"Aging Out" : A recipe for despair
One of the leading causes of homelessness among youth in Canada is the so called "Aging out" of foster care.Aging out is a term that reeks of whitewashing ,lets call…
Kev
Canada’s largest mental health institutions: Prisons
Decades ago recognizing that the institutionalisation of the mentally ill was cruel,unjust and counter productive, we started closing these facilities and embarked on a policy of community care.Well it appears…
Poverty on the rise in Harper’s Canada
New data released by StatsCan shows the national rate for low income earners rose in 2009, for the second straight year, up from 9.2 to 9.6 %. To put that…
Your days of undermining God and His government are fast closing
I came across that line in a particularly nasty hate filled tirade by some zealot calling himself Gideon in the comment thread of one of Montreal Simon's entertaining posts. He…
Who are these people? Why are they here?
“When we drive around farm country we sometime see people working in fields. People who may not look like us. They are very anonymous. We don’t really know much about…
Dirty F@#*ing Hippies Were Right!
@lesliegoodson brought this fantastic video to my attention last night on Twitter,and I thought I should share it here"Peace has somehow become, a pejorative, peace is no pejorative,peace is essential…
Time for council to bring the Ford cabal to heel
At Monday’s executive committee meeting,Ford and his not so merry band of toadies voted to turn down the provinces offer of two public health nurses at no cost to the…
A Housing Benefit for Ontario: An Affordable Plan To Help Alleviate Hunger and Homelessness
Anyone who has read this blog knows that the issues of poverty,hunger and homelessness are of particular interest to me, so when I come across a plan to help alleviate…
Of Rioters,Police And Social Media
I've had all day to digest the events in Vancouver last night,my first knee jerk reaction was how dare those idiots riot over a hockey game when they should have…
Looking Back At The Roots Of The Labour Movement In Canada For Inspiration
Whenever my energy flags and the struggle to build a better society seems lost, I like to go back in time and revisit the birth of the labour movement in…
Who the %$&# needs unions anyway? We all do that’s who
There is much animosity toward unions out there which isn't surprising given the relentless assault waged against them by populist politicians and their mouthpieces in the corporate media, I even…
A Clarion Call: What Min Said
I read a lot of blogs each day, much preferring them to the corporate media. They run the gamut from pedestrian to brilliant, with everything in between. Today I had…
A Progressive’s Lament: Debating the obvious with the obtuse
I have noticed a marked increase in the amount of traffic from right wingers that I have been getting on Twitter lately. I won't call them trolls because to me…
Mincome: A bold experiment that was too successful for it’s own good
In the mid seventies the governments of Canada and Manitoba entered into an agreement to set up a program to study a Guaranteed Annual Income(GAI) which they dubbed Mincome. The…
NeoLiberalism and the inevitable pushback
What we are seeing in places like the Mid East,North Africa, Europe and even the States is the inevitable push back against NeoLiberalism . I say inevitable because NeoLiberal policies…
Starving the Beast
Anyone who thinks that Harper's deficit is a result of incompetence is sorely mistaken. The deficit is a deliberate creation designed to foster the conditions for selling austerity to the…
Ontario’s Slave Labour Market
Back in early march I had a rather disheartening conversation with the 27year old son of a close friend. This young man has never known stable long term employment in…
So How’s That Neo-Liberalism Thing Workin’ Out For Ya ?
For the past 30 years or so in Canada we have seen a steady succession of neo-liberal governments, each telling Canadians that we have to tighten our belts while cutting…
In Defense Of Bob Rae’s NDP Government
The Bob Rae government has been almost universally panned as a disaster and is being held up as an example of the dangers of electing a NDP government. The problem…
How to Eliminate Homelessness And Save Money In The Process
It is very difficult to get accurate statistics regarding the number of homeless in this country, they vary greatly depending on the source, so I have split the difference for…