By Josh Brandon
Tuesday morning, I received a phone call from a Make Poverty History Manitoba member. He lives on a disability benefit that provides him only $180 per month for food and other basic necessities. He wanted to know if he can expect any change soon. I told him we would see in the Speech from the Throne that afternoon what, if anything, the Province has planned for its long-promised poverty reduction strategy.
By Jim Silver
It is curious that the Pallister government would have hired consulting firm KPMG to provide advice on how to manage the Province’s affairs. KPMG’s actions across the world and in Canada—some illegal; many promoting the interests of the exceptionally rich at the expense of the rest of us—suggest that we should be very wary of any advice they might offer.
By Andrew Clark
Income security programs in Manitoba and Canada are not keeping pace with the growing problem of poverty. Change is needed to ensure low income and vulnerable people and families do not become entrapped in a lifetime of poverty.
Canada’s Income Assistance (IA) and Manitoba’s Employment and Income Assistance (EIA) programs provide support to 115,000 Manitobans. These programs were started in the 1960s for people whose incomes were insufficient to meet their basic needs. During the 1990s, IA and EIA benefits were cut and have largely been frozen ever since. Make Poverty History Manitoba (MPHM) estimates that benefit levels for all categories of recipients are below the poverty line – as much as 44% and 33% for single individuals and people with disabilities respectively. It is no surprise that over 60,000 Manitobans accessed foodbanks in 2016.
First published by CBC Manitoba online Saturday Oct. 29
By Jesse Hajer and Zac Saltis
Governments have often turned to investments in higher education to generate hope and opportunity for young people and others seeking better jobs and social mobility. They may have a more receptive audience now more than ever, with younger generations facing increasingly precarious work prospects. Fulltime jobs are being displaced by the ‘gig economy’ and average real wage growth remains low. Young men in Canada aged 25-34, for example, effectively saw zero wage growth from 1981 to 2011, and since the 2007/08 financial crisis youth unemployment – which is consistently greater than the average – has climbed even higher, while more youth, discouraged by their prospects, abandon the labour force.
By Lynne Fernandez
In a new Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives MB report on Manitoba’s public-sector pensions Pensions in Manitoba: What’s Working, What’s Not, author Hugh Mackenzie dispels many myths about public and private sector pensions. He anchors his analysis in the context of Canada’s retirement income policy and its three main players: Old Age Security (OAS) and the Guaranteed Income Supplement (GIS); the Canadian Pension Plan (CPP); and, workplace based pension plans.
By Marina Puzyreva and John Loxley,
As the Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls (MMIWG) continues, a new study looks at the problems of reactive government policy on MMIWG in Manitoba.
The complex impacts on family members of MMIWG are examined in Cost of Doing Nothing: Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls. This study is a preliminary estimate of the cost of doing nothing to prevent many Indigenous women and girls from going missing and being murdered. It gives an insight into the emotional journeys of the families left behind. It also assesses the current financial cost of dealing with this tragedy based on calculations drawn from the literature and estimates of the number of MMIWG in Manitoba.
By Ellen Smirl
Government-issued identification (ID) is essential to gain access to a wide range of government entitlements, commercial services and financial systems. Lack of ID on the other hand, represents a critical barrier that prevents low-income Manitobans from accessing these services and benefits, and ultimately results in further marginalization and deepening poverty. A new study, Access to Identification for Low-Income Manitobans researches what can be done to address these challenges.
By Mark Hudson
First published in the Winnipeg Free Press Oct. 5, 2017
A draft “Climate and Green Plan Town Hall Toolkit” circulated within the Manitoba government proposes a flat $25 carbon tax. While this is only a discussion document, and not yet policy, it’s a worrying sign of what the much-trumpeted “Made-in-Manitoba” climate policy might look like: a piece of largely-pointless window-dressing.
Amy Goodman, Democracy Now! Stories of Democracy Resistance and Hope presentation at Knox United Church, Friday Sept 29th.
See story in the Manitoban here.
Photos by Leif Norman
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