Futureproofing Canada

In this episode of Demystifying Community Housing, we hear from Alex Hemingway, Christina Maes Nino and Steve Pomeroy, on the various challenges facing the community housing sector and how to bolster its resilience. Additional resources: • Canadian Housing Evidence Collaborative (CHEC), a network of more than 30 academics and more than 50 practice partners representing policymakers, housing provid...

In this episode of Demystifying Community Housing, Hanan Ali and Natasha speak with Damian Collins, Professor of Earth & Atmospheric Sciences at the University of Alberta and Director of the Community Housing Canada Research Partnership, Marika Albert, the Policy Director of B.C. Non-Profit Housing Association and Alex Hemingway a Senior Economist and Public Finance Policy Analyst at the Canadian...

In this episode of Demystifying Community Housing we hear from AnaLori Smith, Pam Gill and Rita Wong about what it’s like to live in community housing. We’ll also talk to non-profit housing practitioners Marika Albert and William Azaroff about the challenges of operating community housing and supporting the well-being of their tenants.

In this episode of Demystifying Community Housing, co-hosts Hanan Ali and Natasha Mhuriro speak with Rebecca Schiff, dean of the Faculty of Human Health Sciences at the University of Northern British Columbia; Ray Sullivan, executive director of the Canadian Housing and Renewal Association; and David Hulchanski, a professor in the Faculty of Social Work and the Graduate Program in Planning in the...

Welcome to Demystifying Community Housing, a special series from the IRPP’s Policy Options Podcast, which explores the different facets of community housing and its role in addressing Canada’s housing crisis. In this episode, we speak with Yushu Zhu and Meg Holden, professors of urban studies at Simon Fraser University, who are leading the production of this podcast series. Together we talk about...

PO Podcast 167 - Addressing Ecological Risks (Institutions for Effective Climate Action conference) by IRPP

PO Podcast 166 - Climate Change in the North by IRPP

It is undeniable that poverty and income inequality are two of Canada’s most pressing issues. But it is less clear what policy solutions need to be enacted to address these problems. In response to these challenges, some policy practitioners have called for the implementation of an unconditional Basic Income that would be accessible to all Canadians. Bill S-233, An Act to develop a national framew...

Affordability and climate are compounding, overlapping crises — and people are struggling through them both at the same time. Individuals across Canada are tired of making trade-offs because, when it comes to life’s necessities — housing, food, transportation and a sustainable climate — there should be none. Solutions that ignore the full picture are no longer acceptable. What’s needed now is a fu...

To move beyond this long legacy, federal and provincial governments need to focus on educating Canadians about Black history.

En se privant d’un milliard cette année pour défendre sa compétence en santé, le Québec se retrouve une fois de plus dans le rôle de gardien du fédéralisme.

Without additional funds, the move could lead to reduced course choice and the replacement of specialists with French teachers, harming the quality of education.

Social inequalities have shown no sign of receding in Canada or worldwide. The COVID-19 pandemic demonstrated the persistence of deep-seated inequalities along racialized and gendered lines. Meanwhile, the resurgence of the Black Lives Matter movement for racial justice has called into question the weight that power and privilege continue to hold in our society. Although policymakers continue to a...

Well over a decade after the Occupy Wall Street protests, costs of living are still dramatically outpacing wages. The gap between the 99% and the 1% is wider than ever. The rich are getting richer and the poor are getting poorer, but why? In this episode of In/Equality, host Debra Thompson speaks with John Peters, Associate Professor and Research Fellow at the Inter-University Research Centre on G...

Following the 2020 uprisings after the murder of George Floyd, many institutions committed to major changes to address systemic racism. In response to this mass movement for racial justice, a suite of policies and initiatives were announced to address the historical legacy and ongoing impact of anti-Black racism. In this episode of In/Equality, host Debra Thompson speaks with Craig Wellington, Exe...

Housing affordability has become one of the most talked-about problems of Canadian life. Housing prices have been rapidly rising ,and rent – per many renters – is too damn high. In this episode of In/Equality, host Debra Thompson speaks with Yushu Zhu, assistant professor at Simon Fraser University, who studies housing stratification. What does housing inequality look like across Canada, and parti...

Seventy-four per cent of Canadians live in cities of over 100,000 people, according to the 2021 census. What does that mean for those living in rural and remote areas? How do we ensure rural Canadians have access to high-quality services? In this episode of In/Equality, host Debra Thompson speaks with Bill Reimer, professor emeritus of sociology and anthropology at Concordia University. Bill has s...

In Canada, 1.4 million children live in food-insecure households. Despite being an affluent country, Canada has chronic food insecurity, and the problem is worsening. In this episode of In/Equality, host Debra Thompson speaks with Valerie Tarasuk professor in the Department of Nutritional Sciences at the University of Toronto and an expert on food insecurity. The conversation explores how entrench...

Addressing bias in health-care provision is difficult because the professionals are extremely defensive when confronted with the reality of bias. In this episode of In/Equality, host Debra Thompson speaks with psychiatrist and researcher Javeed Sukhera of the Institute of Living in Hartford, CT, and the Hartford Hospital about his research and teaching on implicit bias. Health-care providers, like...

Discussions around climate change sometimes portray the climate crisis as a phenomenon that impacts all people equally. But this framing neglects the fact that accelerating climate change disproportionately affects marginalized and vulnerable communities, in particular Black and Indigenous communities, in Canada and on a global scale. In this episode of In/Equality, host Debra Thompson speaks with...

Calls for a guaranteed basic income have strengthened during the pandemic, as proponents of the policy have argued that a basic income is a simple and effective way to reduce poverty. A new IRPP book, Basic Income and a Just Society: Policy Choices for Canada’s Social Safety Net, analyzes the arguments advanced by proponents of a basic income. The authors, in turn, take a hard look at Canada’s soc...

From June 12 to 14, 2023, the Institute on Governance (IOG) and the Centre of Excellence on the Canadian Federation at the Institute for Research on Public Policy (IRPP) partenered to convene Resilient Institutions: Learning from Canada’s COVID-19 Pandemic – a conference on making public institutions and governance more agile. As the experience of the COVID-19 pandemic has recently demonstrated, c...

What do the results of the 2023 Alberta election mean for the future of the province? What consequences will the election have for the province’s relations with Ottawa, with other provinces, and with First Nations? Tune into this panel discussion, moderated by the IRPP’s Charles Breton, executive director of the Centre of Excellence on the Canadian Federation, for a forward-looking exploration of...

It is impossible to think about inequality in Canada without an understanding of Canada’s settler colonial reality. Public conversations about settler colonialism and the inequalities it imposes on Indigenous Peoples have changed over the last decade thanks to the work of Indigenous activists and leaders. In this episode of In/Equality, host Debra Thompson speaks with one of the public scholars wh...

Various orders of government and institutions like universities develop policies for disabled people. How often are disabled people brought into the process of policymaking? In this episode of In/Equality, host Debra Thompson speaks with Michael Orsini, a Professor of Political Studies at the University of Ottawa and a critical disability scholar. The conversation begins with an an understanding o...