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 1339 subscribers.
Scroll to the bottom of this newsletter to see some notes and a disclaimer.

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CUPE BC divisions launch provincial election web sites
February 2, 2005
"May 17 may seem like a long way off, but Canadian Union of Public Employees members in BC have their eyes firmly fixed on the date. CUPE BC and the Hospital Employees Union have launched election web sites to help oust Gordon Campbell's liberals. (...) The sites feature voter registration information, an inventory of the liberal government's broken promises, campaign tools, background on issues, and ways to get involved."

Raising the Roof's Toque Tuesday Campaign
February 8, 2005
"Hats off.... It's Toque Time!
Raising the Roof's Toque Tuesday Campaign is a national campaign that gives people from all walks of life the chance to raise funds, raise fun and raise awareness in the fight against homelessness in Canada. Warm your head and your heart! Buy your special Raising The Roof toque in exchange for a minimum $10 donation to support programs and initiatives which help make a difference in the lives of thousands of men, women and children who are homeless or at risk of homelessness. Then, proudly wear your toque on Toque Tuesday - February 8th - to show your commitment to preventing and eliminating homelessness."
- get your toque at The Home Depot near you, or go to the website to order a toque online or to find the campaign coordinator in your region.
Source:
Raising the Roof
"Raising the Roof is the only national charity in Canada dedicated to finding long-term solutions to homelessness"

Shared Learnings on Homelessness
"Practical tools, resources and information sharing for frontline staff, managers and volunteers working to address the problem of homelessness in their communities. Use this site to find out about initiatives in cities, towns and rural areas across Canada. Link to others working within the homelessness sector, share your experiences and learn from theirs."

Online Resources and Links on Homelessness - links to resources related to homelessness prevention practices, factsheets and From Street to Stability, a compilation of findings on the paths to homelessness and its prevention and a library of print and Internet resources.

Housing Again - "a site dedicated to putting affordable housing back on the public agenda"

4. Canada’s Commitment to Equality:
A Gender analysis of the last ten federal budgets
(Canadian Feminist Alliance for International Action) - February 3, 2005

Ten Years of Federal Budgets:
Double Whammy for Women
Press Release
"OTTAWA – February 3, 2005 – Federal fiscal choices have done little to improve most women's economic security over the last 10 years, says the first ever analysis of federal budgets on Canadian women. The ground-breaking report, released today in Ottawa by the Canadian Feminist Alliance for International Action, tracks a decade of federal budgets. Written by award-winning economist Armine Yalnizyan, it measures the federal government's performance against the explicit commitments it made to gender equality in Beijing in 1995. It shows that massive spending cuts unduly hurt women in the deficit era and women's interests have been largely ignored since Ottawa began posting surpluses."

Canada’s Commitment to Equality: A Gender analysis of the last ten federal budgets
By Armine Yalnizyan
Complete report (PDF file - 609K, 117 pages)
Executive Summary

Source:
Canadian Feminist Alliance for International Action (FAFIA)
"FAFIA is an alliance of over 40 Canadian women's equality-seeking non-governmental organizations formed in February 1999 at a national consultation of women's organizations held in Ottawa. "

Year of the Veteran - 2005
January 27
"The Government of Canada has declared 2005 the Year of the Veteran. Throughout the year, Canadians will celebrate, honour, remember, and teach our youth about the contributions and sacrifice of our veterans. Every year is an important year to honour veterans and their service and 2005 is especially meaningful because it marks the 60th anniversary of the end of the Second World War; and the Government of Canada is developing a new Veterans Charter that will better support releasing Canadian Forces members and their families who are re-entering civilian life."
Source:
Veterans Affairs Canada

Canadian Family Finances: Debt Load Up,
Taxes Down, Incomes Flat, Savings Nil
News Release
January 27, 2005
"Ottawa—Meet the Johnson family. Both parents work outside the home to support two young children. For at least four years, in real terms, their household income has stagnated. Only because they have enjoyed income tax reductions in recent years have they not suffered an income loss. Although they are buying their home and one spouse has a pension plan, they have no money set aside for emergencies. They have many expenses and are indebted to the tune of 120% of their total disposable income. They can sustain this high debt load because of record low interest rates, but will be in trouble when interest rates rise. According to the Vanier Institute of the Family's report, The Current State of Canadian Family Finances, the Johnsons are typical of the average Canadian household, of which two thirds are families. Incomes are flat. Fewer Canadian families are saving and on average have more debt than their annual net incomes. . The rate of bankruptcies is at a near-record high, and the rate for the Atlantic Provinces has increased five- to 10-fold since 1980."

The Current State of Canadian Family Finances - 2004
HTML version
PDF version (507K, 29 pages)

Healthcare Renewal in Canada: Accelerating Change
January 2005
"This first report [of the Health Council of Canada] covers activity across Canada launched or being planned from the 2003 Accord. Priority areas are the health of Canadians, primary health care, drugs, home care, health human resources, and infrastructure to support renewal."
-click through the report using the links in the left margin of the page

Be sure to check out the References section of the report (the link below) for a bibliography of documents and a large collection of links to online resources:
References (PDF file- 67K, 27 pages)
- list of reports, articles, websites and information about selected health care initiatives used to generate Health Care Renewal in Canada.

Source:
Health Council of Canada
"Created in December 2003, as a result of the 2003 First Ministers' Health Accord, and following the recommendations of the Romanow and Kirby Reports, the Health Council of Canada is mandated to monitor and report on the progress of health care renewal in Canada."

February 1, 2005
Health Indicators
This new issue of Health Indicators, an Internet-based data publication, features updated health region level data and maps based on the most recent vital and cancer statistics available. Updates include: life expectancy, infant mortality, low-birth weight, and mortality rates by selected causes. Even though Canada has one of the highest life expectancies in the world, today's release of Health Indicators demonstrates that life expectancy varies widely between health regions. People living in Northern and remote regions of Canada, many of whom are Aboriginal, have life expectancies more in line with developing countries than with other Canadians.
Complete report:
Health Indicators vol. 2005, no. 1
- includes profiles and data tables on : Health status - Non-medical determinants of health - Health system performance - Community and health system characteristics

January 27, 2005
Payroll employment, earnings and hours, November 2004 (preliminary)
The average weekly earnings of payroll employees rose slightly in November (+$3.06), bringing year-over-year gains to 1.9%. Industries showing the largest increases from November 2003 were mining and oil and gas extraction (+6.6%), and health care and social assistance (+4.4%).

January 26, 2005
Study: Are good jobs disappearing in Canada?, 1981 to 2004
Hourly wages have been very stable over the last two decades, with little change in the proportion of workers holding either well-paid jobs or low-paid jobs. However, newly hired employees have seen their wages drop substantially relative to those of other workers, according to a new study.
Other releases

January 26, 2005
Study: Earnings of temporary versus permanent employees, 2003
Temporary work accounted for almost one-fifth of overall growth in paid employment between 1997 and 2003 despite a period of economic growth and favourable employment conditions. However, a new study shows that temporary jobs are generally less well paid than permanent ones. In addition, the gap between the two groups varied with the type of temporary employment.

POVERTY DISPATCH Digest (Institute for Research on Poverty - U. of Wisconsin)
February 3, 2005

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.

February 3, 2005

Today's subjects include:
Medicaid Costs // No Child Left Behind Conference // Medicaid - Indiana, Missouri, Pennsylvania, Massachusetts // Medicaid Benefits for Legal Immigrants - Colorado // Health Care Plan Cuts - Tennessee // Low-Income Health Insurance - Minnesota // Food Stamps - Indiana // Earned Income Tax Credit - San Francisco, Wisconsin // Tax Refund Loans - Wisconsin // Minimum Wage - Wisconsin, Montana // Low-Income Housing - New York City // Homelessness - Washington, Massachusetts // Problems for Welfare Agency - Milwaukee // Teen Birth Rate - Milwaukee

NOTE: "Poverty Dispatch is now being compiled and distributed to e-mail subscribers twice a week -- Mondays and Thursdays. We plan to maintain a broad coverage of poverty-related issues as reported all week in U.S. newspapers and other news sources." (Institute for Research on Poverty)

Most of the weekly digests below offer 100 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:
(You'll find 100+ links in each of the digests below)

State of the Union: Key Policy Points
February 3, 2005
- President Tries to Have It Both Ways: Using Misleading Numbers About A Social Security Crisis While Advancing A Plan That Would Make Matters Worse
- New Details Indicate Administration Social Security Plan Would Entail Several Trillion Dollars in Borrowing
- Details From the President on Private Accounts Not Likely To Answer Key Questions
- The Administration’s Misleading $600 Billion Estimate of the Cost of Waiting To Act on Social Security
- Overview of Other Social Security, Tax Cut, and Deficit Issues in the State of the Union
Source:
Center on Budget and Policy Priorities

World Economic Forum
"The World Economic Forum is an independent international organization committed to improving the state of the world. The Forum provides a collaborative framework for the world's leaders to address global issues, engaging particularly its corporate members in global citizenship. (...) Funded by the membership fees of the 1,000 foremost global companies, the Forum works in partnership with academia, government representatives, international organizations, labour leaders, media, non-governmental organizations and religious leaders."
Annual Meeting 2005:
"Taking Responsibility for Tough Choices"
Davos, Switzerland, 26-30 January 2005

World Social Forum
"The World Social Forum is an open meeting place where groups and movements of civil society opposed to neo-liberalism and a world dominated by capital or by any form of imperialism, but engaged in building a planetary society centred on the human person, come together to pursue their thinking, to debate ideas democratically, for formulate proposals, share their experiences freely and network for effective action"

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

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Last Monday, January 31, I sent out an e-mail message to newsletter subscribers to explain why I hadn't sent out an issue the day before, and why some subscribers hadn't received any newsletter in several weeks.

The latter problem was due to a technical issue - a new Terms of Use rule imposed by my service provider in recent weeks setting strict limits on the number of copies of any e-mail message that anyone can send at any one time. Unfortunately, I only found out last week that most folks on my list hadn't received any newsletter for two weeks; I never received any error messages when I'd sent out those newsletters. That problem has been overcome - I've gone back to the Canadian Union of Public Employees (CUPE), the same kind folks who allowed me to distribute my newsletter and administer my mailing list using their facilitities for over a year --- I think I'll stick with them for awhile longer....

As for last week's newsletter, I hadn't worked on my website in over a week, and thus had no content for the newsletter, because of a death in the immediate family, as I noted in my January 31 message to subscribers.
I can't possibly write individual replies to everyone who sent me expressions of sympathy, but I do want to say thank you so much to each of you for your kind words of support. It was my dear mother who passed away last Thursday from a brief bout of pneumonia and after ten years in a wheelchair in a long-term care facility following a massive stroke in 1995. She's in a far better place now - no more pain, no more wheelchair, no more confusion and no more frustration with her circumstances. After her long and challenging journey, she's finally found peace. And that will help me, her loving son and only child, to heal myself...
[Note: this isn't intended to get more folks to send me more words of support, because I think I'm going to be fine --- instead, just give your Mom a hug for me, wouldja...]