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The Ontario government's shameful snub of affordable housing
Wednesday, 29 May 2019 09:35 Written by theconversation 
Daniel Del Gobbo, University of Toronto
Ontario Premier Doug Ford’s new housing policy offers us a lot of things, but what it fails to mention might hurt vulnerable Canadians the most.
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and Toronto Mayor John Tory recently announced a $1.3 billion federal investment in the Toronto Community Housing Corporation, the city’s largest affordable housing provider. According to the federal government, the $1.3 billion will go toward renovating some 58,000 housing units across 1,500 buildings. It is the largest federal transfer of housing funds to a municipality in the country’s history.
The investment follows on the heels of Trudeau’s announcement of the federal government’s first-ever National Housing Strategy in 2017. Trudeau pledged to spend $40 billion to address the problems of inadequate housing and chronic homelessness in Canada over a 10-year period.
For his part, Ontario Premier Doug Ford recently pledged $1 billion to repair Ontario’s affordable housing stock and streamline the application process as part of the provincial government’s Community Housing Renewal Strategy. Exactly how much Toronto Community Housing will receive is unclear.
Ontario’s recent budget is silent on the issue as well. It doesn’t mention Toronto Community Housing once. Instead, the budget seems focused on boosting the overall housing supply while cutting access to social programs like affordable housing, income support and homelessness prevention by $550 million per year. Funding for the Ontario Ministry of Municipal Housing and Affairs has been cut by 25 per cent overall.
When Trudeau first announced the National Housing Strategy, he famously declared that “housing rights are human rights.” The federal government’s investment in Toronto Community Housing is an important step toward fulfilling this promise. Now it’s the province’s turn to step up as well.
More than just a landlord
Affordable housing providers in Canada are facing an identity crisis.
Some critics have argued that Toronto Community Housing should behave like any other landlord. They argue its main job should be to collect rents, enforce leases and promptly evict tenants who fail to comply with the rules, regardless of their personal circumstances.
Toronto Community Housing has faced accusations of wasteful spending in the past. Residents and taxpayers should demand a crackdown, the critics say. A Toronto Sun columnist suggested that it should behave like a private landlord: “Clearly, private landlords are in business to make money. (Toronto Community Housing) officials really couldn’t care less.”
Ford would seem to agree. One of the hallmarks of Ontario’s new housing policy is a change to the application rules. Toronto Community Housing would be empowered to turn away prospective tenants who were previously evicted for criminal activity. Apparently Tory has campaigned for the rule change as well.
Toronto Community Housing is home to 110,000 people, including 30,000 youth and children and 20,000 seniors. The vast majority of residents live below the poverty line. Nearly 60 per cent of them are women, and one third of them self-identify as either having a disability or living with mental health challenges. For many people, eviction from Toronto Community Housing would mean they have nowhere else to live. Homelessness, poverty rates, and mental health are closely interrelated in Canada.
Properly understood in this light, Toronto Community Housing is more than just a private landlord. And the federal government’s investment is more than just a commitment to repairing bricks and mortar. Affordable housing is one of the planks of a more fair and just society. Ontario’s new housing policy fails to recognize this.
Affordable housing matters
Since the federal and provincial governments downloaded responsibility for affordable housing to municipalities in the late 1990s and early 2000s, Toronto Community Housing has lacked stable, long-term sources of funding and support from every level of government.
As a result, Toronto Community Housing faces a capital repairs shortfall of $2.6 billion over the next 10 years since it inherited a large stock of buildings without the resources to maintain them. The city’s affordable housing stock is literally crumbling.
The waiting list for a rent-subsidized unit in Toronto Community Housing is currently tens of thousands of families long. Most applicants can expect to wait seven years or more for a bachelor unit and longer than 10 years for a larger unit. The waiting list includes people experiencing homelessness, survivors of intimate partner violence and human trafficking and terminally ill people with fewer than two years to live.
A combination of factors has meant that Toronto Community Housing has failed to provide shelter for many people who need it most. Research shows that racialized women, Indigenous peoples, immigrant populations, and persons with disabilities, among others, are most likely to face housing discrimination in Canada. Homelessness is a barrier to the social advancement of historically marginalized groups in our society, particularly those who fall at the intersection of multiple systems of oppression and can face the greatest challenges in obtaining safe and adequate housing.
Police services are not equipped to contend with the complex issues facing people who experience poverty and homelessness. The criminal justice system is increasingly exclusionary of people with mental health challenges, among others, who comprise a large part of Toronto Community Housing’s population. Shifts in public policy surrounding poverty, homelessness and mental health have resulted in the criminalization of homelessness in Canada.
Read more: A taxing problem: Canadian cities desperately need new sources of revenue
Faced with this reality, the federal government’s recognition that “housing rights are human rights” is a commitment to addressing the city’s increasingly competitive and inaccessible housing market. It’s a commitment to improving the safety, housing conditions and quality of life for thousands of city residents. It’s a commitment to empowering some of the most vulnerable members of our society by increasing their access to vital social services like job placement assistance and local community-building initiatives. Affordable housing providers can help to provide these services.
The provincial government’s new housing policy, on the other hand, fails to reflect the same values as the federal government’s plan.
Ontario should have allocated more for affordable housing in its budget, not less. To match the federal government’s investment, the province should have earmarked funds for Toronto Community Housing specifically. Mental health supports and other social programs aimed at homelessness prevention should have been made a top priority throughout. And the province should have recognized that housing rights are human rights, not privileges. This means they should extend to everyone. Prospective tenants who were previously evicted for criminal activity should not be denied access to affordable housing in the future.
Building for the future
Affordable housing providers should be funded and supported toward the goal of breaking the cycle of poverty in Canada. The federal government’s investment in Toronto Community Housing is a good start, but more funding and support from every level of government is needed to fulfil Trudeau’s promise that “housing rights are human rights” across the country.
At the same time, affordable housing providers should be held more accountable in meeting their human rights mandate. The National Housing Strategy is not a blank cheque. The promise of the policy requires that we spend residents and taxpayers’ money in socially responsible ways.
Canadians should invest in affordable housing. It’s a commitment to lifting the most vulnerable members of our society from the ground up — and lifting our entire country up in the process.
Daniel Del Gobbo, Adjunct Professor at Osgoode Hall Law School and SJD Candidate, University of Toronto
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
Banking while Black: The business of exclusion
Wednesday, 29 May 2019 02:04 Written by theconversation 
Caroline Shenaz Hossein, York University, Canada
Black Canadians are twice as likely as those in the overall Canadian population to have low incomes, get shot, be unemployed and to encounter systemic bias that interferes with equal access to goods and services. The financial world is no exception.
Black people have a hard time getting access to money to borrow, or are completely shut out. They often encounter horrid service when they do go into a bank. Remember Frantz St. Fleur, a Haitian-Canadian, whose Toronto bank called the police while he was trying to deposit a $9,000 cheque? He was profiled by bankers who called the police, who promptly arrested him. Both assumed his cheque was fraudulent. It wasn’t.
More recently, a Nigerian-Canadian entrepreneur reached out to me to share her story. Her bank account was frozen because the bankers thought she had too much activity going in and out of her account. She’s a businesswoman. It should be no surprise to her bank that she makes a lot of transactions. It’s no wonder Black people want to redo the way banking works.
My current research examines business exclusion for racialized Canadians and how they co-opt resources to create vibrant local economies.
Progressive non-profits such as ACORN don’t get it. They speak of financial alternatives but they do not give any solutions. Sure, they speak about credit unions, but credit unions are too scarce to be a reasonable choice and aren’t often located in poor neighbourhoods. Like commercial banks, they also deal with their own cultural diversity issues.
A look at the Meridian credit union or the Alterna credit union in Toronto’s posh east end says a lot. They are situated in areas that are convenient for white people, and the general reputation of credit unions in Canada seems to be an old white man’s bank. They do not look like they are working to attract racialized clients.
An alternative financial service institution is one that provides outside help and one that promises to do things differently from formal banks. Up to now, the fixation by progressives has been on the big bad guys like Cash for Money, Money Mart and payday lenders.
But we also need to be looking at banking alternatives that actually help people. For example, Montreal has a group called Montreal Community Loan Fund (ACEM). It’s a community bank that started back in the 1980s to democratize finance and to create an inclusive business environment.
Today, ACEM is an organization supporting thousands of small business people, especially immigrant-owned businesses that cannot access credit, even from the guichet Desjardins, the supposed good guys. This was a credit union that started informally to help the French-speaking Catholic minority in rural Quebec in the 1900s. This original intent to put banking within reach of the excluded is important for Canada. Somehow, the modern-day credit unions have turned their back on racialized minorities who feel cut off from formal conventional banks.
‘Banker Ladies’
There Is Another Real Alternative (TIARA) in the form of mutual aid groups and co-operatives. Hundreds if not thousands of hyphenated Canadians engage in mutual aid groups or peer-to-peer banking institutions, officially known in academic circles as rotating savings and credit associations (ROSCAs).
ROSCAs are mutual aid groups. They’re informal institutions where members self-organize, decide on the rules and make regular fixed contributions to a fund that is given in whole or in part to each member in turn.
ROSCAs are an important way of organizing people and resources locally — and co-operatively. Although ROSCAs is an academic term, it is the official name for these systems that are very much localized.
ROSCAs are known worldwide in various cultural vernaculars like “Susu” in Ghana, St. Vincent, Trinidad and Tobago, Grenada; “Esusu” in Nigeria; “Ayuuto” and “Hagbad” in Somalia; “Equub” in Ethiopia and Eritrea; “Box-hand” in Guyana and Antigua; “Partner” in Jamaica; “Restourne” in DR Congo and “Sol” in Haiti. These many names depict the same phenomenon — people sharing money through co-operation. It is also about self-help and love — neighbours helping each other.
Black Canadians have contributed enormously to what we know about Canada’s social economy because of their innovation in these ROSCAs. Racialized Canadian women come together to organize ROSCAs in a voluntary manner in an effort to meet their own social and economic needs and the needs of others when they move to big cities like New York City, Miami, Toronto and Montreal.
These women are known as the “Banker Ladies.” This short history of Black women creating banking alternatives is revealing in that Black people in the Americas contribute profoundly to co-operative money traditions.
The co-operative tradition has been active in Canada for a very long time, yet it’s often associated with old white men and not Black communities. However, many people of colour who move here have a strong understanding of co-operative economics from their homelands. We need to change this “old white man” perception because the growth of co-operatives will depend on racialized Canadians in the future.
Economic self-help
In Canada the women who organize ROSCAs are stirring things up. The Harriet Tubman Institute for Research on Africa and its Diaspora at York University is carrying out a federally funded project, “African Origins in the Social Economy,” and a provincially supported project called “Social Innovations” focused on collecting empirical data from Canadian-based financial and business innovations in order to understand social enterprises, mutual aid and economic co-operation among people of colour, especially women.
So far the study explains that ROSCAs are the preferred institution where these women bank because of the business of exclusion in commercial banks. Sure these women have bank accounts at TD, CIBC and BMO, but they don’t use them much except to get a salary deposit. This is what University of Winnipeg’s Jerry Buckland refers to as the under-banked. ROSCAs are a place to do business and to form friendships and bonds.
Formal commercial banks and credit unions to some extent have not been kind to Black people. So in Canada’s financial centres, women are banking in their own way to make sure their money is shared by others who cannot get any help at a regular bank.
This is not a new practice, but an ancient and well-respected one coming from Africa as a way for people to pool money and then rotate it among each others, usually interest-free. ROSCAs build businesses and send children to school. Almost equally important, they are helping women entrepreneurs form lasting bonds.
Canada’s Banker Ladies are a perfect example of self-help, economic co-operation, love and the sharing economy because what they do is ensure the betterment of society. Bankers should know more about this special kind of mutual aid led by Black women — and learn a thing or two about humanity.
Caroline Shenaz Hossein, Associate Professor of Business & Society, York University, Canada
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
Canada’s legalization of weed edibles is another global social experiment
Saturday, 25 May 2019 05:12 Written by theconversation 
Sylvain Charlebois, Dalhousie University and Janet Music, Dalhousie University
This October, cannabis-infused edibles will be fully legal on the Canadian market.
Despite claims that broader cannabis legalization would change the social, economic and cultural fabric of the country, there is little evidence to suggest that this is the case.
The government itself claimed initially that its primary intent was to legalize cannabis without normalizing it. That’s exactly what it delivered. Allowing Canadians to have access to legal cannabis while keeping the social stigma against routine marijuana use alive was arguably the result the government was looking for.
The rollout of commercially available dried cannabis flower was relatively uneventful, though shortages and high price points still allow the black market to thrive. Beyond the hoopla, nothing has significantly changed. As illegal vendors continue to prosper, the social stigma has remained, evidenced by a recent study by Dalhousie University.
This recent study released in May suggests that Canadians remain supportive of legalized cannabis, but their enthusiasm for legalized cannabis and edibles has dropped in recent months.
Now, edible cannabis policy is in the spotlight as Western countries around the globe look to capitalize on this frontier market. Canada is once again acting as a global social experiment, demonstrating to international political and business communities best and worst market practices.
Edibles are big business
Generally, consumers remain open to the edible cannabis market. In American states where cannabis is legal for recreational use, edibles account for 12 to 15 per cent of the market. In Canada, sales of cannabis-infused edible products are projected to reach $4.1 billion by 2022.
While the edible market offers opportunities for prosperity for cannabis producers and retailers, there remain challenges ahead for those looking to enter this market. Negative media portrayals have raised concerns among consumers who have yet to sample edibles. Cannabis ingestion among children presents a serious public health issue, expected to increase with the advent of legally available edible products, such as gummy candies and baked goods that appeal to kids.
Some consumers who currently want to integrate cannabis-infused food into their diets without turning to the black market for edibles — and without increasing their sugar intake — cook with cannabis. But that carries great risks that aren’t being given any consideration by regulators.
The effects of cannabis-infused edibles vary greatly and are dependant on dose, gender, weight and metabolism. For novice users, edibles present a chance of accidentally consuming too much as they experiment in getting the dosage right for their own personal circumstances.
There are multiple social media how-to videos on baking and cooking with cannabis, but these aren’t monitored for the accuracy of the information provided, further leaving consumers open to cannabis-related mishaps.
‘Walking a fine line’
And so the government is walking a fine line between public safety and promoting the sale of cannabis as a recreational intoxicant, particularly when it comes to edibles.
As uncertainty grows among consumers about edibles, how much of it is fed by public service messaging is unclear. Certainly, mixed messaging does little to alleviate confusion. Health Canada guidelines and recent media coverage may be contributing to an increase in uncertainty about experimenting with edibles. Health Canada’s uncompromising regulatory framework is making many feel that edibles are welcomed in Canada, to a certain degree.
While public safety campaigns target sober driving and address child safety regarding cannabis-infused candy, businesses looking to market cannabis must adhere to strict guidelines that limit the scope and reach of what they can promote.
The regulations set by the federal government surrounding the legal sale of cannabis edibles are confusing to retailers. There are of course mandatory regulatory requirements regarding testing and dosage. Labelling guidelines will be the same as those for food and pharmaceuticals. However, the low THC limit of 10 milligrams per edible, and the lack of clarity around how much THC is allowable per package, has the potential to cut into a business’ bottom line.
The Dalhousie survey revealed how illiterate Canadians are about cannabinoids. Only 31 per cent of respondents were able to detect the non-psychoactive, therapeutic nature of CBD. CBD is of great interest to the food industry, but few understand it. More public education is needed.
Overall, the legalization of cannabis in October 2018 allowed for new markets in cannabis distribution. Adding edibles to the mix this fall isn’t likely to fuel broad cultural changes in the way Canadians imbibe in the short term. Canadians, by and large, have accepted cannabis, but policies are preventing businesses from catching up and leading the rest of the world in cannabis production and distribution. So far, that’s a missed opportunity.
Sylvain Charlebois, Director, Agri-Food Analytics Lab, Professor in Food Distribution and Policy, Dalhousie University and Janet Music, Research Associate at Agri-Food Analytics Lab from the School of Information Management, Dalhousie University
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
The Trump administration just made its first move in a clampdown on US visas for Nigerians
Saturday, 25 May 2019 01:16 Written by qz.com/africa/Nigeria accounted for over 25% of non-immigrant visas issued to Africans in 2018 alone—but that may be set to change.
The United States embassy has announced an immediate indefinite suspension of interview waivers for visa renewals for applicants in Nigeria. Known as “drop-box,” the interview waiver process allowed Nigerian applicants who met certain eligibility criteria to renew their visas by submitting their passports and supporting documents for review without going through a new in-person interview each time.
The process mainly targeted regular visitors to the US who have a history of applying for and receiving visas. One of the requirements for the interview waiver was for an applicant to have previously received a two-year visa.
With the new waiver suspension, all applicants—first time and recurring—will now be required to appear for in-person interviews at US embassies in Nigeria.
A likely consequence could be a drop-off in the number of non-immigrant visas issued to Nigerians. Compared to the drop-box process which resulted in a high rate of visa renewals for regular visitors, in-person interviews will likely result in increased scrutiny, a much longer process and, by extension, fewer visas issued.
There have already been local reports of visa drop-box submissions taking much longer to process over the past year, hinting at increasing scrutiny. Increasingly, drop-box applications have also been returned unapproved with requests for in-person interviews.
The possibility of a tougher outlook for applicants is noted in the US embassy’s statement as it says one of the reasons it has suspended the interview waiver is to “promote legitimate travel.” It’s rhetoric that is consistent with the Trump administration’s stance on immigration.
The proposed measures included reducing visa validity periods, making it tougher for citizens from countries like Nigeria to receive visas at all and the long-term possibility of outright bans.
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Canada's legalization of weed edibles is another global social experiment
Thursday, 23 May 2019 02:59 Written by theconversation
Sylvain Charlebois, Dalhousie University and Janet Music, Dalhousie University
This October, cannabis-infused edibles will be fully legal on the Canadian market.
Despite claims that broader cannabis legalization would change the social, economic and cultural fabric of the country, there is little evidence to suggest that this is the case.
The government itself claimed initially that its primary intent was to legalize cannabis without normalizing it. That’s exactly what it delivered. Allowing Canadians to have access to legal cannabis while keeping the social stigma against routine marijuana use alive was arguably the result the government was looking for.
The rollout of commercially available dried cannabis flower was relatively uneventful, though shortages and high price points still allow the black market to thrive. Beyond the hoopla, nothing has significantly changed. As illegal vendors continue to prosper, the social stigma has remained, evidenced by a recent study by Dalhousie University.
This recent study released in May suggests that Canadians remain supportive of legalized cannabis, but their enthusiasm for legalized cannabis and edibles has dropped in recent months.
Now, edible cannabis policy is in the spotlight as Western countries around the globe look to capitalize on this frontier market. Canada is once again acting as a global social experiment, demonstrating to international political and business communities best and worst market practices.
Edibles are big business
Generally, consumers remain open to the edible cannabis market. In American states where cannabis is legal for recreational use, edibles account for 12 to 15 per cent of the market. In Canada, sales of cannabis-infused edible products are projected to reach $4.1 billion by 2022.
While the edible market offers opportunities for prosperity for cannabis producers and retailers, there remain challenges ahead for those looking to enter this market. Negative media portrayals have raised concerns among consumers who have yet to sample edibles. Cannabis ingestion among children presents a serious public health issue, expected to increase with the advent of legally available edible products, such as gummy candies and baked goods that appeal to kids.
Some consumers who currently want to integrate cannabis-infused food into their diets without turning to the black market for edibles — and without increasing their sugar intake — cook with cannabis. But that carries great risks that aren’t being given any consideration by regulators.
The effects of cannabis-infused edibles vary greatly and are dependant on dose, gender, weight and metabolism. For novice users, edibles present a chance of accidentally consuming too much as they experiment in getting the dosage right for their own personal circumstances.
There are multiple social media how-to videos on baking and cooking with cannabis, but these aren’t monitored for the accuracy of the information provided, further leaving consumers open to cannabis-related mishaps.
‘Walking a fine line’
And so the government is walking a fine line between public safety and promoting the sale of cannabis as a recreational intoxicant, particularly when it comes to edibles.
As uncertainty grows among consumers about edibles, how much of it is fed by public service messaging is unclear. Certainly, mixed messaging does little to alleviate confusion. Health Canada guidelines and recent media coverage may be contributing to an increase in uncertainty about experimenting with edibles. Health Canada’s uncompromising regulatory framework is making many feel that edibles are welcomed in Canada, to a certain degree.
While public safety campaigns target sober driving and address child safety regarding cannabis-infused candy, businesses looking to market cannabis must adhere to strict guidelines that limit the scope and reach of what they can promote.
The regulations set by the federal government surrounding the legal sale of cannabis edibles are confusing to retailers. There are of course mandatory regulatory requirements regarding testing and dosage. Labelling guidelines will be the same as those for food and pharmaceuticals. However, the low THC limit of 10 milligrams per edible, and the lack of clarity around how much THC is allowable per package, has the potential to cut into a business’ bottom line.
The Dalhousie survey revealed how illiterate Canadians are about cannabinoids. Only 31 per cent of respondents were able to detect the non-psychoactive, therapeutic nature of CBD. CBD is of great interest to the food industry, but few understand it. More public education is needed.
Overall, the legalization of cannabis in October 2018 allowed for new markets in cannabis distribution. Adding edibles to the mix this fall isn’t likely to fuel broad cultural changes in the way Canadians imbibe in the short term. Canadians, by and large, have accepted cannabis, but policies are preventing businesses from catching up and leading the rest of the world in cannabis production and distribution. So far, that’s a missed opportunity.
Sylvain Charlebois, Director, Agri-Food Analytics Lab, Professor in Food Distribution and Policy, Dalhousie University and Janet Music, Research Associate at Agri-Food Analytics Lab from the School of Information Management, Dalhousie University
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
Ontario's child-care cuts will hurt low-income parents working or studying full time
Monday, 20 May 2019 23:41 Written by theconversation 
Linda A. White, University of Toronto; Elizabeth Dhuey, University of Toronto; Michal Perlman, University of Toronto, and Petr Varmuza, University of Toronto
Ontario’s recent provincial budget claimed to help families access quality child care — but in reality, the province’s budget masks what are emerging as massive cuts to child-care funding that will have far-reaching consequences for families and communities.
The provincial budget promised a $1.7 billion investment in 2019-20 “to help families access child care and early years programs to support them while they earn a living.” It touted a child-care tax credit and policy changes to loosen child-care regulations that would purportedly help all families access the child care they need.
In fact, the province has cancelled a $50-million fund that helped care providers absorb labour costs and other child-care funding for a minimum total of an estimated $80-million loss in funds. The figure does not include additional cuts municipalities will be expected to bear due to changes in the province’s cost-sharing model.
Toronto estimated to lose 6,000 care subsidies
Meanwhile, Toronto city manager Chris Murray advised the mayor and city council that he’s done the math based on both cuts to direct child-care funds plus the cumulative impact due to cost-sharing changes — leading him to estimate nearly $85 million in immediate child-care funding cuts to the City of Toronto alone.
A spokesperson for the Ministry of Education issued a statement arguing: “The City of Toronto should be looking at ways to make their operations more efficient instead of passing on these costs to parents… Any reductions in child care spaces would be the result of the City of Toronto’s own decision making.’”
So how should the city absorb these cuts? Should the city gut its Assessment for Quality Improvement (AQI) program — a child-care support program that sets service standards and guidelines to child-care service providers in approximately 70 per cent of all licensed care in Toronto? This is an innovative quality-assurance program built on transparency that improves quality and safety for all children served.
The Toronto city manager warned that the city may have to cut more than 6,000 subsidies for low-income families. According to figures obtained from Toronto Children’s Services, 64 per cent of families that received a subsidy were led by a single parent whose average taxable income was $22,700 in 2017. The average income for two-parent families receiving a subsidy was $38,300.
Reducing the number of subsidies will mean that these parents, many of whom are already struggling, will not be able to support their families or continue their studies.
Far-reaching consequences for child care
Other municipalities are similarly calculating the impact of cuts that will have far-reaching consequences for parents and all employers of parents who rely on child-care services.
In our view, the province’s cuts are an anti-anti-poverty measure. Provincial transfers to municipalities for children’s services, among other things, help share the costs for child-care subsidies, a crucial support for low-income families.
The parameters of eligibility for assistance are set by the province under the Ontario Child Care Service Management and Funding Guideline 2018; the amount of parental contribution is stipulated in the regulations under the Child Care and Early Years Act.
But municipalities share responsibility for subsidy funding with the province. Through service-planning processes, municipalities have limited discretion to determine priorities for types of care, age groups and geographic location and the mechanism for calculating the subsidy amount paid to service providers. Municipalities are solely responsible for eligibility assessments and allocation of subsidies to individual families.
Early childhood: A critical developmental time
There is unequivocal evidence that early childhood is a critical period in terms of children’s developmental trajectories and growing recognition that high-quality early childhood education and care programs can enhance child development.
Evidence shows that the potential effects of high-quality early childhood education and care are strongest for children from families with low incomes.
Supporting vulnerable children is especially important now as the latest Ontario provincial Early Years Report (2018) noted that nearly 30 per cent of children across the province were identified as vulnerable. This means that in kindergarten they were ranked in the lowest 10th percentile in at least one of the following five domains: physical, social, emotional or language development and general knowledge.
A figure of 30 per cent vulnerability is the highest percentage since 2004 when these data on children’s developmental well-being were first collected. The data strongly suggest children and families need more, rather than less, support. Low income has been identified as one of the contributing factors to children’s developmental vulnerability.
Bad economics, bad child-care policy
Aside from the direct benefits to parents and children, the child-care sector is a significant source of local economic development. Not only do child-care jobs provide worker income, but subsidized child care also increases maternal labour supply when the labour supply levels are low – in other words, it allows struggling parents the opportunity to work more, or more consistent, hours.
Having those parents work increases tax revenue which ultimately increases GDP. Removal of the subsidy means these parents do not have the opportunity to contribute to the economy, and increases the inequality gap, now and in the future.
The province’s child-care tax credit is not going to help very low-income families. A tax credit does not provide a way to handle the immediate costs of child-care services. Even the maximum $6,000 tax credit does little to offset the actual costs in a city like Toronto where child care for an infant can easily cost upwards of $20,000 per year.
The proposed changes will significantly weaken a system that is already struggling to help children and families who face significant challenges. Gutting the already weak support for low-income families is wrongheaded and will cause immediate and long-term harm.
In the absence of measures long recommended by child-care policy advocates (such as operating grants to centres, sliding fee scale rates tied to income and wage enhancements for providers), the subsidy system is the one plank of the system that should be expanded, not cut.
Linda A. White, Professor of Political Science and Public Policy, University of Toronto; Elizabeth Dhuey, Associate Professor of Economics, Department of Management, University of Toronto; Michal Perlman, Professor of Applied Psychology and Human Development, University of Toronto, and Petr Varmuza, PhD Candidate, Ontario Institute for Studies in Education (OISE), University of Toronto
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
Nigerian Girl, Tobechukwu Philips, breaks 125-year academic history in the US
Friday, 17 May 2019 18:34 Written by SAHARAREPORTERS Tobechukwu Phillips a Nigerian born teenager has broken the 125 academic history of her high school in Texas, US.
Phillips, who earned A's all through her stay at Alvin High School boasted a 6.9 GPA is now the first Black valedictorian of her school.
Alvin High School was originally established in 1894. African-American students were allowed to join the school in 1965.
Speaking on her success Phillips said: “Maintaining the highest GPA in my class is a difficult task. It truly takes time management but more importantly acknowledging what you do it for. I know that I am no longer just representing myself.
“My biggest advice to other scholars of colour is to truly adopt the mindset of Rosa Parks — ‘No.’ Do not conform to the stereotypes that have held us under thumbs for so long.
“Do not be discouraged when someone speaks out against you, simply allow what they say to fuelyour fire. But more than anything, do not remain tight-lipped. Stand up for what you believe in and take it upon yourself to be the change you’ve always wanted. Say ‘No’ to the ways of the world and stick out.”
SR
