New poverty report card evaluates quality of life in Canada’s 10 provinces

There are numerous sites that say Canada is the best place to live, or one of the best in the world. The website Cicnews was launched in 1994 by the late Attorney David Cohen as the online presence of the Cohen Immigration Law Firm. Cohen Immigration Law has been helping people achieve their Canadian immigration goals for over 45 years. They’ve produced a report card for each province. They discovered something else… the experience isn’t shared with everyone.

Using a multitude of measures – all under four general umbrellas: experience of poverty, poverty measures, material deprivation and anti-poverty legislative progress – Food Banks Canada recently graded each of Canada’s 13 provinces and territories on the poverty reduction efforts, and results, of local governments.

Some of the measures used by Food Banks Canada include:

Financial Discomfort
Poor Access to Healthcare
Food Insecurity
Inadequate Standard of Living
Unemployment

As indicated by Food Banks Canada, “these grades represent how well poverty reduction efforts are going [at the provincial, territorial, and federal government” levels. These Report Cards explore the experience of poverty across Canada and where governments can take steps to improve their social policy.” In summary, here is how each province scored overall.

Ontario: D-
Quebec: B-
British Columbia: D+
Alberta: D
Manitoba: C-
Saskatchewan: D
Nova Scotia: F
New Brunswick: D-
Newfoundland and Labrador: D-
Prince Edward Island: C-
Yukon, Northwest Territories and Nunavut: Incomplete*

*The report card for each of Canada’s three territories received an incomplete grade because, “due to low sample size, data for this region may not accurately real-life circumstances.” Read more https://www.cicnews.com/2023/10/new-poverty-report-card-evaluates-quality-of-life-in-canadas-10-provinces-1040101.html www.cicnews.com/2023/10/new-po…

At Canada’s largest Atlantic puffin colony, chicks are dying of starvation

After searching a sampling of nests on the ecological reserve where Atlantic puffins congregate to breed each spring, Wilhelm and her colleagues discovered that many chicks had perished.

The grim discovery connects the fate of the Atlantic puffin — which is not only the official bird of Newfoundland and Labrador, but a ubiquitous image in the province — with serious problems in ocean ecology, including warming ocean temperatures and a struggling, complex food web.

“Just based on the the body mass and just picking up the dead chicks, that were just skin and bones, so essentially they died of starvation.”

Adult puffins dive for food such as capelin, a forage fish that can make up as much as 50 per cent of their diet, and bring it back to the nest, a burrow in the cliffs.

But when food is scarce the adults feed themselves, and the chick is left to starve. Read more https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/newfoundland-labrador/puffin-starvation-threat-climate-change-1.6978773 www.cbc.ca/news/canada/newfoun…

#environment #nlpoli #puffin #starving

NDP convention could see emergency resolution on pharmacare

A group of grassroots NDP activists is planning to push for pharmacare to be a make-or-break element of the federal party’s supply-and-confidence deal with the Liberals at a policy convention next week.

The agreement has the NDP supporting the minority Liberals on key votes in exchange for progress on shared priorities, including pharmacare.

The activists are submitting an emergency resolution to declare that the future of the deal is contingent on legislation that commits to a universal and entirely public pharmacare program, which they hope will be debated on the convention floor in Hamilton.

The group, called Stand Strong For Pharmacare, launched a website for delegates to encourage them to take a strong stance on the policy and hold the Liberals to their agreement.

“Our NDP convention resolution would make it clear that if (Prime Minister) Justin Trudeau breaks his promise for universal, comprehensive, and public pharmacare, it will have consequences,” the website states. Read more https://globalnews.ca/news/10010643/ndp-convention-pharmacare-resolution/ globalnews.ca/news/10010643/nd…

#NDP #politics #pharmacare #election #activists #promises

Danielle Smith’s government is under investigation for its secrecy. Here’s what you need to know

Imagine if a senior operative working behind the scenes of Premier Danielle Smith’s government scheduled a private meeting with a bunch of oil industry lobbyists to chat about Alberta’s policies.

One of the lobbyists responds to the invitation by sending over an agenda with a range of topics and proposals including the creation of new subsidies for the oilpatch, crafting a strategy to fight federal government rules aimed at cracking down on pollution and introducing obstacles to make it difficult for renewable energy projects to launch.

The lobbyist also proposes they discuss a bailout plan for a company that is near bankruptcy, but facing a multimillion-dollar bill to clean up a bunch of contaminated sites where it used to operate.

This scenario is not all that far-fetched in a province that has access to the world’s third-largest reserves of oil, following Saudi Arabia and Venezuela.

But what happens when a government that is supposedly operating in a free democracy breaks the law to conceal its dealings with lobbyists?

Sadly, I believe this is what happened earlier this year when the Alberta government began to systematically refuse to release records of its meetings with the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers and other oil and gas lobbyists. Although we know officials from at least four ministries have been significantly influenced through regular meetings with industry lobbyists, the departments collectively refused to accept more than 20 separate requests I made through freedom of information legislation since the beginning of 2023 to get the details.

But there’s also some good news I can share. Thanks to The Narwhal’s persistence, a provincial watchdog — Information and Privacy Commissioner of Alberta Diane McLeod — has agreed to launch a systemic investigation after we filed a complaint detailing a plethora of evidence we have collected about an apparent cover-up. Read more https://thenarwhal.ca/oipc-alberta-danielle-smith-foi/ thenarwhal.ca/oipc-alberta-dan…

#CAPP #DianeMcLeod #coverup #lobbyists #abpoli #politics #ucp