Over the weekend, I read “In the dark,” The Globe and Mail’s in-depth feature on Canada’s astonishing data deficit. To paraphrase Maytree Chairman Alan Broadbent, it seems data is poised to make a comeback. And it’s about time.
As some of you might know, Maytree has been calling for a national resource that houses key social development data. We need both transparency and accountability through data to pursue and implement rights-based solutions to poverty. Without the numbers, it’s hard to see the scale of the problems we are trying to solve, and just as hard to measure progress.
This is why Maytree continues to update and publish Welfare in Canada and Social Assistance Summaries, key reports on social assistance programs that should rightly live within a publicly funded national organization.
To contribute to what we hope will be a renewed national conversation on data, we’d like to share some of the work we’ve done in the past on the importance of collecting data: first, Alan Broadbent on mending Canada’s data deficit, and second, a piece on how we tried, together with researchers from the Mowat Centre, to make a map of the hardest places to live in Canada — but couldn’t find the data.
From the Caledon archive we have Michael Mendelson on establishing a Canadian Council on Inclusion and Wellbeing, a modest proposal to reinstate institutional infrastructure to monitor the progress being made on poverty in Canada.
Please also take a moment to meet Garima Talwar Kapoor, our new Director of Policy and Research. By way of introduction, she writes this month’s Maytree opinion, offering her personal take on the intersection of human rights and social policy.
You’ll also find below our new blog series on rights-based participation, as well as our latest submissions to provincial and federal consultations.
Elizabeth McIsaac
President, Maytree
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It’s time: Social policy needs to consider economic and social rights
Garima Talwar Kapoor was just 8 years old when a health scare led her to consider the impact of public policy on shaping people’s lives. As Maytree’s new Director of Policy and Research, she reflects on why the next era of social policy development must put social and economic rights at the heart of policy. Read the opinion
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Exploring the role of people with lived experience of poverty in finding solutions to poverty
While the idea of consultation is becoming more and more popular, participants with lived experience of poverty are often unable to influence policy-making at every level for a variety of structural reasons. Over the course of this year, we’ll be speaking to lived experts and community allies about changing this situation. In this post, Maytree’s Effie Vlachoyannacos provides an introduction to the series. Read the article
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Meet the Maytree Policy School class of 2019
This year we welcome 22 social policy leaders working on everything from food security and education to reconciliation and housing. Read their bios
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Submissions to provincial and federal consultations
It’s been a busy period for consultations for both the federal and provincial governments, with Maytree preparing submissions to two consultations:
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Extending the disability tax credit to low-income Canadians
Maytree’s submission to the pre-budget consultation for the 2019 federal budget offers suggestions on expanding access to the disability tax credit for low-income Canadians. Read the submission
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Improving OHIP+ for lower- and modest-income Ontarians
The Ontario government’s proposed changes to OHIP+ could be burdensome for working families with low incomes. Maytree recommends that the government preserve OHIP+ as the first and sole payer for prescription medicines for families with incomes below a certain threshold. Read the submission
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Five Good Ideas about running effective meetings
Working together is a good and necessary thing, but life’s too short for boring, unproductive meetings. In this session of Five Good Ideas, Certified Professional Facilitator Dr. Rebecca Sutherns offered five practical ideas for running purposeful and engaging meetings. Watch the session
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February 21: Five Good Ideas about making lived experience part of your non-profit’s DNA
If you are part of a non-profit that serves people and/or communities, chances are you have been asked about how well you know the needs of the people you support. In this session of Five Good Ideas, representatives from the Parkdale Activity-Recreation Centre (PARC) will share how they create space at all levels for the lived experience of their community members. Learn more and register |
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Maytree Scholarship for Munk School Fellowship in Global Journalism
Are you a subject-matter specialist who wants a smarter public discussion of your field? The Fellowship in Global Journalism is designed for experts who want to shape news coverage of their areas of interest. Every year, Maytree funds one Fellow who has an interest in reporting on Canadian poverty issues from a human rights perspective. Learn more, participate in a free online information session, and apply
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March 19-20: Tamarack Institute Collective Impact workshop
The Tamarack Institute is hosting a brand new two-day workshop in Toronto designed to give Collective Impact professionals, consultants, and facilitators the tools they need to train others in their community initiatives. Learn more and register
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