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 1567 subscribers.
Scroll to the bottom of this newsletter to see some notes and a disclaimer.

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1. PovNet website updated - February 2006
2. BC Solutions Budget 2006: Budgeting for Women's Equality (Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives - BC Office) - February 16
3. Emerging Patterns in the Labour Market: A Reversal from the 1990s (Statistics Canada) - February 16
4. Statistics Canada releases a study on Canada's Beer Trade - just in time for the Olympics - February 15
5. What's new from the Childcare Resource and Research Unit (University of Toronto) - February 17

6. Poverty Dispatch Digest : U.S. media coverage of social issues and programs --- February 16
7. State of the Union Address - U.S. (The White House) - January 31, 2006
8. What's New from the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities (U.S.):
--- 2006 Earned Income Credit and Child Tax Credit Outreach Kit - February 2006
--- The President's Health Insurance Budget Proposals: Cost and Coverage - February 2006

PovNet site updated (February 2006)
* A Path Out of Poverty - report by the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives (CCPA) and Simon Fraser University indicates that BC must invest in education programs for low-income adults with upgrading needs if it wants achieve its goal of making the province the best-educated and most literate jurisdiction in North America.
* Social Justice Awards, from the Centre for Social Justice in Toronto, to recognize those who have devoted their time and energy to the pursuit of social justice.
* The public services gap in Ontario - new study from the Ontario Alternative Budget project of the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives.
* Cold Comfort - latest issue of Perception, a digest of the Canadian Council of Social Development with news and views on poverty and income security, employment, health, pensions, social services, etc.
* Alberta settles $100M case over financial assistance payments
* Time to Up Welfare Payments in BC
* Across the Country:
--- Welfare drops minimum wage to $2 an hour - Nova Scotia
--- Payday Loan Industry in Court - Manitoba
--- Homeless woman plans Iqaluit protest - Nunavut
--- Help with High Bills Coalition Urges - Nova Scotia
--- Students from poor families "shamed" by school fees - Ontario
--- Old Cell Phones Feed the Hungry - National
* Canadian Aboriginal Children 78th on the United Nations Human Development Index
* Internet Connects a Homeless Nation
* Canadian Internet Policy and Public Interest Clinic
* Profile of Homelessness in Nanaimo
* Teaching guide for issues related to homelessness available from the Toronto Disaster Relief Committee
* much more...

Source:
PovNet
"PovNet is for advocates, people on welfare, and community groups and individuals involved in anti-poverty work. It provides up-to-date information about welfare and housing laws and resources in British Columbia, Canada. PovNet links to current anti-poverty issues and also provides links to other anti-poverty organizations and resources in Canada and internationally."
- incl. links to : News - Issues - Advocacy - Find an Advocate - Regional - About us - Links

Links : large collection, organized under the following categories : Advocacy - Anti-poverty - Community Organizing/Activism - Disability - First Nations/Aboriginal - Government - Homelessness/Housing - Human Rights - Immigrants & Refugees - International - Seniors - Women - Workers' Rights - Youth

BC Solutions Budget 2006:
Budgeting for Women's Equality
February 16, 2006
NOTE: the BC Budget will be tabled on Tuesday, February 21

February 16, 2006
Study: Emerging patterns in the labour market: A reversal from the 1990s
Many labour market trends established in the 1990s have been reversed since 2000. Most of these recent trends intensified in the past year, according to a report released today in the Canadian Economic Observer. In particular, it was another banner year for the resource sector. These gains were reflected in stronger employment growth in rural areas and in large firms. In terms of supply, older workers continued to fill the bulk of new jobs. A new trend was full-time positions, which accounted for most job growth.

4. What's New from Statistics Canada:
--- Canada's Beer Trade: A Swing to Imported Brands - February 15

What's New from Statistics Canada:

February 15, 2006
Study: Canada's trade in beer, 2003
"(...) Beer is by far the most popular alcoholic beverage among Canadian consumers. However, beer drinkers are increasingly swinging more and more to imported brands to quench their thirst. With annual beer sales in Canada at nearly $8 billion in 2003, this growing trend has implications for Canada's domestic beer industry, which makes a significant contribution to the economy. Beer industry accounts for more than 200,000 jobs and directly adds more than $2 billion to gross domestic product. Nearly two-thirds of the value of all beer imported into Canada in 2003 was from three countries — Mexico, which accounted for 24%, the Netherlands (22%), and the United States (17%).

Complete report:

Canada’s Beer Trade:
A Swing to Imported Brands (PDF file - 151K, 18 pages)
February 15, 2006

[NOTE: I wasn't trying to make any particular connection between beer and social programs by including this link - and yes, there is a link, but that's a whole different newsletter. I just thought it interesting that StatCan would release a study on beer during the Olympics, a traditional two-week period of sitting in front of the tube - occasionally with a beer - watching athletes compete. Go, Canada! - Gilles]

Each week, the Childcare Resource and Research Unit disseminates its "e-mail news notifier", an e-mail message with a dozen or so links to new reports, studies and child care in the news (media articles) by the CRRU or another organization in the field of early childhood education and care (ECEC). What you see below is content from the most recent issue of the notifier.

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WHAT'S NEW
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>> BC Solutions Budget 2006: Budgeting for women's equality
Alternative Provincial Budget from the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives states that "BC can afford to fully implement a publicly-funded, non-profit early learning and child care program."

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CHILD CARE IN THE NEWS
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This message was forwarded through the Childcare Resource
and Research Unit e-mail news notifier. For information on the
CRRU e-mail notifier, including instructions for (un)subscribing,
see http://www.childcarecanada.org
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

Towards a national system of early learning and child care
Regularly updated
NOTE: this is a large (and growing) collection that includes government and non-governmental reports, press releases, news articles and other documents dealing with the new federal-provincial-territorial arrangements for early learning and child care in Canada.

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.

Here's the complete collection of U.S. media articles in this week's Poverty Dispatch Digest:
(click the link above to read all of these articles)

February 16, 2006
Today's subjects include: Child Support Enforcement // Foster Care // Early Suburbs and Poverty // Poverty and Heart Health // Poverty – Opinion // Child Care Costs – Minnesota // Working Poor – North Carolina // Working Poor – Seattle // School Dropouts – Indiana // Early Childhood Education – California // Homelessness - Western Wisconsin

February 13, 2006
Today's subjects include: Prostate Cancer and Poverty // Low Enrollment in Tutoring Programs // Child Support Enforcement and Hunting Licenses // Welfare Time Limits - New Jersey // Effect of Federal Budget on Social Services - Massachusetts // Child Poverty - Utah, New York // Antipoverty Program - Dakotas and Washington // Poverty Report - Alabama // Plight of the Underclass - California // Wealth Gap - North Carolina // Benefits of Preschool - California // Student Achievement Gap - Utah // Testing, Dropouts, and Achievement Gap - Washington and Massachusetts // State Health Care Proposal - Tennessee // Minimum Wage - Kentucky // Proposal to Reduce Taxes on the Poor - Alabama // Earned Income Tax Credit - Florida

Each of the weekly digests 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 Digest link above]

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 Digest link at the top of this section.
Recently-archived POVERTY DISPATCH weekly digests:

2006 Earned Income Credit and Child Tax Credit Outreach Kit
Make Tax Time Pay!
Links to 11 documents about the 2006 EITC, including:
- Facts About Tax Credits for Working Families
- Strategies for Promoting Tax Credits for Working Families
- Opportunities for Linking Workers to Free Tax Help and Asset Development
- Katrina Survivors and the Earned Income Credit and Child Tax Credit
- EIC Participation for Tax Year 2004 and 2003
- EIC and CTC Benefit Amounts
- State Earned Income Credits and Child and Dependent Care Benefits
- Why Pay When You Can Get Your Taxes Done for Free?

THE COST AND COVERAGE IMPACT OF THE
PRESIDENT'S HEALTH INSURANCE BUDGET PROPOSALS
by Jonathan Gruber, MIT
This new analysis by one of the nation's leading health economists finds that the Administration's proposals to expand tax breaks for Health Savings Accounts (HSAs) would cause a net increase in the number of uninsured Americans.

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:
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 mention Canadian Social Research Links when you do.

Cheers!
Gilles

E-MAIL:
gilseg@rogers.com