By Molly McCracken
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V4n-Hv3_QXk?feature=player_detailpage&w=640&h=360]
In Winnipeg’s inner city, and especially in West Broadway and Spence neighbourhoods, older homes converted to rooming houses are an important type of housing for many people living on low incomes. However, rooming houses are fast disappearing due to an uncoordinated policy and regulatory framework and market pressures. In addition, there are many day-to-day problems associated with rooming houses related to challenges of poverty and aging housing stock. Research finds that these interrelated issues should be dealt with together. Saving rooming houses should be a priority; this type of housing is viable when well-maintained and connected with social supports.
Winnipeg’s mayoral race is now officially underway. Any serious contenders are going to have to convince a very skeptical public that they can turn around what really has been a winter of discontent with City services. Unfortunately, problems that have taken years to accumulate are unlikely to be addressed overnight.
By Molly McCracken, director, CCPA-MB
Youth For Christ is an evangelical Christian organization whose “Centre for Youth Excellence” received public funding based on a business plan that promised to meet the needs of local Aboriginal youth. The public funding for, and presence of this building on a key corner, continues to anger many in the inner city. This article uses documents obtained through an Access to Information request to the federal government to look back on the process that granted public funds and resources to this organization and the situation today.
By Gabriel Bako
While the labour landscape has changed dramatically in Canada in the last 58 years, the legal framework has not. The labour relations framework that we use today in Canada was implemented in 1944 with PC-1003, and the Rand Formula in 1946. The models were based on the Wagner Act of 1935 that was implemented in the United States which gave important legal rights to organized workers. PC-1003 gives legal rights to unions to collectively bargain, represent, and organize workers and the Rand Formula gives the provisions for automatic dues check-offs.
By Lynne Fernandez, Shauna MacKinnon and Sara Swartz
For one week in early April, Sara Swartz (Universitas Programme of the KIP International School), Shauna MacKinnon (Manitoba Research Alliance [MRA] and University of Winnipeg [UW]) and Lynne Fernandez (MRA and CCPA MB) visited Medellin, Colombia to take part in the seventh World Urban Forum (WUF7). Last Spring, KIP, UW, UM, the Manitoba government, MRA, CCPA MB and other Winnipeg community-based organizations signed a Memorandum of Collaboration and have since began working on an online journal highlighting “innovative practices of inclusive urban development and poverty reduction.”
Thanks to everyone who came out to our supporter week open house on Thursday. The open house at the Social Enterprise Centre had some some great conversation as well as a taste of some wood fired pizza, made onsite in Gretel’s hand-crafted mobile oven. You can still download the video of the inspiring discussion between Lynne Fernandez and Jim Stanford on Economics for Everyone. Jim’s take away message for young activists fighting austerity and neoliberalism: “Educate, organize, mobilize”.
Meanwhile, CCPA continues to need your support. If you did not have a chance to sign up or renew your membership, I encourage you to do so today. CCPA’s progressive policy research plays an essential role in catalysing change and advancing social justice.
The best way to ensure progressive research continues to be published in Manitoba is by supporting the CCPA-MB. Help us continue to do community-based research and commentary on issues of social justice and environmental sustainability. To find out how you can support the CCPA go to our website:
https://www.policyalternatives.ca/join-or-renew
or call our office 204-927-3200.
Evidence-based policy research can exert a powerful force for social change, especially when it stands with the community in its actions and organising. The role of the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives – Manitoba is to inform social movements and to provide them the arguments they need to advocate for a progressive future. In a world where mainstream media too often takes its newsfeed from corporate spin and government news releases, the work CCPA-MB does in providing non-partisan, community-based research is essential for stemming the neoliberal assault on workers, the environment and on our communities.
Lynne Fernandez holds the Errol Black Chair in Labour Issues at CCPA MB
Many of us have, like John Lennon, imagined a world without war, greed, hunger or possessions. There are those rare individuals who insist that we should settle for nothing less, that human kind’s true heart is to live in communities guided by understanding, compassion and social justice. This year May Works is dedicated to those individuals and organizations that have fought and continue to struggle for this ideal. They refuse to accept that social exclusion is inevitable. They name, and clearly understand the obstacles that keep society from realizing its full potential, and they challenge those boundaries and restrictions relentlessly.
By Lynne Fernandez, Errol Black Chair in Labour Issues
As Winnipeggers come out of an unusually punishing winter, the sun seems to be stimulating more than the usual spring activities. There is a feeling air that our city is poised to embrace a change; that politicians will be forced to finally adopt some rational policies to move Winnipeg into the rank of a modern city. Maybe the frozen pipes, water main breaks, a bus system that struggled to meet the needs of passengers and the worst potholes ever will serve to finally hold decision makers responsible for our infrastructure problems.
It’s time to take back our city.
“Indians Wear Red”: Colonialism, Resistance and Aboriginal Street Gangs won in the non-fiction category last night at the Manitoba Book Awards! Elizabeth Comack, Lawrence Deane, Larry Morrisette and Jim Silver wrote this book based on research done through the Manitoba Research Alliance. Congratulations to the authors for receiving the Alexander Kennedy Isbister Award for Non-Fiction!
From the cover: Drawing on extensive interviews with Aboriginal street gang members, as well as with Aboriginal women and elders, “Indians Wear Red” locates Aboriginal Street gangs as a form of resistance to colonialism… Solutions lie not in the search for “quick fixes” but in decolonization: re-connecting Aboriginal people with their culture and building communities in which they can thrive, aware of and proud of their identity.
Read this fast facts summary of the book. For more information on “Indians Wear Red” visit Fernwood Publishing. Notably all royalties from sales of the book are donated back to CCPA MB for future research.
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