be for the household's support and shelter needs, so they need different rules for situations where households on welfare share the rent on an apartment or a house. [If you wish to pursue this any further, you can find the provincial and territorial welfare policies concerning households on welfare sharing accommodation via the Key Welfare Links page of this site - you'll find this info in welfare policy manuals and regulations...]

Canadian Economic Accounts Quarterly Review
First Quarter 2005 (PDF file - 285K, 49 pages)
"This publication presents an overview of the economic developments reported in Canada's national accounts for the most recent quarter. The overview covers several broad areas:1) Gross domestic product (GDP) by income and by expenditure, 2) GDP by industry, 3) Balance of international payments, 4) Financial flow accounts 5) Labour productivity and other related variables, 6) International investment position and 7) National balance sheet."

Welfare rolls down, homelessness up
New report blames provincial changes to eligibility rules for Vancouver's worsening situation
By Rod Mickleburgh
May 26, 2005
VANCOUVER -- Provincial government changes to welfare rules have doubled the severity of Vancouver's dire and growing homeless problem, according to the city's policy co-ordinator for the homeless. Jill Davidson said new requirements for receiving welfare the Liberals brought in are too onerous and bureaucratic for many of those eligible to receive social assistance. 'We think we could probably almost halve the number of people on the street if you just got people on welfare who were eligible for welfare,' said Ms. Davidson, the author of a 100-page report and action plan to eliminate homelessness in Vancouver within 10 years."
Source:
The Globe and Mail

Report lays out new strategy for homeless - Vancouver
By Mike Howell-Staff writer
May 23
"Increase mental health and addiction services, build more social housing and make changes to the province's employment and assistance program. Those are the key priorities to reducing homelessness as outlined in a lengthy city report, Homeless Action Plan, going before city council May 25 at a public meeting. Written by senior housing planner Jill Davidson, who has worked on the plan for more than a year, the report comes at a time when the streets are filling up with homeless people. The city's conservative estimates are that 600 people sleep on the streets in the winter months and up to 1,200 in the summer. That's double the number from three years ago."
Source:
The Vancouver Courier

More Housing Centre Council reports - links to dozens more reports on housing and homelessness in Vancouver produced in the past few years by the Housing Centre.

Preliminary Results of [Vancouver] Homeless Count conducted on March 15, 2005 (PDF file - 14K, 2 pages)
Source:
Regional Homelessness
[Greater Vancouver Regional District]
"The Greater Vancouver Regional District (GVRD) is a partnership of 21 municipalities and one electoral area that make up the metropolitan area of Greater Vancouver. GVRD's role in the Lower Mainland is to deliver essential utility services like drinking water, sewage treatment, recycling and garbage disposal that are most economical and effective to provide on a regional basis, and to protect and enhance the quality of life in our region by managing and planning growth and development, as well as protecting air quality and green spaces."

Current developments in Early Childhood Education and Care: Provinces and territories
Regularly updated
"This resource is a collection of useful online readings about current early childhood education and care policy and program delivery issues in each province and territory. Within each jurisdiction, information is organized into three sections: news articles, online documents and useful websites."

POVERTY DISPATCH Digest
Institute for Research on Poverty - U. of Wisconsin
This digest offers dozens of new links each week to full-text articles in the U.S. media (mostly daily newspapers) on poverty, poverty, welfare reform, child welfare, education, health, hunger, Medicare and Medicaid, and much more...
The Institute for Research on Poverty (IRP) at the University of Wisconsin-Madison offers a free e-mail service that consists of an e-mail message sent to subscribers each Monday and Thursday, containing a dozen or so links to articles dealing with the areas mentioned above. The weekly Canadian Social Research Links Poverty Dispatch Digest is a compilation, available online, of the two dispatch e-mails for that week --- with the kind permission of IRP.

June 2, 2005
Compiled by the Institute for Research on Poverty, University of Wisconsin-Madison, and distributed Mondays and Thursdays

Today's subjects include: Medicaid // Preschool Expulsions - Opinion // Teen Unemployment // Affordable Housing - Opinion // Education Statistics Report // Wal-Mart and State Social Services // Poverty and Economic Development - Indiana // Health Insurance Coverage - California // Wal-Mart and State Social Services - Wisconsin, Minnesota // Health Care Costs for Uninsured - Washington // Child Support Guidelines - Minnesota, Georgia // School Privatization Effort - Pennsylvania // Full-Day Kindergarten - Arizona // Minimum Wage - Wisconsin, Vermont, North Carolina // Living Wage Law - Los Angeles // Homelessness - Minnesota

Each of the weekly digests below offers dozens of links or more to media articles that are time-sensitive.
The older the link, the more likely it is to either be dead or have moved to an archive - and some archives [but not all] are pay-as-you-go.
[For the current week's digest, click on the POVERTY DISPATCH link above]

The Poverty Dispatch weekly digest is a good tool for monitoring what's happening in the U.S.; it's a guide to best practices and lessons learned in America.

Subscribe to the Poverty Dispatch!
Send an e-mail message to John Wolf < jwolf@ssc.wisc.edu > to receive a plain text message twice a week with one to two dozen links to media articles with a focus on poverty, welfare reform, child welfare, health, Medicaid from across the U.S.
And it's free...

For the current week's digest, click on the POVERTY DISPATCH link at the top of this section.
Recently-archived POVERTY DISPATCH weekly digests:

The Sustainable Cities Programme
[part of the United Nations Human Settlements Programme ]
"The past several decades have seen a growing interest in the notion of various aspects of sustainable development, whether they be in terms of agriculture, transportation planning, or creating large-scale housing programs. Located within the United Nations Human Settlement Programme, the Sustainable Cities Programme (SCP) is a facility dedicated to building capacities in urban environmental planning and management. Currently the SCP operates in 20 cities around the globe, including cities in China, Chile, Egypt, and Kenya. Visitors to the site will want to read about how the programme operates in different parts of the world, and then perhaps look at their publications, which include several fact sheets and source books on topic such as urban air quality management and environmental planning. Finally, the site also provides material on their various global meetings, such as the upcoming SCP meeting in Havana during June 2005."
[Review by The Scout Report, Copyright Internet Scout Project 1994-2005]

Report 2005: A dangerous new agenda
Press Release
May 25, 2005
"(London) Governments are betraying their promise of a world order based on human rights and are pursuing a dangerous new agenda, said Amnesty International today as it launched its annual assessment of global human rights. Speaking at the launch of the Amnesty International Report 2005, the organization's Secretary General Irene Khan said that governments had failed to show principled leadership and must be held to account."

Amnesty International Report 2005
The state of the world's human rights
"During 2004, the human rights of ordinary men, women and children were disregarded and grossly abused in every corner of the globe.
The Amnesty International Report 2005, covering 149 countries, is a detailed picture of these abuses."

Disclaimer/Privacy Statement

Both Canadian Social Research Links (the site) and this Canadian Social Research Newsletter belong solely to me, Gilles Séguin.

I am solely accountable for the choice of links presented therein and for the occasional editorial comment - it's my time, my home computer, my experience, my biases, my Rogers Internet account and my web hosting service.

I administer the mailing list and distribute the weekly newsletter using software on the web server of the Canadian Union of Public Employees (CUPE).
Thanks, CUPE!

If you wish to subscribe to the e-mail version of newsletter, go to the Canadian Social Research Newsletter Online Subscription page and submit your coordinates:
http://lists.cupe.ca/mailman/listinfo/csrl-news

You can unsubscribe by going to the same page or by sending me an e-mail message [ gilseg@rogers.com ]

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The e-mail version of this newsletter is available only in plain text (no graphics, no hyperlinks, no fancy bolding or italics, etc.) to avoid security problems with government departments, universities and other networks with firewalls. The text-only version is also friendlier for people using older or lower-end technology.

Privacy Policy:
The Canadian Social Research Newsletter mailing list is not used for any purpose except to distribute each weekly issue.
I promise not share any information on this list, nor to send you any junk mail.

Links presented in the Canadian Social Research Newsletter point to different views about social policy and social programs.
There are some that I don't agree with, so don't get on my case, eh...

To access earlier online HTML issues of the Canadian Social Research Newsletter, go to the Newsletter page:
http://www.canadiansocialresearch.net/news.htm

Please feel free to distribute this newsletter as widely as you wish, but please remember to include a link back to the home page of Canadian Social Research Links.

Gilles

E-MAIL:
gilseg@rogers.com