The disability income system is an agglomeration of disparate programs that were designed for distinct purposes. That reality would not actually be a bad thing if at least all the pieces worked well together. A new Basic Income for persons with disabilities would enable the reform of both the...

Almost all poverty measures commonly used in Canada work by setting a dollar amount – a poverty line – below which a household is said to be in poverty, above which a household is not considered poor. But when we measure poverty only according to income, we may incorrectly assess whether or not...

The Policy Research Initiative of the federal government organized an extremely interesting and well-attended conference on “Asset-Based Social Policies” on December 8-9, 2003. There is quite a buzz around this broad theme in Canadian social policy circles these days, and some community-level...

Ideally, a proactive purposeful policy framework or national housing strategy will seek to minimize both market and administrative failure. In thinking about how to frame and shape a national housing strategy, we might start with the overall housing system and separately examine how well – or not...

This short statement proposes an agenda for reconstructing much of our social policy over the next decade. Some of these initiatives build on ongoing reforms − most notably those regarding children and parents. The proposals for adults are more radical and far-reaching, calling for deconstruction...