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 1374 subscribers.
Scroll to the bottom of this newsletter to see some notes and a disclaimer.

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March 18, 2005
Study: Recent changes in the labour market, 1991 to 2004
Labour demand since 2000 has been in many ways the reverse of the 1990s, shifting from high-tech to housing and resources, according to a new assessment of changes in Canada's labour market.

Protecting Canada's Vulnerable Workers (PDF file - 105K, 3 pages)
News Release
March 18, 2005
"A growing proportion of Canadian workers are finding themselves without the basic protections other workers take for granted. They are vulnerable workers – vulnerable, in that they experience a combination of low pay, lack of benefits, insecure working conditions, and lack of opportunity to improve their situation."

This news release introduces the two following research reports in CPRN’s Vulnerable Workers Research Series:

Non-standard Work and Economic Vulnerability
by Richard Chaykowski
March 2005
"Non-standard Work and Economic Vulnerability, by Richard Chaykowski of Queen's University's School of Policy Studies, examines the extent and depth of low pay, the kinds of employment relationships experienced by vulnerable workers, and the extent to which workers are covered by employment benefits."
Complete report (PDF file - 1.8MB, 80 pages)
Summary (PDF file - 75K, 4 pages)

Towards Enhancing the Employment Conditions of Vulnerable Workers: A Public Policy Perspective
by Guylaine Vallée
March 2005
"Towards Enhancing the Employment Conditions of Vulnerable Workers: A Public Policy Perspective, by Guylaine Vallée of the Université de Montréal's School of Industrial Relations, explores some key vehicles for extending vulnerable workers' access to minimum employment standards and traditional benefits."
Complete report (PDF file - 1.7MB, 70 pages)
Summary (PDF file - 67K, 4 pages)

Sometimes a job is not enough
Mar. 18, 2005
By Carol Goar
"Every time I write about poverty, I get a volley of messages pointing out that the best social program is a job. (...) A strong work ethic does help pull families out of poverty, as my disgruntled correspondents contend. But in today's cut-rate job market, it's not enough"
Source:
The Toronto Star

March 17, 2005
National balance sheet accounts - Fourth quarter, 2004
"National net worth reached $4.3 trillion by the end of the fourth quarter, or $132,500 per capita. (...)The national balance sheet accounts are statements of the balance sheets of all of the various sectors of the economy. (...) National net worth grew 6.3% in 2004. National wealth, the sum of non-financial assets, grew by 5.7%. This, combined with a decrease in net foreign debt, resulted in an improvement from the 5.3% growth of 2003 in national net worth.

* more details about the BC complaint to the Ombudsman re: system problems with the Ministry of Human Resources
* link to Louise Arbour's speech about human rights and poverty issues in Canada (English and French)
* responses to the 2005 federal budgets
* link to Canadian Bar Assoc. court challenge to constitutional right to legal aid
* SPARC BC's report on delivering poverty law services in BC
* updates from New Brunswick, Alberta
* Ontario's Hands Off our Baby Bonus campaign details
* links to information and web sites focussing on poverty issues in the upcoming BC election in May
* supports and services for persons with disabilities in Canada
* Women Elders in Action position paper on situation of women elders in Canada dependent on public pensions
And our resource section highlights the MultilingoLegal web site which provides online access to legal information and community resources in a number of languages.
Go to the PovNet Home Page

- Federal Government Events - Includes events organized and/or sponsored by the Government of Canada throughout the year, from International Customs Day (January 26) to the National Day of Remembrance and Action on Violence Against Women (December 6 ) - includes website URLs

- Non-governmental Organization Events - from Alzheimer Awareness Month (January) to International Children's Day of Broadcasting (second Sunday of December)

Social Assistance Caseload Reaches 14-Year Low - Saskatchewan
News Release
"The social assistance caseload has dropped to its lowest level in 14 years. The caseload number in January 2005 was 27,669. This is the lowest amount* for the month of January since 1991, and is down considerably from a peak of 41,000 in 1994."
Source:
Department of Community Resources

NOTE: I can't find any welfare statistics on the Department's website except for the following snapshots:
Frequently-asked questions - click on "Social Assistance" for July 2003 caseload info
[Note that a case can include more than one recipient. Case=Household]
Annual Report 2003-04 Dept. of Community Resources (PDF file - 1MB, 33 pages - incl. a graph showing average caseload/beneficiary data by year from 1994 to 2004)
Number of People on Welfare, March 1995 to March 2005 (PDF file - 133K, 1 page) --- from the National Council of Welfare (for all provinces and territories - these are the latest official public national welfare dependency stats in Canada)

*A special nit-picking comment concerning Amount/Number :
(definitely of interest only to English language sticklers...)
Note the excerpt from the above news release:
"The caseload number in January 2005 was 27,669. This is the lowest amount for the month..."
===>Amount words relate to quantities of things that are measured in bulk; number words relate to things that can be counted.
You can't have an 'amount' of cases or people any more than you can have a 'number' of snow or money.
Source:
Common Errors in English

This news release is quite possibly written by the same type of person who, at the end of a voicemail or e-mail message, invites me to get back in touch with him or her by saying something like:
"If you wish further information please contact myself" or some such thing. 'Myself' is a reflexive pronoun that can only be used if the word I comes before it in the same sentence.
[Now don't get me going --- I know myself too well...]

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WHATS NEW
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>> Measuring child benefits: Measuring child poverty
by Mendelson, Michael
Report from the Caledon Institute addresses two critical questions in social policy: what is child poverty and how much is an adequate child benefit?

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CHILD CARE IN THE NEWS
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>> Yes, ex-minister, you're hired [AU]
Australian, 17 Mar 05
Larry Anthony, the Australian government minister who presided over the rapid expansion of private child care providers, has joined the board of ABC Learning Centres, the industry's biggest operator.

>> Two-thirds rely on family for child care [GB]
Guardian, 14 Mar 05
Two-thirds of British parents still rely on family and friends to look after their children, the children's minister, Margaret Hodge, admitted today. While 40% would prefer to put their child in nursery or daycare, many are concerned about the quality of child care staff and services, said the minister.

>> Parents face cultural walls [CA]
Toronto Star, 14 Mar 05
Kenise Murphy Kilbride and Mehrunissa Ali, early childhood education professors at Ryerson University have released Forging New Ties, Planting New Roots, a 32-page guidebook to help immigrant parents understand and gain access to health care, emergency services, child care and child safety, education, as well as some background on traditions and cultural heritage in Canada.

>> Child care chief retires with £10m windfall [GB]
This Is London, 14 Mar 05
The founder of British day nurseries group Nord Anglia, which has just issued a surprise profits warning, has made nearly £10m from recent share sales.

>> New ABC child care centre probed [AU]
The Age, 13 Mar 05
A third Melbourne ABC Learning child care centre in less than 14 months is being investigated by the Department of Human Services regarding the supervision of a child.

>> Child care costs exclude women from workforce [IE]
Irish Times, 10 Mar 05
Child care costs in Ireland are the highest in Europe and are keeping large numbers of women out of the workforce, according to a major study.

>> Rural child care advocates buoyed [CA-MB]
Farmers' Independent Weekly, 10 Mar 05
Manitoba has said that it's committed to an action plan for expanding child care services, which includes expanding the number of spaces across the province. Advocates say a closer look at rural child care is needed, as are policies that will work for rural child care programs.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
This message was forwarded through the Childcare Resource and Research Unit e-mail news notifier.
For information on the CRRU e-mail notifier, including subscription instructions , see http://www.childcarecanada.org
The Childcare Resource and Research Unit (University of Toronto, Canada)
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

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.

March 17, 2005

Today's subjects include: Medicaid Cuts - Opinion and Editorial // No Child Left Behind - Opinion // Minimum Wage - Commentary // Child Poverty - Connecticut, Virginia // Welfare Reform - Arkansas // Child Support Enforcement Fees - Missouri // Social Service Computer Problems - Colorado // Social Services Budget - Texas // Medicaid - New York, Mississippi, Missouri, Florida // Health Care Plan - Tennessee // Special Education Program - Ohio // Low-Income Workers - Arkansas // Faith-Based Initiatives Office - Minnesota, North Dakota // Minimum Wage - New Hampshire, Vermont, New Jersey, Arkansas // Subsidized Day Care Cuts - New York City

NOTE: "Poverty Dispatch is 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:

Double standards on human rights 'undermining UN'
March 14 2005
The United Nations human rights commission, the UN's principal forum for promoting human rights, opens its annual six-week session today amid unprecedented criticism of its competence and credibility. For years human rights groups have complained of growing politicisation and double standards that have stifled debate and allowed countries responsible for egregious abuses to escape condemnation. (...) Kenneth Roth, head of New York-based Human Rights Watch, reckons that about half the commission's 53 members are there "not to promote human rights but to undermine them".
Source:
Financial Times - U.S.

Commission on Human Rights - 61st session (Geneva )
14 March-22 April 2005
"The United Nations Commission on Human Rights is the world’s foremost human rights forum. Established in 1946 to weave the international legal fabric that protects our fundamental rights and freedoms, its brief has expanded over time to allow it to respond to the whole range of human rights problems. The Commission continues to set standards to govern the conduct of States, but it also acts as a forum where countries large and small, non-governmental groups and human rights defenders from around the world can voice their concerns."
Source:
Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights

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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.

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There are some that I don't agree with, so don't get on my case, eh...

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Gilles

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gilseg@rogers.com