Featured News
Latest CMHC numbers confirm low, moderate-income renters priced out of private rental markets
Posted on June 15 2010 under Featured News
Research from the Wellesley Institute and others draws a clear set of links between good quality, affordable housing and good health.
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Ontario should adopt bold vision for welfare reform
Posted on June 15 2010 under Featured News
Government panel says radical reform needed to meet Ontario’s changing economic needs
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Social Assistance Review Advisory Council
Posted on June 15 2010 under Featured News
Read the recommendations put forth to the Minister of Community and Social Services
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SOCIAL PLANNING NETWORK OF ONTARIO (SPNO) MEDIA RELEASE
Posted on June 15 2010 under Featured News
Social Assistance Advisory Council Report’s Bold Vision for Tomorrow Does Not Put Food on the Table Today
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What to make of former Bank of Canada governor David Dodge's predictions on Canada's economy?
Posted on June 15 2010 under Featured News
Can Canadian governments balance their budgets by mid-decade with program spending cuts alone?
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Hamilton Economic Summit
Posted on May 15 2010 under Featured News
Monday's event will focus on opportunities through the Pan Am Games, transportation and downtown renewal
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Poverty hits women hard
Posted on May 15 2010 under Featured News
More than 40 per cent of city's poor are female -- report
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Goar: Housing shortage tiptoes onto political agenda
Posted on May 15 2010 under Featured News
It would take a minor miracle for Parliament to pass a private member’s bill calling for “secure, adequate and affordable housing for Canadians.”
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Goar: Living wage becomes a reality - but not here
Posted on May 15 2010 under Featured News
On April 27, a small city in British Columbia made history, enacting Canada’s first living-wage bylaw.
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Families fight for maximum Ontario Child Benefit payments
Posted on April 29 2010 under Featured News
Concerned groups in the Hamilton area descended on Queen’s Park Tuesday, demanding the Ontario government stop the “claw back” of the Ontario Child Benefit from social assistance recipients.
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Hamilton protest at Queen's Park
Posted on April 28 2010 under Featured News
Demand for better child benefits
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Queen's Park protest targets benefit cuts
Posted on April 27 2010 under Featured News
Bus load heading to Toronto from Hamilton
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Literacy is the road to social change
Posted on April 27 2010 under Featured News
When faced with the stark realities of The Hamilton Spectator series Code Red, some may question long-held ideas for addressing wide gaps in this city's social determinants of health.
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Code Red: What's next?
Posted on April 27 2010 under Featured News
One of Code Red's most dramatic messages is that while adults and children trapped in poverty pay the highest price, none of us rides for free.
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Panel talks poverty strategies in wake of Spec's Code Red series
Posted on April 27 2010 under Featured News
A living wage, less economic segregation and even higher taxes are being cited as ways to tackle poverty and improve the health of citizens.
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Little mishaps add up living a life in poverty
Posted on April 27 2010 under Featured News
There was the day when a wheel broke on her grocery cart.
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Hamilton EI claims drop, but welfare rises
Posted on April 27 2010 under Featured News
For economist Erin Weir of the United Steel Workers, the numbers are depressing confirmation the economy is repeating its historical pattern of recovering from recession without creating jobs.
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Housing benefit tops wish-list for provincial housing plan
Posted on April 27 2010 under Featured News
Monthly benefit of $100 would close gap between low incomes and high rents, advocates say
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Poverty advocates protest cash clawback
Posted on April 19 2010 under Featured News
Support groups and recipients heading for Queen’s Park
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Code Red: call to action
Posted on April 10 2010 under Featured News
Code Red is about the health of our community. And we should be alarmed.
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Code Red series begins today
Posted on April 10 2010 under Featured News
Exclusive Spec series reveals glaring disparities in wealth and health in the city.
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Tackling poverty countrywide
Posted on April 07 2010 under Featured News
Senator Eggleton tells Hamilton breakfast meeting how it can be done
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Back to Scratch
Posted on April 06 2010 under Featured News
With the recent increase in Ontario's minimum wage, the gap between the minimum wage and the welfare rate is as wide as it was during the Depression.
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Poverty costs Canada billions: Eggleton
Posted on April 06 2010 under Featured News
Senator Art Eggleton wants everyone - but especially the federal government - to take note: poverty cost this country billions of dollars.
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Reality of living on social assistance
Posted on April 06 2010 under Featured News
In the Liberals' recent budget, the poorest in Ontario got exactly what they've come to expect from politicians.
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How food banks assess clients
Posted on April 06 2010 under Featured News
After skepticism about spring food drive extensions, Daily Bread and North York Harvest clarify their policies
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Please give, say needy food banks
Posted on April 06 2010 under Featured News
Daily Bread and North York Harvest both extending spring food drives, have gathered less than half of what Toronto’s hungry need
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Five bright ideas to save the Liberal party
Posted on April 06 2010 under Featured News
Without affordable housing and enriched day care, we maintain the cycle of poverty in which generations of Canadians have been trapped.
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NDP says scrapping diet allowance is cruel
Posted on April 06 2010 under Featured News
Ontario’s Liberal government was branded “cruel and heartless” Thursday for scrapping a special diet allowance of up to $250 a month for people living on social assistance.
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Ease welfare rules for disabled, Tory MPP says
Posted on April 01 2010 under Featured News
Toby Barrett argues Ontario welfare rules trap disabled in poverty
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Ontario asked to restore special diet allowance
Posted on April 01 2010 under Featured News
People on social assistance are calling on the Ontario government to reverse its decision to eliminate a special diet allowance.
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A poor excuse for a food allowance
Posted on April 01 2010 under Featured News
The Stop delivers a shot to the gut with its Do The Math campaign
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Where's poverty reduction?
Posted on April 01 2010 under Featured News
Without a more significant poverty reduction investment plan, Ontario will fail at reaching its goal of reducing poverty by 25 per cent by 2013.
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Welfare rules tweaked after diet allowance axed
Posted on March 29 2010 under Featured News
Ontario's social services minister is tweaking four welfare rules in the wake of outrage over the elimination of a Special Diet Allowance in last Thursday's budget, the Star has learned.
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Little strategy, some benefits
Posted on March 29 2010 under Featured News
For Hamilton, the provincial budget released yesterday gives, but it takes away, too, and in a serious way.
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Outrage as province axes food allowance
Posted on March 29 2010 under Featured News
"If they're actually considering making cuts ... then they're really considering increasing the depths of poverty in Ontario," said Deirdre Pike of the 25 in 5 Hamilton Network.
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The province, in its budget, must step up after feds vacated responsibilities
Posted on March 29 2010 under Featured News
Even before the recession began, Ontarians agreed that the ranks of the poor in this province were too high.
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Special Diet Announcement Increases Insecurity for People on Social Assistance
Posted on March 29 2010 under Featured News
Ontarians on social assistance have every right to be concerned about today's provincial government decision to create a new "nutritional supplementation" program to replace the current Special Diet Program.
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Budget throws Ontario’s poor in limbo
Posted on March 29 2010 under Featured News
The sting of recession and deep-seated poverty will continue for too many Ontarians who were left behind in today’s provincial budget, says the 25 in 5 Network for Poverty Reduction.
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April 15th: Raise The Rates - Rally and March on the McGuinty Government
Posted on March 29 2010 under Featured News
We are calling on poor and working people in Ontario to organize and fight back.
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Poverty advocates decry loss of diet allowance
Posted on March 25 2010 under Featured News
Ontario is scrapping the Special Diet Allowance that helps people on social assistance pay extra food costs related to specific medical conditions such as diabetes and high blood pressure.
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A test of Ontario's appetite to fight for poverty reduction
Posted on March 25 2010 under Featured News
Ontario is about to face one of the biggest tests of its commitment to poverty reduction.
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Health providers and anti-poverty advocates urge government to maintain Special Diet
Posted on March 25 2010 under Featured News
Today, 18 organizations issued an open letter to Minister Meilleur, calling for her commitment to maintain the Special Diet Allowance.
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This is no time for Duncan to panic
Posted on March 25 2010 under Featured News
With the economy still in recovery mode, a move to cut spending and sell assets would be a disaster
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Welfare isn't broken so it won't be fixed
Posted on March 25 2010 under Featured News
In pre-budget consultations, as they do year after year, advocates for the poor – and often the poor themselves – have claimed that Ontario's welfare system is broken and needs to be fixed.
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Cities can't sustain rise in poverty
Posted on March 25 2010 under Featured News
The report shows Hamilton joins the majority of cities in seeing the poor get poorer and that those living on social assistance are finding it harder to get by.
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Budget must face up to poverty
Posted on March 25 2010 under Featured News
Investments in families must continue to be made for positive change
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Anti-Poverty Activists Shut Down Office Of Minister Of Community And Social Services
Posted on March 22 2010 under Featured News
Demand Raise in OW/ODSP Rates and Hands off the Special Diet!
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Aboriginal poverty Canada's shame
Posted on March 22 2010 under Featured News
'Burden is on the entire country,' Fontaine says
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Ontario seeks Ottawa's help as welfare cases spike
Posted on March 16 2010 under Featured News
Province calling for national standard for accessing EI payments as laid-off workers exhaust their federal benefits
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Welfare special diet allowance at risk
Posted on March 16 2010 under Featured News
Province signaling changes in wake of auditor’s report of abuse in the program
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Goar: Have the poor fallen off the agenda?
Posted on March 16 2010 under Featured News
The bad omens keep coming.
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Women and children still last: No thank you, Mr. Flaherty!
Posted on March 08 2010 under Featured News
This federal budget doesn’t even remotely make a dent in Canada’s abysmal rate of child and family poverty.
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