The Alternative Federal Budget, released today by the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives (CCPA), provides a different vision from the austerity doctrine that is gripping governments in Ottawa and elsewhere. The Alternative Federal Budget goes beyond rejecting an austerity agenda as a response to Canada’s slow climb out of recession. It presents a comprehensive program […]
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Equity Dialogues: Equity in Decision-Making and Service Delivery
Equity and population health are among the fundamental principles enshrined in Ontario’s Excellent Care for All Act, and equity has become broadly accepted as a key health system/provider goal. But how can we drive implementation? How do we ensure that equity is embedded within system/organizational planning processes, performance management, deliverables and incentives. Further, how do we […]
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Erosion of housing, homelessness spending continues, as latest federal spending estimates are released
The erosion of federal housing and homelessness investments is continuing, according to the 2012/13 Estimates, the official inventory from the Government of Canada of detailed spending by every federal department and agency. With inflation running at 4.87 percent over the past two years, the federal government would need to spend about $3.3 billion in the […]
Investing in the health of Women
International Women’s Day (IWD) has three different themes this year: the international theme is “Connecting Girls and Inspiring Futures”; the UN’s is “Empower Rural Women — End Hunger and Poverty” and the European Parliament‘s is: “Equal pay for work of equal value.” Here at Wellesley Institute we think a lot about the issues raised by […]
Good news: Council rejects mass sell-off of TCHC homes, adopts plan for special commission
Toronto City Council voted on Tuesday to reject the proposal to sell off 740 of Toronto Community Housing Corporation’s (TCHC) affordable homes in 675 buildings and has instead adopted the plan, put forward by the Wellesley Institute, to create a special commission to help Toronto’s social housing agency navigate to a financially secure future. This […]
New Research on the Equity Potential of Community-Grounded Primary Care
Brilliant health economist, Bob Evans, occasionally spoke of ‘zombies’: policy and health funding prescriptions that were constantly refuted by evidence but kept coming back. One such zombie is the idea that equity and effectiveness are incompatible. New research from ICES comparing primary care models, however, demonstrates that Community Health Centres, whose fundamental goal is improving health […]
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Planning And Building Inclusive And Healthy Neighbourhoods
On Saturday, March 3, 2012 the Wellesley Institute’s Director of Housing and Innovation, Michael Shapcott, gave a keynote presentation to urban planning students at a conference at Ryerson University on housing, human rights, health and equality.
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Youth, social policy, and health: making the connections
Currently, when a Crown ward turns 21, they are no longer eligible for provincial assistance through the Children’s Aid Society. Caseworkers are faced with few options other than referring their young clients to shelters and the social assistance system for continued support. A new report released yesterday by the Ontario Provincial Advocate for Youth and Children […]
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Update on Social Assistance Review
In the few weeks since the Commission for the Review of Social Assistance in Ontario released its discussion paper, we at the Wellesley Institute have been busy analyzing and preparing our response. We’re working with our partners to provide advice to the Commission about promising suggestions, and where they need to rethink their approach to […]
Systems Thinking
Systems thinking is a broad framework towards understanding and managing complex systems from a holistic perspective, drawing on various approaches and methodologies. It holds that problems are emergent properties of a system and they cannot be understood and addressed by simply reducing the system to its constituent components, but by focusing on their interconnections and […]