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...

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...

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...