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Litinerance au Canada: Sa croissance, les reponses politiques, et le plaidoyer

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Le 1er février, j’ai fait une conférence sur l’itinérance adressée aux étudiants du séminaire d’études supérieures de monsieur Steve Pomeroy à la School of Public Policy and Administration à l’Université Carleton. Le thème de ma présentation a été l’émergence de l’itinérance au Canada en tant que domaine politique publique pressant dans les années 1980. J’ai parlé la croissance de l’itinérance, […]

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Homelessness in Canada: Its Growth, Policy Responses, and Advocacy

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On February 1, I gave a guest presentation on homelessness to a graduate seminar class on housing policy taught by Steve Pomeroy at Carleton University’s School of Public Policy and Administration. The focus of my presentation was the emergence of homelessness in Canada as a pressing public policy area in the 1980s. I discussed the growth of homelessness, policy responses […]

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Dix choses à savoir sur les défis associés avec mettre fin à l’itinérance au Canada

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Le 18 novembre, j’ai fait une présentation sur les défis en ce qui concerne « mettre fin à l’itinérance » au Canada au 7 Cities Leadership Summit à Edmonton. Ma présentation, illustrée de diapositives, peut être téléchargée ici. Voici dix choses à savoir en tant que défis concernant « mettre fin à l’itinérance » au Canada. En 2008, Calgary est devenue […]

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Ten Things to Know About the Challenges of Ending Homelessness in Canada

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On November 18, I gave a presentation on “ending homelessness” at the 7 Cities Leadership Summit in Edmonton. My PowerPoint slides can be downloaded here. Here are ten things to know about “ending homelessness” in Canada: 1. In 2008, Calgary became the first Canadian municipality to publicly commit to “ending homelessness.” More than a dozen other Canadian municipalities have since […]

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Ten Things to Know About Homelessness in Canada

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This afternoon I gave a presentation at Raising the Roof’s Child & Family Homelessness Stakeholder Summit in Toronto. My slide deck can be downloaded here. To accompany the presentation, I’ve prepared the following list of “Ten Things to Know About Homelessness in Canada.” 1.Efforts to enumerate persons experiencing homeless have generally been spotty, but it is reasonable to assert that […]

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Dix Choses à Savoir sur l’Itinérance au Canada

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Cet après-midi, j’ai fait une présentation au Child & Family Homelessness Stakeholder Summit, organisé par Chez Toit, à Toronto. Ma presentation, illustrée de diapositives, peut être téléchargée ici. Pour accompagner la présentation, je vous ai préparé la liste suivante: « Dix choses à savoir sur l’itinérance au Canada. » 1. Les tentatives de dénombrer les personnes en situation d’itinérance ont […]

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More on the At Home/Chez Soi Study

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Earlier this month, I blogged about the At Home/Chez Soi homelessness study prior to the release of its final report. Today I’ve blogged again, this time about the contents of the final report itself.  This second blog post, being rather long and nuanced, was written for the Homeless Hub.  It can be accessed at this link.

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10 Things to Know About the At Home/Chez Soi Study

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On Tuesday, April 8, results of the Mental Health Commission of Canada‘s At Home/Chez Soi homelessness study will be released at an Ottawa press conference. The study followed more than 2,000 participants in five Canadian cities.  All were homeless when the study began. Half of them received the Housing First intervention, and half of them did not.  Data was collected from […]

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The Ford Nation, Perils of Populism and Public Choice

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Watching Rob Ford in the recent weeks reminds me of what John Ralston Saul once wrote of Benito Mussolini and his contemporary reincarnation in Silvio Berlusconi: “He was the nascent modern Heroic leader. Mussolini combined the interests of corporatism with public relations and sport, while replacing public debate and citizen participation with false populism and the illusion of direct democracy.” […]

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Homelessness Policy

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This afternoon, I gave a presentation on public policy responding to homelessness in Canada, with a focus on the past decade.  I gave the presentation at this year’s annual conference of the Ontario Non-Profit Housing Association. Points I made in the presentation include the following: -Once inflation is accounted for, the current annual value of federal funding for homelessness programming […]

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The dubious case for casinos

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I got way off my usual research agenda this morning for a business panel on CBC radio. The topic was the economics of casinos, the result of the City of Surrey voting down a new casino proposal. I have often disparagingly compared stock markets to casinos, but in fact I knew relatively little about the actual business of casinos. I […]

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The Universal Student Transit Pass

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I have an opinion piece out on the City of Ottawa’s universal, student transit pass–also known as “the U-Pass.” Points raised in the op-ed include the following: -U-Pass programs exist for roughly 30 universities and colleges across Canada. -For a U-Pass program to be introduced, students typically must vote in favour of the program in student referenda. -When there is a […]

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The Privatization of Social Housing

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Last weekend, I spoke on a panel at the Annual Conference of the Ontario Non-Profit Housing Association.  The panel was inspired in large part by the recent debate in Toronto over Mayor Rob Ford’s attempt to sell social housing units to private buyers.  The panel, entitled “To Privatize or Not to Privatize? That is the question,” included myself, Vince Brescia […]

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How Rob Ford Can Fix Social Housing

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I have an opinion piece in today’s Toronto Star regarding Toronto’s Mayor, Rob Ford, and the Toronto Community Housing Corporation (TCHC). Mr. Ford would like to see a considerable number of units from TCHC’s existing stock sold off.  For background on the issue, please my blog post of April 13, which can be found here. In today’s piece, I argue that it is more […]

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Are We an Urban Nation?

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Why yes of course we are, but perhaps not quite so urban as we think.  It is often asserted that most Canadians now live in big cities or their suburbs. But this is a bit misleading, leaving the impression that almost all of us live in Greater Toronto, Vancouver and Montreal. Statscan has decided to end the old rural/urban dichotomy […]

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Housing on the knife’s edge

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At long last, the federal government has decided to seriously address the housing price bubble that has increasingly concerned Canadians. On the heels of multiple warnings from the Bank of Canada that Canadians have taken on too much household debt for comfort (we hold the dubious distinction of having the worst consumer debt to financial assets ratio among 20 OECD […]

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Communities in Crisis

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The full reports of the CLC Communities in Crisis project are now available  (links are at the end of each community summary.) Canada lost almost 500,000 full-time jobs between the Fall of 2008 and the Summer of 2009, with a particularly devastating impact upon industrial communities where a wave of layoffs and plant closures added to the toll of the longer […]

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Vancouver bids to be world’s greenest city

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Last week, the City of Vancouver’s task force, the Greenest City Action Team, issued a plan for the city with short and longer-term goals and policy advice on achieving them. The report covers more than climate change, a good thing as it is important to identify win-wins that lead to improvement on other environmental, health and social objectives as we […]

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EI Benefits by City

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UPDATE (September 29): Quoted by The Globe and Mail, National Post, Toronto Star, and Canadian Press . . . A recent inquiry for a NOW Magazine article has inspired me to use the July Employment Insurance (EI) figures, released this morning, to examine how this program serves Canadian cities. However, I begin with a national overview of the numbers and […]

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Mike Harris Blames the Victim … Again

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Lightning should surely have struck the offices of the Fraser Institute last week when it released a study co-authored by Mike Harris, the former Ontario Premier, on the supposedly declining state of the City of Toronto.   The study itself (“Is Toronto in Decline?”, available at http://www.fraserinstitute.org/researchandpublications/publications/5696.aspx)  was nothing to write home about.  It consisted solely of rehashed results from […]

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Toronto Fiscal Panel: The View From Inside

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I recently took a crash course in the fascinating, challenging economics of municipal finance. I was one of the 6 members of the independent panel that was formed to review the City of Toronto’s fiscal situation. The panel issued its report last month. Most progressive economists have long recognized the growing economic importance of cities, and the urgent need for […]

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Climate Keynesianism

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With recession on everyone’s lips south of the border, how much longer can Canada hold out before we begin to feel the nasty effects in the Great White North? I am guessing that the Tories want to go to the polls now because they know the economy is slipping and they do not want to have to wear the downturn […]

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Is Big City Real Estate Overpriced?

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The current issue of Maclean’s features a typically provocative cover on “Real Estate 2008.” The “Buy? Sell? Panic?” headline caught my attention because I am currently selling a place in Ottawa and moving to Toronto. The story inside Maclean’s is far more soothing, suggesting that there is no risk of a real estate crash in major Canadian cities because: sub-prime […]

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Vancouver Dreaming

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I was asked to submit a dream statement for a conference this weekend called Dream Vancouver. Here is my contribution: My Vancouver dream is like those ones when you are there in your house and are doing stuff – but it is not really your house here on planet Earth. My Vancouver dream is a lucid dream; I am not […]

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