As a new parent, I appreciated reading the "new policy solutions for families." I've been personally very grateful to Gen Squeeze and other organisations who in the past successfully advocated for making EI (and parental leave) accessible to self-employed individuals. This was an excellent step in the right direction to making parental leave available to all parents. There's more to be done when it comes to promoting shared leave and increasing benefit amounts, as you've noted.
I love that Gen Squeeze considers flexible work arrangements as part of the solution for families. I think that flexible and remote work are often missing from the conversation about parenting. In my own experience, having flexibility with my hours has tremendously improved my ability to balance parenting and working.
You touched on this in the article, but I think it's worth reiterating the gap in our system for children before they go to school. After parental leave ends and before publicly-funded school begins, there is huge uncertainty for parents. Will they be able to afford childcare? And if they can, will they even get a space? There must be data on the impacts to our economy when parents are forced into taking additional time off work to care for children because of lack of affordable, accessible childcare. Would love to see you write more about this!
CBC is one of our most underrated assets...always at risk of being under-funded.
Canadians, young people especially do not tend to listen to "mainstream media" It's a shame.
Conservatives want to eliminate it because it's considered "leftist". Young people are tuned into their siloed favorites. What we lose is a national treasure-a shared Canadian source of information.
It is not Leftist but probing-questioning of assumptions. Most of our assumptions are pretty right wing because our culture- our shared capitalism is right wing. It does not have the answers that the likes of Jordan Peterson or Joe Rogan...pretend to have.
Designated days rather than every day is a day for the health interconnected-interdependent web of life-web of society. Housing insecurity produces a host of negative repercussions throughout that web of society. If you see society as an interconnected web anytime you see a basic need not being met-a strand broken the first sense you should make of it is that weakens all of us. Guaranteed Basic income for all would strengthen all parts of the webbing. So, would a serious government policy of building affordable home like we did after WWII for the veterans. What we need to do has been done before.
I agree Glen! A universal basic income would be a great start! The CERB, despite its many challenges, gave us a taste of it and I honestly thought the tide was turning in favour of UBI because it gave so many people a reprieve from the stress of unaffordable life. This generation's WWII is happening now. The country is in crisis and there's so little political courage out there to make BIG policy changes that are badly needed.
Yes Jennifer. Astra Taylor Friday night, gave the best argument I have ever heard for UBI. Her 5th lecture in this year's CBC Massey Lectures....All five lectures are available on the cbc Ideas website. She gets the Squeeze and has well thought through answers
It's hard not to feel as a young-ish person like recent (and belated!) spending commitments on housing have sort of been the bare minimum to try to get ahead of shifting sentiment on immigration targets rather than to actually prioritize the housing problem for its own sake, especially because targets for population growth have a lot to do with supporting an aging population. Certainly supply is not the whole story, but I don't think there's any question about the fact that fast population growth creates strain. (This is especially true when that growth is disproportionately adults who would mostly ideally be independent households, which makes it different than previous periods of fast growth.) It even shows up a little bit in the rhetoric about needing to plan for a growing Canada.
Might not be a problem if governments had treated population growth as a thing that requires real investment, both for immigrants themselves and to make sure the benefits of immigration are shared broadly, rather than a cheap way to rebalance demographics and grow the tax base, but I think there's a real dynamic where it's been assumed until recently most of the investment needed to support a growing population can be private even as many of the investments needed to support an aging population are public. Of course, part of the reason growth as a solution to that might feel attractive to governments in the first place is exactly because of the age-imbalance in spending and lack of investment in families GenSqueeze points out, but it can also exacerbate disparities.
I never thought about it like that Valerie but you're right! So many of the resources for immigrants are coming from private places: private businesses hiring them, private companies/landlords housing them, private religious institutions fundraising for them, nonprofits scrounging to help in every way possible and even private citizens doing their best to find winter clothes for them. A friend of mine took in an entire family on the spot because they were at risk of being homeless. Meanwhile, we're spending Billions$$$ in support for older Canadians who have record levels of wealth AND we're going into big time debt for it! A debt that future generations (including immigrants) will be paying for their entire lives. I am so shocked that governments consistently ignore the need to invest in schools for example to keep up with all the new people entering Canada. Is there a school anywhere that isn't overcrowded and frankly unsafe and detrimental to learning? It's so frustrating!!
Yeah, and even those community supports come on top of immigrants themselves having to pay more of their own way for some things (education for people who eventually immigrate, sponsored spouses not being eligible for social assistance even in changing circumstances, &c). I read an argument in a blog post about how you can't 'really' change dependency ratios with immigration because... immigrants also have parents! Not sure I buy that too literally, but there's a real sense in which immigrants who have to pay a lot for non-prepaid supports for seniors, that they themselves probably won't benefit from to the same degree, and then still (maybe) have to support their own parents get an even worse deal than other young Canadians.
Hey Valerie, Have you read Paul's Globe and Mail piece from back in April? He dives into this! It's so good! It really made me understand how immigrants are being placed in a tough situation because they are paying for past and present government's ability to plan better for how to support seniors. Here's a quote from it:
"This lack of foresight means government budgets are now in a precarious position. Boomers dutifully paid taxes according to the rules of the day. But those rules asked them to pay for the smaller percentage of retirees who came before them – not for the full cost of the medical care and income support they would actually use. As a result, those rules risk leaving unpaid bills for their offspring or insufficient public funding for the medical care and OAS on which boomers will increasingly rely. Given this historical legacy, larger immigration targets are attractive to governments. Rather than talk about whether boomers paid enough in taxes to fully cover the cost of their medical care and OAS, Canada plans to attract more workers to increase the total number of people available to pay taxes. This might have been a fine solution, but our invitation to come to Canada isn’t what it used to be."
As a new parent, I appreciated reading the "new policy solutions for families." I've been personally very grateful to Gen Squeeze and other organisations who in the past successfully advocated for making EI (and parental leave) accessible to self-employed individuals. This was an excellent step in the right direction to making parental leave available to all parents. There's more to be done when it comes to promoting shared leave and increasing benefit amounts, as you've noted.
I love that Gen Squeeze considers flexible work arrangements as part of the solution for families. I think that flexible and remote work are often missing from the conversation about parenting. In my own experience, having flexibility with my hours has tremendously improved my ability to balance parenting and working.
You touched on this in the article, but I think it's worth reiterating the gap in our system for children before they go to school. After parental leave ends and before publicly-funded school begins, there is huge uncertainty for parents. Will they be able to afford childcare? And if they can, will they even get a space? There must be data on the impacts to our economy when parents are forced into taking additional time off work to care for children because of lack of affordable, accessible childcare. Would love to see you write more about this!
CBC is one of our most underrated assets...always at risk of being under-funded.
Canadians, young people especially do not tend to listen to "mainstream media" It's a shame.
Conservatives want to eliminate it because it's considered "leftist". Young people are tuned into their siloed favorites. What we lose is a national treasure-a shared Canadian source of information.
It is not Leftist but probing-questioning of assumptions. Most of our assumptions are pretty right wing because our culture- our shared capitalism is right wing. It does not have the answers that the likes of Jordan Peterson or Joe Rogan...pretend to have.
Designated days rather than every day is a day for the health interconnected-interdependent web of life-web of society. Housing insecurity produces a host of negative repercussions throughout that web of society. If you see society as an interconnected web anytime you see a basic need not being met-a strand broken the first sense you should make of it is that weakens all of us. Guaranteed Basic income for all would strengthen all parts of the webbing. So, would a serious government policy of building affordable home like we did after WWII for the veterans. What we need to do has been done before.
I agree Glen! A universal basic income would be a great start! The CERB, despite its many challenges, gave us a taste of it and I honestly thought the tide was turning in favour of UBI because it gave so many people a reprieve from the stress of unaffordable life. This generation's WWII is happening now. The country is in crisis and there's so little political courage out there to make BIG policy changes that are badly needed.
Yes Jennifer. Astra Taylor Friday night, gave the best argument I have ever heard for UBI. Her 5th lecture in this year's CBC Massey Lectures....All five lectures are available on the cbc Ideas website. She gets the Squeeze and has well thought through answers
Oh cool! I'll take a listen! Thanks! I hadn't heard. CBC doesn't do a stellar job of promoting the Massey Lectures if you ask me.
It's hard not to feel as a young-ish person like recent (and belated!) spending commitments on housing have sort of been the bare minimum to try to get ahead of shifting sentiment on immigration targets rather than to actually prioritize the housing problem for its own sake, especially because targets for population growth have a lot to do with supporting an aging population. Certainly supply is not the whole story, but I don't think there's any question about the fact that fast population growth creates strain. (This is especially true when that growth is disproportionately adults who would mostly ideally be independent households, which makes it different than previous periods of fast growth.) It even shows up a little bit in the rhetoric about needing to plan for a growing Canada.
Might not be a problem if governments had treated population growth as a thing that requires real investment, both for immigrants themselves and to make sure the benefits of immigration are shared broadly, rather than a cheap way to rebalance demographics and grow the tax base, but I think there's a real dynamic where it's been assumed until recently most of the investment needed to support a growing population can be private even as many of the investments needed to support an aging population are public. Of course, part of the reason growth as a solution to that might feel attractive to governments in the first place is exactly because of the age-imbalance in spending and lack of investment in families GenSqueeze points out, but it can also exacerbate disparities.
I never thought about it like that Valerie but you're right! So many of the resources for immigrants are coming from private places: private businesses hiring them, private companies/landlords housing them, private religious institutions fundraising for them, nonprofits scrounging to help in every way possible and even private citizens doing their best to find winter clothes for them. A friend of mine took in an entire family on the spot because they were at risk of being homeless. Meanwhile, we're spending Billions$$$ in support for older Canadians who have record levels of wealth AND we're going into big time debt for it! A debt that future generations (including immigrants) will be paying for their entire lives. I am so shocked that governments consistently ignore the need to invest in schools for example to keep up with all the new people entering Canada. Is there a school anywhere that isn't overcrowded and frankly unsafe and detrimental to learning? It's so frustrating!!
Yeah, and even those community supports come on top of immigrants themselves having to pay more of their own way for some things (education for people who eventually immigrate, sponsored spouses not being eligible for social assistance even in changing circumstances, &c). I read an argument in a blog post about how you can't 'really' change dependency ratios with immigration because... immigrants also have parents! Not sure I buy that too literally, but there's a real sense in which immigrants who have to pay a lot for non-prepaid supports for seniors, that they themselves probably won't benefit from to the same degree, and then still (maybe) have to support their own parents get an even worse deal than other young Canadians.
Hey Valerie, Have you read Paul's Globe and Mail piece from back in April? He dives into this! It's so good! It really made me understand how immigrants are being placed in a tough situation because they are paying for past and present government's ability to plan better for how to support seniors. Here's a quote from it:
"This lack of foresight means government budgets are now in a precarious position. Boomers dutifully paid taxes according to the rules of the day. But those rules asked them to pay for the smaller percentage of retirees who came before them – not for the full cost of the medical care and income support they would actually use. As a result, those rules risk leaving unpaid bills for their offspring or insufficient public funding for the medical care and OAS on which boomers will increasingly rely. Given this historical legacy, larger immigration targets are attractive to governments. Rather than talk about whether boomers paid enough in taxes to fully cover the cost of their medical care and OAS, Canada plans to attract more workers to increase the total number of people available to pay taxes. This might have been a fine solution, but our invitation to come to Canada isn’t what it used to be."
https://www.gensqueeze.ca/canadian_immigration_targets_respond_to_generational_tensions
CBC Radio-that is-not CBC TV-which is commercial.