The deficit hawks who had been quiet during much of the early pandemic spending are back in full force and have signalled the terms of debate. And most  pundits and think tanks are asking the same questions:

When will Ottawa rein in spending?

The right answer, both substantively and politically, ought to be easy: we should spend whatever it takes, for as long as it takes, to beat the virus, keep people whole, and buy time for business.

More spending will be needed to kickstart the economy once enough of us are vaccinated.

And then we will have to turn our attention to the larger crises in which the COVID catastrophe is embedded: climate change, nature loss, economic inequality and insecurity, and the need for bold action, long overdue, on Indigenous reconciliation and racial justice.

That’s what’s needed and polling shows that’s where most Canadians are.

But when will the budget return to balance?

Balanced budgets are a lousy measure of fiscal responsibility. There are good reasons for borrowing, not just in a crisis but even in good times. In other words, there’s good debt—borrowing to meet human needs and set us up for a just and sustainable future—and bad debt—borrowing to fund tax cuts for those who need no help or to subsidize sectors which should not be growing.

Surely we should be debating which is which, rather than wringing our hands about getting to balance.

But don’t we need some kind of fiscal anchor?

Since the federal fiscal update, headline after headline has worried that the federal government has come unmoored, set adrift because the finance minister refused to indicate what “fiscal anchor” would constrain future spending. But even the IMF’s own research shows that there is no magic tipping point for when debt becomes toxic.

Not only is our current fiscal situation the envy of other rich countries, interest rates are so low that borrowing is pretty much free, the central bank is buying up billions of dollars of federal and provincial bonds, and so we are largely borrowing from ourselves.

In any case, what’s the rush to anchor ourselves? Doesn’t it make more sense to debate what we need before we arbitrarily decide what we can afford? An “anchor” just weighs us down and keeps us in place. Yes, there are risks in piling up debt. But there are even greater risks in doing too little to address the multiple crises we face.

Governments need to explain how they will assess and manage not only the risks to the treasury but, also, the risks to human health and community well-being.

But won’t this mean tax increases down the road?

Yes, and what’s wrong with that? To be sure that our investments are sustainable and that costs and benefits are distributed fairly, we will have to give tax reform a central place.

In the midst of a recession we should tread carefully. Nonetheless, some tax increases that have strong public support could even help in recovery: plug the leaks and close the loopholes that benefit the wealthy, tax the excess profits that some big businesses—especially the digital giants—reaped during the pandemic, even while so many suffered, and do more to get at wealth inequality.

In the medium term, we will need to look at comprehensive tax reform to fix what’s broken, adapt to new and emerging trends and risks, and ensure that those who benefit most from how things are pay the most to make things better.

To those who are worried about capital flight: given our strong fiscal position and the huge spending announced by the EU and the U.S., where in the world will capital fly?

To those who are worried about passing debt on to the next generation: a canard. The next generation pays the interest, sure, but they also collect the interest payments, not to mention getting a healthier environment, stronger infrastructure, and  livable communities.

Government is not like a household. Households don’t live for hundreds of years, issue their own money, impose taxes on or sell bonds to their members, friends and neighbours. Countries do.

COVID-19 has revealed and amplified the inequalities and cracks in our system, the cost of years of austerity politics. It has also reminded us that government can be a force for good.

Deficit and tax phobia have orchestrated a massive upward transfer of wealth, weakened the social fabric, and narrowed our sense of what is affordable and, therefore, what is possible.

Of course governments must tell us how they will pay for their plans, but rather than starting with an inevitably arbitrary anchor telling us what we can afford, we ought to be having a debate about the future we want, about what a just and green recovery looks like and the role of government in getting there.

We cannot afford to have that debate short-circuited by tax and debt paranoia.

Alex Himelfarb is chair of the CCPA national steering committee and the Narwhal board. He is a former Clerk of the Privy Council.

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There is a well-documented relationship between intolerance for non-dominant identities (think racialized, Indigenous, disabled, trans, gay, lesbian, female, Muslim, and physical appearances outside of oppressive standards) and school bullying and violence (Davis, 2018; Jiwani, 2005; Lachance, 2019; Robinson, 2012; Sykes, 2011; Walton, 2011). Of course, there are exceptions: individuals from all backgrounds can confront exclusionary and unwelcoming school and work environments. However, young people who transgress rigid social norms and expectations are those most often penalized by a multitude of consequences, ranging from micro-aggressions to physical violence. Through an anti-oppressive lens, school bullying and violence are the outcomes of social contexts that valorize straight, white, able-bodied and middle-class ways of
being, and devalue and other non-dominant groups. Adults often tell young people to “be themselves” without acknowledging that for non-dominant-group students, being “themselves” often has real social penalties. While a “just be yourself” approach is often well-intentioned, it risks locating the problem within those being targeted and victimized instead of the perpetrators. An anti-oppressive approach to school bullying requires us to not only hold the perpetrators accountable; it requires everyone in the school community to examine how taken for granted ways of doing and thinking privilege certain identities and marginalize others (Kumashiro, 2000).

The importance of anti-oppressive education for combatting bullying and violence in schools, and more precisely, anti-racist education, was foregrounded earlier this year by the events surrounding Kaleab Schmidt, a 13-year-old Black student from a small town in Saskatchewan. The story is a more recent example of how the systemic violence of racism—an issue in schools across the Canadian Prairies that school leaders often deny or do not acknowledge—can easily be transformed into a story about “bullying”. Kaleab Schmidt took his own life the day after he was suspended from school for punching a student who had called him a racial slur. A public inquest into his death revealed that for several years, students in the small community directed multiple forms of racism at Kaleab for which they faced few consequences.

In the delivery of their recommendations, the inquest jury stated, “a poster in the hallway is not effective”, alluding to the superficiality of common bullying “interventions”. While the gravity of what happened to Kaleab was not lost on the jury, they did not include anti-racist education in their recommendations. Instead, the jury asked that all instances of physical altercations, bullying and racism be investigated and documented, and further recommended an update and enforcement of anti-bullying policy with education for teachers, administration and students.

How this update of the policy and the recommended anti-bullying education will directly address racism is yet to be known, but it is crucial the issues of racism and white dominance in the community remain at the centre. The actions of Kaleab’s classmates, and the adults who did not hold them accountable, were not simply “unkind.” Nor were they exceptional. Their (in)actions emerged from a wider socio-historical context that has long upheld whiteness and marginalized Indigenous and racialized people on the Canadian prairies. The need to keep the focus on anti-racism was underlined in a media interview given by one of Kaleab’s classmates. When asked what she has learned at school about racism, she stated, “Nothing. It’s swept under the rug.”

In underlining the erasure of systemic oppression, the student’s words allude to the discomfort around talking to young people about racism and other forms of oppression. Many adults often feel unprepared to teach against oppression or even talk about it—and when it shows up in school hallways, the default response is a lecture on the golden rule or an admonishment about respect.

It is a myth that naming and talking about oppression and power will exacerbate “the problem”, and pretending it doesn’t exist is unfair to everyone. Young people learn from a young age that straight and white are “right”, that performing their assigned genders is safest, and disability is associated with deficit. The positive side is that young people are deeply motivated to question this harmful knowledge and work for social change. To do so, they require adults to support them in addressing the challenges of race, class, gender, sexuality and ableism they encounter on a daily basis.

Teachers and school administrators have the responsibility to design meaningful interventions based on their own contextual challenges. But they cannot shoulder the work of reframing bullying as forms of systemic injustice and do the work of anti-oppression education alone. Parents, guardians, family members, youth workers, counsellors, coaches, social workers, and medical professionals all play a pedagogical role in the lives of young people. Racism, homophobia and misogyny do play out at school where young people spend a large amount of time, but they are also taught at the dinner table, on sports teams, in daycares, churches, community organizations, in social services, and in the media.

There is nothing wrong with promoting kindness and positivity, but this alone is not a solution for ending oppression and systemic violence. We need to start naming and addressing the more uncomfortable aspects of school bullying and violence, and acknowledge their inseparability from larger social forces. Anyone can be kind and niceties are not social justice. Let’s reserve our accolades for those who are having courageous conversations about social differences disrupting the myth that everyone is treated equally and working to end injustice and oppression, inside and outside of school walls. And when Pink Day comes around again, remember Travis Price and David Shepherd not for being nice, but for taking a stand for social justice. œ

Amanda Gebhard is an assistant professor with the Faculty of Social Work at the University of Regina. She is thankful to her former young students for inspiring her to write about social justice in schools. This article originally appeared in the summer/fall 2020 issue of Our Schools / Our Selves. 

References

Davis, L.J. (2018). Go to the margins of the class: Disability and hate crimes. In Adams, A., Blumenfield, W.J., Catalano, D.C.J., Dejong, K.S., Hackman,
H.W., Hopkins, L.E., Love, B.J., Peters, M.L., Shlasko, D., & Zúñiga, X. (Eds.) Readings for diversity and social justice (4th ed., pp. 493–497). Routledge.

Jiwani, Y. (2005). Walking a Tightrope: The Many Faces of Violence in the Lives of Racialized Immigrant Girls and Young Women. Violence Against Women, 11(7), 846–875. https://doi.org/10.1177/1077801205276273

Kumashiro, K. (2000). Toward a theory of anti-oppressive education. Review of Educational Research, 70(1), 25–53.

Lachance, L. (2019). LGBTQ2+ youth priorities for addressing gender-based violence. Public Health Agency of Canada. https://www.wisdom2action.org/wp-content/uploads/
2019/06/GBV-Final-Report.pdf

Robinson, K.H. (2012). Sexual harassment in schools: Issues of identity
and power: Negotiating the complexities, contexts and contradictions of
this everyday practice. In S. Saltmarsh, K.H. Robinson & C. Davies (Eds.), Rethinking School Violence: Theory, Gender, Context (pp. 71–93). Palgrave Macmillan.

Sykes, H. (2011). Queer bodies: Sexualities, genders, & fatness in physical education. Peter Lang.

Walton, G. (2011). Spinning our wheels: Reconceptualizing bullying beyond behaviour-focused approaches. Discourse: Studies in the Cultural Politics of Education, 32(1), 131–144. doi:10.1080/01596306.2011.537079

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In the first dispute launched under the Canada-United States-Mexico Agreement (CUSMA), the U.S. is challenging how Canada has allocated additional market access, or tariff-rate quotas (TRQs), for American dairy products as agreed to during the CUSMA negotiations. 

“By setting aside and reserving a percentage of each dairy TRQ exclusively for processors, Canada has undermined the ability of American dairy farmers and producers to utilize the agreed-upon TRQs and sell a wide range of dairy products to Canadian consumers,” says a USTR press release announcing the dispute in December.

Many U.S. farmers, on the other hand, see the trade challenge as an unwarranted attack on Canadian farmers and a supply management system that is increasingly coveted south of the border.

“Dairy farmers and farm workers are fighting for their survival, literally and figuratively, while U.S. trade and agriculture policy is being leveraged against them for the benefit of corporate interests,” said the U.S. farmers and civil society groups in their letter to the USTR. “This action, if implemented, would imperil the livelihoods of Canadian farmers and unionized dairy processing workers, pitting U.S. dairy farmers against working families across the border.”

When CUSMA was being negotiated, Canada’s dairy sector had already lost a significant share of our domestic dairy market to Europe via the Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement (CETA) and to Pacific region countries via the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP). 

Under CUSMA, Canada maintained our supply management system but conceded an increase in tariff-free dairy imports (TRQs) from the U.S.: an additional 50,000 metric tonnes of fluid milk and 12,500 metric tonnes of cheese are to enter Canada duty-free by year six year of the agreement (the summer of 2026). Canada is implementing the CUSMA agreement by issuing permits to Canadian dairy processors, allowing them to import the agreed-upon volumes of U.S.-origin milk ingredients for processing in Canada. 

This is not enough for the aggressive corporate dairy lobby in the United States. The U.S. dairy lobby believes “the spirit” of the new NAFTA agreement would be for Canada to allow them to maximize potential benefits from CUSMA by importing their highest value processed products.

“We agree with the Canadian position on the merits but, more than that, and in solidarity with Canadian dairy farmers and dairy workers, we urge the Biden administration to withdraw the complaint,” the American allies countered in their letter. 

Smaller American dairy farms are in a severe crisis as a result of prolonged low farm-gate prices that are below the cost of production. Paradoxically, as prices fall production increases, as farms try to make up in volume what they are losing in price. This favours the largest farms and drives smaller farms out of business. 

There are fewer and larger dairy farms—some milk as many as 36,000 cows—while one-third of U.S. dairy farms disappeared in the last decade. The rapidly escalating debt and despair has created a suicide crisis in farming communities. American farmers are taking their own lives at rate 3.5 times higher than the general population. 

Meanwhile, large dairy processors responded to the Covid-19 disruption by unilaterally ending contracts, leaving small farmers with no access to market at all and no way to earn a livelihood or repay their loans. If the corporate dairy lobby’s interpretation of the CUSMA agreement prevails, these companies will have even greater ability to force farm-gate prices down and impose misery on more farm families and their communities.

“My heart breaks every time I hear about yet another family dairy farm disappearing as a result of a market that is guided by corporate interests,” says Ontario National Farmers Union member and dairy farmer Arwa de Groot. “I think we should do all we can to help create a supply-managed system for our friends to the south so they too can enjoy the fruits of their labour while producing sustainable, quality milk.”

In Canada, the NFU has been supporting American farmers in their efforts to bring about a fair dairy marketing system modelled after Canada’s supply management system. In 2017, the NFU sent a letter to the previous U.S. administration explaining the benefits of the Canadian model. It said that supply management:

has worked well for over 50 years…and it protects the interests of dairy farmers, processors, and consumers without drawing upon the public purse. Farmers receive a fair return for their labour, management and investment in return for controlling their volume of production; dairy processors receive a reliable supply of milk at predictable prices; consumers receive high quality, wholesome dairy products at reasonable prices and are never faced with shortages. The whole system runs without a penny of government subsidy payments. 

When Covid-19 hit, there was an abrupt change in consumer demand as people shifted to home cooking. Our supply management system was able to respond quickly and fairly, by sharing the burden of re-aligning production and processing needs. In contrast to the American experience, no Canadian dairy farmer lost their access to market as a result of the pandemic.

The supply management system also promotes environmentally friendly practices, in part due to reliable incomes that allow farmers to invest in soil-building, energy efficiency and on-farm renewable energy. With an average herd size of 89 cows, Canadian dairy farmers can integrate forage and feed production and manure management to build healthy soils, avoiding air and water pollution and high feed transportation costs. Economically stable family farms with smaller herds also go hand in hand with high animal welfare standards. 

Each province has its own supply-managed quota allocation, so processing plants required to serve local farmers also provide good jobs all across the country. Looking to the future, farmers elected as dairy board directors set up new entrant programs to help young farmers get started in dairy, often giving priority to those starting certified organic farms. Canada’s dairy sector is also responding to local food system initiatives by creating opportunities for innovative on-farm processing and direct marketing approaches.

We are encouraged by our American friends’ solidarity in calling for the withdrawal of the recent trade challenge, and we hope that President Biden will resist the pressure from “big dairy” with the same courage and imagination shown in his initiative to tackle climate change. We also hope that ending this trade challenge will be the Biden-Harris administration’s first step toward implementing supply management in the United States.

Cathy Holtslander is the Director of Research and Policy at the National Farmers Union. Her work includes analysing implications of international trade agreements for farmers and rural communities, as well promoting alternatives. She is a participant in the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternative’s Trade and Investment Research Project.

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Some countries are thinking creatively about how to achieve this feat. In a landmark move, India and South Africa have proposed to the members of the World Trade Organization (WTO) that governments have the right to temporarily suspend certain provisions of the Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) until herd immunity to COVID-19 is achieved. If the measure passes, countries would no longer be obliged to grant or enforce intellectual property rights over COVID-19 vaccines, diagnostic kits and other related medical technologies. The proposal, initially submitted in early October, has since gathered new co-sponsors and the support of over 100 WTO member governments.

Drafted in 1994, the TRIPS agreement sets out the minimum standards of protection of intellectual property (IP) rights to be provided by all WTO members. These monopoly rights grant inventors a period of exclusivity to produce and market their creations. Public health advocates have long suggested the agreement has encouraged an increase in drug prices and restrained access to life-saving technologies. In view of the special circumstances in low- and middle-income countries, the proposal from India and South Africa would waive obligations to protect patents, copyrights and technical know-how, which, they argue, provide little incentive to private pharmaceutical companies to meet public health needs and less to make their innovations widely and affordably available.

During a TRIPS Council meeting on Dec. 10, the proposed waiver was met with great resistance from some member states. Canada, the European Union (EU), the United States and Switzerland are among a small group of WTO members withholding their support for the waiver. Most are home to global leaders in the pharmaceutical industry and all have reached private deals with vaccine manufacturers, claiming the lion’s share of doses for themselves. 

Since decisions in the WTO are normally taken by consensus, these “vaccine nationalists” have stalled global efforts to equitably distribute medical tools to those in need. Nonetheless, in the absence of a consensus, the WTO agreement allows for a vote to be held. The TRIPS waiver could still be passed with a three-fourths majority vote, that is, with support from 123 of the WTO’s 164 member countries. 

Do the TRIPS flexibilities suffice? 

A number of rich countries, and the brand-name pharmaceutical industry, argue that the TRIPS framework offers governments sufficient latitude and flexibility over IP rights to effectively respond to public health emergencies. Article 31 of TRIPS, for instance, grants governments the power to issue compulsory licences, authorizing national manufacturing of low-cost generic equivalents of patented medicines. In effect, such licences suspend a patent holder’s right to exclusive production, especially during public health emergencies. In return, the patent holder gets a royalty. TRIPS rules also allow for parallel importing, where medicines manufactured in one country are exported under a compulsory licence to another country that typically lacks manufacturing capacity. 

Existing TRIPS flexibilities, while important, are inadequate given the scale and the urgency of the COVID-19 crisis. In order to issue compulsory licences or engage in parallel importing, countries must undergo a complex, cumbersome and time-consuming process. The “case-by-case” or “product-by-product” approach, required when using TRIPS flexibilities, is too limiting during the pandemic. Countries are forced to enter into a web of negotiations and bilateral deals with manufacturers for each essential part of a product, including raw materials, various components and packaging materials. When countries lack immediate manufacturing or institutional capacity, removing IP-related barriers on one product in one country alone will not be sufficient. 

In particular, compulsory licensing under TRIPS contains territorial and procedural restrictions, making it difficult for countries to truly collaborate and stand in solidarity. Article 31 is predominantly used to supply domestic markets, thereby limiting the issuing country’s ability to export generic equivalents to other countries in need. 

In addition to the procedural hurdles, countries face immense pressure from powerful trading partners. The EU and United States, two WTO delegations opposing the waiver proposal, published reports in 2020 condemning countries who continue to make use of compulsory licences. Therefore, the TRIPS agreement is a largely ineffective response to the unfair distribution of medical innovation. 

Is the COVAX Facility the answer to vaccine accessibility in Global South? 

Early last year, the World Health Organization (WHO) launched the COVAX Facility, an initiative pooling funding from nearly 180 governments to accelerate the development and distribution of COVID-19 vaccines. The facility, which promises to deliver two billion vaccine doses, 245 million courses of treatment and 500 million diagnostic tests to low- and middle-income countries by the end of 2021, is financed by wealthy economies. But according to internal WHO reports, COVAX faces a very high risk of failure due to “lack of funds, supply risks and complex contractual arrangements.” 

Waiver opponents such as the EU and Canada maintain that their contributions to the COVAX Facility and other voluntary measures preclude the need for a waiver. At most, however, these initiatives offer a short-term fix to the growing disparity in access between the Global North and South. While the COVAX alliance may multiply the supply provided by a small number of manufacturers, it does not increase nor diversify the number of suppliers, a core objective of the TRIPS waiver. 

Without a global scale-up of production in the Global South, the problem of global scarcity is far from resolved. Ensuring that multiple countries have the capacity and technical know-how is vital to building global immunity. As it stands, COVAX’s vaccine target only addresses 20% of the needs of Global South  countries. 

How can IP hinder public health initiatives? 

Opponents of the India–South Africa proposal attribute the progress in COVID-19 research to vigorous IP protections. In their view, the current patent system is robust and necessary for pharmaceutical innovation. Thomas Cueni, director-general of the International Federation of Pharmaceutical Manufacturers and Associations, claims that the inequitable distribution of COVID-19 vaccines has “nothing to do with intellectual property.” Rather, Cueni says, the challenge boils down to speedy manufacturing; once existing facilities are able to boost manufacturing capacity, doses of the vaccine will reach all corners of the world. 

Contrary to Cueni’s self-interested claims, there have been highly visible examples, throughout the pandemic, where the current IP system has failed to deliver medical supplies and treatment to the people who need it most. Thus far, Big Pharma’s “business-as-usual” exercise of IP rights has impeded mass testing for COVID-19, prevented local production of ventilator valves and delayed the crucial supply of N95 respirators for health care staff. These are only a few examples, compiled by the Médecins Sans Frontières (Doctors Without Borders), highlighting how IP persistently undermines and obstructs accessibility. 

For instance, engineers in Italy created a 3D-printed version of patented ventilator valves in response to growing pressures on the country’s health care system. The 3D-printed valves cost about USD$2-3USD to produce (compared to the USD$11,000USD price tag from the manufacturer) and can be rapidly produced factory-made in a fraction of the time. However, in using 3D-printing technologies, there is a great risk the production of these valves infringes on an existing patent, design or copyright. Fearing costly litigation, the engineers have not shared their digital print file and the technology is not widely used. These are only a few examples, compiled by the Médecins Sans Frontières (Doctors Without Borders), highlighting how IP persistently undermines and obstructs accessibility. 

The waiver has been endorsed by the WHO, several United Nations agencies, many public health experts and hundreds of civil society organizations, including the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives. The next formal meeting of the TRIPS Council is scheduled for early March. Informal discussions between members will continue throughout February to try and find a way forward for the waiver. Consensus seems to be out of reach following the informal TRIPs meeting in early February. Waiver opponents reiterated their positions and failed to acknowledge that IP rights have been a genuine barrier to accessing COVID-19 related technologies. These countries continue to stall progress on the issue, refusing to move to expediated text-based negotiations. The members will meet once again on February 25 to decide on a “neutral and factual” report for the General Council, according to the Geneva official. 

Growing public pressure on the small group of rich country governments blocking this vital public health initiative, which unfortunately includes Canada, will be critical during this time. 

More information on the TRIPS waiver proposal can be found on the CCPA website (www.policyalternatives.ca), on the Trade and Investment Research Project section under the Projects and Initiatives Tab.

Lucinda Chitapain (she/her) is an intern at the CCPA, working closely on the Trade and Investment Project. She is a second-year student at Osgoode Hall Law School, with a concentration in transnational and international law.

This article is forthcoming in the March/April 2021 issue of the Monitor. Click here to subscribe to the Monitor.

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That would have been nice. But recent data from the Canadian Mortgage and Housing Corporation (CMHC) shows the opposite: rents are going up, pandemic or not. 

Between October 2019 and October 2020, average rents for a two-bedroom unit in Canada went up by 3.5%. The inflation rate for the same period was 0.7%, or five times lower. 

These rent increases varied by province. Ontario (4.8%) witnessed the largest increase in average rents, Quebec (3.3%) was close to the national average, British Columbia (2.1%) was at the lower end, and Alberta (0.1%) saw the smallest increase of all provinces. (See table below for details.) 

Looking at the country’s largest cities, Toronto, Montreal, and Vancouver, it’s hard to find any sign of improvements for tenants. The CMHC report tells a similar story for the three cities, which can be summarized in four points: 

1. Rents continued to increase in 2020. Between October 2019 and 2020, rents for two-bedroom units went up by 4.6% in Toronto, 3.6% in Montreal, and 1.5% in Vancouver. For Toronto and Vancouver, rents went up by less than in the preceding 12 months, but they unequivocally increased. 

2. Rents faced by prospective tenants are considerably higher than those of existing tenants. On average, tenants moving between two-bedroom units will pay more: 31% more in Montreal, 20% more in Toronto, and 18% more in Vancouver. (The increases for one-bedroom units are similar.)

3. Vacancy rates are up but primarily at the expensive end of the market. In Toronto, as the chart below shows, vacancy rates remained below 2% for units going for less than $1,400 per month. In Montreal, the vacancy rate for units priced less than $1,000 was at or below 2%. In Vancouver, the rate was 2.7% for units between $1,500 and $1,750, but below 2% for all units below $1,500. While higher vacancy rates arguably increase choice and bargaining power for prospective tenants, the trends we are seeing will primarily benefit tenants with higher incomes. 

4. Landlords are unwilling to lower asking rents. The CMHC report concluded that landlords are responding to the higher vacancy rates by offering incentives to prospective tenants (e.g., one month free or gift cards) or holding units vacant, rather than lowering the rent. 

The report authors noted that in Toronto the rising rents alongside a higher vacancy rate “suggests that landlords may be less willing to offer lower rents and instead offer alternative incentives (at the risk of holding vacant units).” In Greater Montreal, the authors conjectured that large corporate landlords and investment firms might absorb higher vacancy rates and continue to insist on rent increases. 

Taken together, these four points mean that high-income tenants may be spoiled for choice, but they are still likely to pay more than they did in their previous home. Tenants on a lower income are better off staying put. If they are lucky, their province has rent increase guidelines, and their landlords won’t be able to circumvent it using the above-guideline increase application loophole. 

So, where is the idea of a “renter’s market” coming from?

The most likely explanation is that some observers are reading too much into data from Rentals.ca, a website for landlords advertising rental accommodation. In addition to providing a platform for posting and searching vacant units, the website publishes monthly reports on rent trends. Recent reports show average asking rents are lower than a year ago. But as the author of these reports explains, Rentals.ca data is much different from CMHC data.

CMHC works with a much larger sample that includes vacant and occupied units across towns and cities with 10,000 residents or more; its reports and data tables provide a comprehensive picture of Canada’s rental market trends. Rentals.ca collects data only on the vacant units posted on its platform; its reports provide useful and timely insights into rent trends, but they should be read with caution as the data doesn’t capture occupied units and includes only a partial and not necessarily representative sample of vacant units. 

Even if asked rents for vacant units have gone down, as the Rentals.ca reports would suggest, the fulsome picture provided by CHMC data is that tenants are paying more rent, and that’s true for both tenants who stayed put and those moving between similar units. 

Most concerningly, the market incentive to push tenants out – due to arrears accumulated during lockdowns, via renovictions, or any other reason–is still very much present. In the absence of rent controls on vacant units, there is money to be made from evictions, and some landlords will cash that money, pandemic or not. 

Hannah Aldridge is the Research and Policy Analyst at Maytree. You can follow her on Twitter at @HSAldridge (though she doesn’t really tweet). 

Ricardo Tranjan is a political economist and senior researcher with the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives’ Ontario office. You can follow him on Twitter at @ricardo_tranjan.

Table 1. Percentage change of average rent for two-bedroom units from October 2019 to October 2020.*  

*Existing structures only. 

Source: CMHC. 2021. Rental Market Survey Data Tables. 

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While BIPOC workers are overrepresented in jobs that the pandemic exposed as economically precarious, they are also underrepresented in Ontario’s teacher workforce. Indeed, the most comprehensive data collected indicated that approximately 90 per cent of Ontario teachers are white.   

As I’ve argued elsewhere, such as in my piece Racializing Merit: The Revocation of Regulation 274/12 and Teacher Hiring in Ontario, there are profound implications to not addressing the composition and implications of a workforce that is predominantly white, female and heteronormative. This largely mirrors the makeup of education faculties as well those who make admission decisions, and informs the demographics of educational administrators who are responsible for teacher hiring.

Education Minister Stephen Lecce took advantage of this as a highly politicized and partisan opportunity to argue that not requiring directors of education to hold OCT (Ontario College of Teachers) credentials, or to actually have educational experience, would encourage diversity. In doing so, not only did the minister reinforce the prioritization of “business” leadership skills over “pedagogical” leadership skills, he also failed to outline the specifics of how the removal of OCT qualifications for those in positions of education leadership will increase diversity in a tangible manner. 

The Ontario College of Teachers under direction of the Ministry of Education has commissioned the issuance of emergency teaching certificates to teacher candidates currently enrolled in Ontario pre-service education programs that are set to graduate at the end of 2021 (OCT, 2020). While this move will allow for teacher candidates to earn wages during their practicum hours, there are far too many unknowns accompanying this measure. For example, it is unclear whether teacher candidate wages will be on par with regular school board OTs, as well as whether or not teacher candidates will be unionized with job protections. This begs the question of whether or not it would be more equitable to just have paid practicums due to the increased cost/debt factor incurred with teacher education programs now being two years rather than one year. If practicums were to be paid, this would likely make teacher education programs more accessible for many BIPOC communities; teacher candidates do not have to engage in unpaid labour, while also paying increasing tuition fees, during times of economic hardship. 

Minister Stephen Lecce announced during his briefing on February 1st that the certificates will expire at the end of August 2021 for those who have not taken or passed the Math Proficiency Test (MPT), or on December 31st 2021 for those who have. So while this policy allows teacher candidates to make connections with school communities and administrators in the short term, it is a strategy that will only reinforce job precarity in the long run, a trend that already disproportionately impacts BIPOC people throughout the province. 

Throughout the pandemic, faculties of education have undertaken drastic changes such as switching to online learning, virtual practicums and office hours for mentorship, to keep teacher education programs afloat, while trying to accommodate the various needs of students. However, while there have been discussions about the impact of the shutdown and the reliance on remote learning for marginalized students in K-12, much less attention has been paid to the implications for BIPOC teacher candidates. This highlights the discrepancies between decision-makers and faculty members–those in positions of authority, who are predominantly white–who design policy, and those who are impacted by it, with little regard for or understanding of their personal or familial needs and responsibilities. 

Massive and widespread shifts from traditional to online learning pedagogies create a double barrier for BIPOC teacher candidates who are already disproportionately affected by the pandemic. As Carl James notes, shifts to online teaching and learning pedagogies are designed for financially secure, abled, white students (James, 2020), who have access to more resources, as well as the cultural and social capital in order to successfully navigate these changes and systems which are designed for them. In order to ensure the shift from face-to-face to online learning and the move from in-school to virtual teaching practicums do not further impede BIPOC students of education–who must already navigate the racialized spaces teacher education embodies–I offer the following recommendations as a starting point. 

Recommendations

1. Make turning cameras on optional-this will allow for BIPOC students to have privacy and dignity to engage in their courses while also tending to familial or employment responsibilities
2. Allow teacher candidates to record and submit presentations rather than presenting live. Presenting live to their peers and instructors as this may violate the privacy of students and their families, and living spaces. The timing of the live presentations may not be suitable should students be engaged in caring for their children during school hours
3. The OCT, faculties of education, unions, boards and the Ministry of Education must do more to advocate for longer term teaching employment, so that teacher candidates are not considered a cheap, short term labour supply. This will help ensure much needed financial and career security for many students, and in particular BIPOC students disproportionately impacted by the economic hardships of the pandemic. 

Dr. Zuhra Abawi is an Assistant Professor of Education at Niagara University Ontario. 

References 

Abawi, Z., & Eizadirad, A. (2020). Bias-Free or Biased Hiring? Racialized Teachers’ Perspectives on Educational Hiring Practices in Ontario. Canadian Journal of Educational Administration and Policy, 193, 18-31. 

Colour of Poverty. (2019). Colour of poverty factsheets. Retrieved from https://colourofpoverty. ca/fact-sheets/. 

James, C. E. (2020). Racial Inequity, COVID-19 and the Education of Black and Other Marginalized Students. Royal Society of Canada. Retrieved from https://rsc-src.ca/en/covid-19/impact-covid-19-in-racialized-communities/racial-inequity-covid-19-and-education-black-and 

Ontario College of Teachers. (2020). New certificate helps province address COVID-19-related teacher shortages. Retrieved from https://www.oct.ca/public/media/announcements/new-certificate-helps-province-address-covid19-related-teacher-shortage 

Rushowy, K. Ministry gives go-ahead for boards to hire teacher-ed students for supply positions. Toronto Star. Monday February 1st, 2021. Retrieved from https://www.thestar.com/politics/provincial/2021/02/01/ministry-gives-go-ahead-for-boards-to-hire-teacher-ed-students-for-supply-positions.html 

United Way Greater Toronto. (2019). Rebalancing the Opportunity Equation. Retrieved from https://youthrex.com/report/rebalancing-the-opportunity-equation/ 

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If the federal government is mentioned at all by the Saskatchewan government, it is usually either as an unhelpful or incompetent irritant to the provincial government’s otherwise best laid plans.

Indeed, based on statements by our Premier, one could be forgiven for thinking the federal government has contributed nothing more substantial than unwanted criticism to our provincial COVID-19 response.

So many in our province might be surprised to discover the true extent of the federal government’s COVID-19 funding commitments to Saskatchewan, particularly in comparison to what our own provincial government has (and has not) spent. Picking up the Tab: A complete accounting of federal and provincial COVID-19 measures 2020 by CCPA Senior Economist David Macdonald offers a complete breakdown of who has been funding what in our province.

Most COVID-19 spending in Saskatchewan is on the fed’s dime

The vast majority of COVID-19-related spending in Saskatchewan has been exclusively from the federal government. Of all COVID-19-related spending in the province, 90% has been federal money, while 10% has been provincial.

Obviously, a significant amount of this federal money has been for income supports to workers and businesses. Almost half the province’s workforce—241,650 applicants—have relied on CERB at some point during the crisis, while Saskatchewan businesses have received almost $1 billion in Canada Emergency Wage Subsidies (CEWS) and will likely receive $1.6 billion before the program wraps up.

Beyond income supports, the federal government is also funding the vast majority of spending for COVID-19-related health spending (98%), funding to support municipal operating and transit budgets (100%) and COVID-19 adaptation in schools and child care centres in the province (92%).

What this demonstrates is that, despite Mr. Moe’s constant attacks on Ottawa over carbon pricing and equalization, federalism is working.

As David Macdonald writes: “Federal power, in a lot of cases, is precisely its spending power; the ability to provide funding for programs that, particularly for the smaller provinces, simply wouldn’t be possible without it.”

Room for more leadership from the Saskatchewan government

Certainly the Saskatchewan government, by itself, does not have the fiscal capacity to fund the type of income supports required to weather this pandemic. That being said, the province is not without means, nor responsibility, to spend provincial dollars in other COVID-19-affected areas.

It is here that we see the real failure of leadership by the current provincial government. Not only has it refused to spend adequate provincial dollars to address provincial needs, but it has also failed to spend or access federal dollars designated to address those needs.

The provincial government has left millions of federal dollars on the table, both by refusing to spend monies already delivered and by failing to fully access available federal dollars.

It has left unspent $18.6 million for the safe restart of childcare, $13 million to help train early childhood workers and $42 million for job training for workers in hard hit sectors.

Saskatchewan has also not fully accessed federal money in several other funds, leaving $49.4 million for the essential workers wage-top-up on the table, as well as $31 million from the Safe Long-Term Care fund and $11.5 million for the purchase of hotels and motels for rapid housing.

Why the government has decided to forgo these funds is unclear. Certainly it cannot be for lack of need. As we currently experience the highest levels of infection and transmission in the country, the government cannot pretend to have the luxury of not accessing and spending every available dollar to protect its residents and mitigate the harm from the pandemic.

However, if the province has been miserly with federal money, it has been equally stingy with its own, particularly in comparison to other provinces that have made substantial COVID-19-related investments in key areas.

For instance, in regards to funding for health care (COVID-19 testing, PPE, health and long-term care) Saskatchewan is only spending $30 a person after federal transfers are accounted for. In comparison, Ontario and Quebec are spending over $150 a person, while Manitoba is spending $252 a person.

The province is spending substantial amounts of its own money on new infrastructure (the Saskatchewan government is currently sitting on $1.4 billion in unallocated infrastructure funds; this is money already in the budget, but not yet allocated to infrastructure projects). But while such money may be sorely needed as a stimulus to our badly damaged economy, it does nothing to address the out of control damage of the COVID-19 virus right now.

Failure to spend looks like callous recklessness

As it has throughout this crisis, the Saskatchewan government appears more concerned with mitigating the economic impacts of the virus than fighting the virus itself, with results that speak for themselves.

Lastly, throughout the pandemic, the Saskatchewan government has been quick to tout the state of its finances, in spite of the crisis, reporting lower deficits than anticipated and continuing to commit to a balanced budget by the 2024 election.

The irony is, that for all the ire that Mr. Moe directs at Prime Minister Trudeau, it may very well be the largesse of the federal government, coupled with the underspending of transferred dollars, that has allowed Saskatchewan to post such rosy fiscal numbers.

While in any other situation such news might be greeted by some as evidence of fiscal responsibility, during the worst public health crisis in 100 years, failure to spend and access every available dollar to protect us from the ravages of this pandemic looks a lot less like financial caution and a lot more like callous recklessness.

Simon Enoch is Director of the Saskatchewan Office of the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives. Unless otherwise indicated, all data cited from David Macdonald’s Picking up the Tab: A complete accounting of federal and provincial COVID-19 measures 2020

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It should be. As of Jan. 25, COVID-19 had killed at least 5,846 Ontarians, including 3,376 residents and staff in our long-term care homes. More people have now died in the second wave of the virus, which began in September, than died in the first.

You might think that means the provincial government is pulling out all the stops to save lives in the months still to be endured before millions of Ontarians can be vaccinated. At a time like this, you might think Queen’s Park would “spare no expense,” to borrow a phrase from Premier Doug Ford.

You might think that, but you’d be wrong.

When COVID-19 hit, the federal government turned on a firehose of money to fight it. In a new report out today, CCPA senior economist David Macdonald pegs federal pandemic assistance to individuals, businesses, and programs in Ontario at $136 billion in 2020. Put another way, that’s more than $9,200 per person. Only one province—Alberta—has received more federal aid per capita.

But when it comes to spending by provinces, it’s a different story.

Among the six provinces outside the Atlantic bubble, no province has spent less per capita to fight COVID-19 in 2020 than Ontario.

Queen’s Park’s spending of its own money on COVID-19 (not money transferred from the feds) has totalled roughly $9 billion, or just over $600 per person. In percentage terms, the Ford government has picked up the tab for just 6% of overall pandemic spending in the province.

At the end of 2020, the province was holding back $6.4 billion in three different COVID-19 contingency funds. These are funds the province has committed to borrowing and spending, on its own, if things get bad enough.

Well, they’re bad enough. That’s why we’re in a state of emergency.

The areas that are desperate for help are well-known, from essential workplaces to schools to the long-term care sector, where the majority of pandemic deaths have occurred. Yet the Ford government has consistently hesitated in the battle against COVID-19.

“We’re going to continue being very fiscally conservative,” the premier said back in August. On that score, he appears to have kept his word. But at what cost in lives?

Eight months ago today, Ford held a historic news conference in which he released details of a report by the Canadian Armed Forces on “disgusting” (his word) conditions in certain long-term care homes. “Everything is on the table to fix a broken system,” Ford said. “I’ll spare no expense to make sure we fix the system. That’s what we’re gonna do. We’re gonna make sure we fix the system.”

Eight months later, the system’s not fixed. Over 500 long-term care residents and staff in Ontario have already died of COVID-19 in January alone.

Throughout the pandemic, the premier has repeatedly called on the federal government for financial help. In doing so, he has conceded—perhaps inadvertently—that tackling the crisis calls for more spending. But he has not made the case that the federal government has failed to deliver the dollars during the pandemic.

That’s a very difficult case to make.

Federal money has done a lot of heavy lifting in the battle against COVID-19, including in areas of clear provincial jurisdiction like health, education, and municipal services. That does not mean the province can sit idly by as the death toll climbs.

In creating its large contingency funds many months ago, the Doug Ford government apparently imagined how bad COVID-19 could be. But imagination is not enough. Saving lives calls for action, and action now—not next month, not next fiscal year, but now.

History will show that endless delays and half-measures contributed to hundreds if not thousands of deaths that could have been avoided. Sadly, we can’t change the past, and neither can Queen’s Park. But it can change the present, and changing the present means spending money.

Hundreds of lives are hanging in the balance.

Randy Robinson is the Ontario Director of the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives. Follow him on Twitter at @RandyFRobinson.

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A couple of months ago, my colleague Hadrian Mertins-Kirkwood considered five ways in which Canada’s climate policy might be affected (hopefully for the better) by the Biden-Harris presidency.

Inauguration day now safely behind us (phew), I thought I would perform a similar thought experiment with Biden’s proposed worker- and climate-centred trade agenda—and how Canada could constructively respond.

1. Take a chill pill on government procurement

The Canadian political and business establishment gets nervous about any change in government south of the border. But they are especially jittery about Biden’s plans for stricter domestic content preferences in federal procurement (Buy American) and state transfers (Buy America).

The typical Canadian response to these popular and longstanding U.S. measures is to climb atop a “rules-based trade” soapbox, cry “protectionism” (see photo above) and demand a waiver for Canadian firms, who might otherwise be locked out of public infrastructure projects. This strategy has never worked and stands even less of a chance now, in the middle of a national economic and health crisis much worse the Great Recession of a decade ago.

The best thing we can do in this situation is to chill, watch, and learn. Canadian business will benefit more, on the whole, from a sustained U.S. recovery than from a temporary, modest and uncertain slice of Biden’s stimulus spending pie.

Federal and provincial governments would do better to adopt their own sustainability criteria and, where possible under global trade rules, put local economic development conditions on public spending that favour local goods, services and employment.

Canadian versions of Buy America and Buy American (e.g., sustainability conditions on federal transfers to the provinces and territories) could spark a conversation between the Trudeau government and Biden administration about the mutual benefits of a potential “Buy North American” strategy, as proposed by the United Steelworkers during the first Obama presidency.

Co-operating with the U.S. on public procurement of regionally produced renewable energy infrastructure, for example, would have the added benefit of more rapidly “greening” the North American grid (another Biden priority) while creating millions of good jobs on both sides of our shared border.

2. Get serious about labour rights and environmental protections

In a speech earlier this month, Katherine Tai, Biden’s pick for United States Trade Representative (USTR), expressed the new administration’s desire to “implement a worker-centered trade policy.” Tai touted the incorporation of enforceable labour and environmental provisions in the NAFTA replacement agreement (USMCA, or CUSMA in Canada) as an example of the kind of reforms she will seek in future trade policy, to “address longstanding wounds and grievances suffered by regular working people.”

Already, Democrats are looking to prioritize U.S. government enforcement of the CUSMA labour protections in disputes that will expose the power and limits of the new NAFTA to stop companies from violating core labour rights (e.g., to bargain freely) and improve working conditions across the continent (more on the CUSMA labour provisions here). This activist agenda is endorsed by powerful U.S. labour voices like AFL-CIO and the autoworkers and, tentatively, by Mexican worker advocates like the Maquila Solidarity Network.

The Trudeau government could complement the Biden administration’s enforcement strategy by setting up an impartial body to hear complaints from the public about international labour violations. As CCPA researcher Scott Sinclair proposed last year, credible complaints should compel the federal government to take up the case, up to and including a state-to-state dispute settlement proceeding to solve the labour violations.

With respect to enforcement of environmental protections, Earl Blumenauer, a Democrat from Oregon who chairs the House Ways & Means trade subcommittee, also said this month that he hopes to add more environmental provisions to CUSMA, a move rejected by the Trump administration. This would be a way “to build momentum, build some trust and get people in the mindset on where we go from here,” he said. If Biden moves in this direction, Trudeau should be willing to come to the table.

On January 19, a group of 122 House lawmakers wrote to Biden urging him to agree with Canada and Mexico to add the Paris climate agreement to a list of multilateral environmental agreements that the parties to CUSMA pledge to adopt and maintain, per Article 24.8. This should be a no-brainer for the Trudeau administration, and a move that may create opportunities for governments, environmental advocates and the public to challenge policies in any North American jurisdiction that run counter to Paris commitments to significantly lower greenhouse gas emissions.

3. Co-operate on protective regulation

Late last year, the Trudeau government announced that it would be adding plastic waste to the list of controlled (toxic) substances under the Canadian Environmental Protection Act, as part of an integrated plastics management plan. The move, which opens up regulatory options now that might otherwise have been difficult, or might have taken too long to establish in law, was immediately challenged by the North American petroleum and chemicals lobbies as a possible violation of the “good regulatory practices” and “technical barriers to trade” chapters in CUSMA.

These business agitators do not have a strong CUSMA case against the Canadian proposal. But they are correct that the new NAFTA enshrines a regulatory mentality and administrative practices under which public and environmental protections should impose as small a “burden” on business as possible and avoid creating new obstacles to trade.

The problem with this mindset is that curbing harmful and unnecessary plastic products and packaging demands the exact opposite approach: we need regulations that create new costs for plastic-polluting companies and that impose new barriers to international trade in plastics.

In December, a prominent group of Senate Democrats sent a letter to Trump’s USTR Robert Lighthizer defending the Canadian plastics management proposal. Under the Biden administration, Canadian and U.S. environmental scientists, municipal and state-level governments and other advocates of environmental protection measures could be enlisted into a coalition for an aligned U.S.-Canadian plan that would also, coincidentally, lower trade costs—albeit not in the way industry groups would like to see.

In the long run, Canada and the U.S. will need to rewind and reform their domestic regulatory policies and bilateral regulatory cooperation activities that currently put business in the driver’s seat. One of Biden’s first executive orders seems to move in this direction, according to Washington, D.C.-based Public Citizen. A win for stronger environmental protections via Canada-U.S. cooperation on plastics would demonstrate what an alternative regulatory mentality and more precautionary international regulatory co-operation can achieve.

4. Jointly back a TRIPS waiver at the WTO

The Biden-Harris administration promises to take the COVID-19 crisis more seriously than Trump did, while Trudeau bragged that his government’s vaccine procurement and rollout strategy is the envy of countries such as Germany. However, both the United States and Canada have opposed a modest proposal at the World Trade Organization (WTO) that would help poorer countries provide for their citizens as well.

Canada, the U.S. and a few other rich countries are blocking a proposal from India and South Africa—backed by over 100 other countries—to temporarily suspend intellectual property rights in the WTO TRIPS agreement for the purpose of speeding up and lowering the cost of responding to the COVID-19 emergency.

Last year, Canada’s own COVID-19 legislation, Bill C-13, authorized the temporary suspension of patents and trade secrets to respond to shortages and protect public health. It is hypocritical and disingenuous for the Trudeau government to be blocking less well-off countries from doing the same.

Given Biden’s need to shore up international allies in the wake of Trump’s foreign policy wrecking ball, the new administration might be open to putting the profits of Big Pharma temporarily aside at the WTO. A Canadian softening on the TRIPS waiver may create room for Biden to do the same.

For any of this to happen, the Canadian government has to want it to, which is an open question. But Canada would be wise to try to work with and amplify the Biden administration’s mildly progressive instincts, rather than spend the next four years fretting about U.S. economic, environmental and trade policy reforms that will more likely than not benefit Canadian workers as well.

Stuart Trew is a senior researcher at the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives and incoming Director of the CCPA’s Trade and Investment Research Project.

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Here are 10 things to know:

1. The current recession may contribute to rising homelessness across Canada, but that matter is complicated by several factors. Those factors include: a lag effect of up to five years from the time a recession starts until its impact fully plays out; the many unknowns that lie ahead (e.g., whether there will be future waves of the pandemic, what types of new social benefits are announced, etc.); and differences from one community to another (with respect to both the labour market and housing market, for example).

2. A recession’s lag effect stems, in part, from a strong desire of households to avoid absolute homelessness. When faced with reduced income or outright job loss, a household may try to arrange a rental arrears plan with their landlord; they may also borrow money from family and friends. They may try to move into cheaper housing as well, or move in with family or friends. The lag effect also stems from Canada’s elaborate social welfare system. For example, Employment Insurance (and more recently the Canada Emergency Response Benefit) can cushion the blow from job loss and help households hang on to their housing. Social assistance, while not as generous, can also delay homelessness onset.

3. This lag effect means there is time for senior orders of government to plan homelessness prevention initiatives. Since it could be a few years before we see rising homelessness in some communities as a result of the current recession, there is time for preventive measures to be designed, implemented and to take effect. Those measures could target households that are either at serious risk of becoming homeless or that have just become homeless.[1]

4. The recession’s impact on homelessness will vary from one community to another. Housing markets, income assistance systems and homelessness system planning frameworks vary across Canada. What is more, migration patterns over the next several years will be hard to predict. As a result, it is challenging to say which Canadian communities will see rising homelessness at what junctures in time. We do know that, thus far, the following types of workers in Canada have been most directly affected by the COVID-19 recession: young people, women, non-married persons, and persons without high school accreditation.

5. In order to monitor the many complex factors involved here, policy-makers needs to track various indicators. The report recommends that ESDC track the following indicators as the recession unfolds: the official unemployment rate; the percentage of Canadians falling below the Market Basket Measure (and especially those falling below 75% of the Market Basket Measure);[2] social assistance benefit levels; median rent levels; the rental vacancy rate; the percentage of households with extreme shelter cost burdens; evictions; and average nightly occupancy in emergency shelters.

6. This tracking will require some nuance. As much as possible, such tracking should emphasize both how these indicators have changed since the start of the pandemic, and how this change varies across both geographical areas and specific populations (e.g., women, youth, Indigenous peoples, etc.).

7. The report recommends that the federal government enhance the Canada Housing Benefit (CHB). This benefit provides financial assistance to help low-income households afford rent. It is expected that half of this money will come from the federal government, and the other half from provinces and territories. The CHB was supposed to launch nationally on April 1, 2020, however, just five provinces have formally agreed to terms regarding the CHB. The federal government could increase the value of this benefit, which could encourage other provinces and territories to sign on. For example, the federal government might offer 2/3 or 3/4 cost-sharing.

8. The report also recommends that the federal government take a soft approach to recovering CERB overpayments from social assistance recipients. This is important in light of the considerable confusion that existed as the CERB was being rolled out. Such an approach might include not trying to fully recover the value of the CERB from these individuals (via the tax system). Even complete amnesty should be considered in some cases.

9. The report recommends that ESDC introduce a new funding stream for Reaching Home (i.e., the federal government’s main funding vehicle for homelessness). The report discusses the successful implementation of prevention efforts in the United States following the 2008-09 recession, and encourages ESDC to introduce something similar for Canada. A new prevention stream could focus on time-limited financial assistance directed at households who are either still housed (but at risk of becoming homeless), are in the process of losing their housing, or who have just begun to experience absolute homelessness. Targeting can evolve over time, in light of changes seen in the aforementioned indicators (e.g., the official unemployment rate, the percentage of persons with incomes below the Market Basket Measure, etc.).

10. The report identifies policy changes that could be made by provincial and territorial governments. These include increases to social assistance benefit levels, the reinstatement of social assistance eligibility for recipients who became ineligible due to the CERB, and the encouragement of housing-focused practices at emergency shelters.

In sum. Since we know there is serious risk for more homelessness in Canada as a result of the current recession, senior orders of government need to limit the damage. Well-designed prevention efforts can be more cost-effective than emergency responses after the fact.

I wish to thank Susan Falvo and Vincent St-Martin for assistance with this blog post.

[1] It is also very important to continue addressing existing homelessness. I’ve written about that here.

[2] For more on the Market Basket Measure, see this blog post.

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