Sunday Morning Links

This and that for your Sunday reading.

- Cam Dearlove writes a must-read column on the role of housing in building a healthy society:

For housing advocates and researchers, our nation’s inability to make headway on homelessness and housing instability is not only a moral failure, but also a financial one. Studies have consistently shown a positive return on investing in ending homelessness – one program in Waterloo Region, which combats persistent homelessness, has estimated returns of $9.45 in value for every dollar spent.

Housing for each of us is about so much more than shelter, as the quality and adequacy of housing is a key determinant of health. Crowded housing puts us at greater risk of spreading illness, while environmental issues such as mold can lead to chronic health issues. High housing costs take away from the money that could be spent on other quality of life determinants, such as healthy food, while the stress of unaffordable housing can lead to long-term physical and mental health issues.
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The experience of homelessness is particularly damaging to children. Studies show the experience to be traumatic, with major emotional, psy- chological, and physiological impacts, often manifesting in behavioural challenges and poorer outcomes in school. Preventing children from this experience seemed an obvious priority, said Angela Pye, Social Planning Associate with the Region of Waterloo. “We looked at our limited resources and asked: “what could we do that would make a difference upstream?” The Region of Waterloo responded by working with community partners to redesign the local Families in Transition program to include a shelter diversion pilot, where workers intervene early to help families retain their housing or find new housing, all part of a plan to avoid ever reaching a shelter. Sometimes this work requires additional resources to support shelter diversion, such as covering rent or utility arrears.

“It makes sense to support that individual or family, because it’s the right thing to do and aligns with our values as a system – but it’s also cost-effective, as it’s much less expensive to end someone’s experience of homelessness, with costs often borne in other systems,” said Pye.
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Today the poor house seems like such an outdated and archaic institution – with the will, and adequate, long-term investments from provincial and federal governments, homeless shelters could be viewed the same way tomorrow.

- Lana Payne discusses the IMF's recognition that unions are essential to combat inequality. Deirdre Fulton reports on the Congressional Progressive Caucus' work to develop trade agreements which benefit the public, not only their corporate sponsors. And Mark Barabak writes that we may soon see a Bernie Sanders candidacy for the U.S. presidency focused on empowering the public rather than the wealthy few.

- Meanwhile, Ros Wynne-Jones points out how a deliberate move toward precarious employment is making it difficult for people to survive in care-related professions.

- Finally, Alan Sears rightly questions the cult of the entrepreneur. But I'll note that the focus on the difference between large and small business may miss an even more important point: there's no reason why new ideas should have to be developed solely by individuals staking their livelihoods on long odds of success, rather than public investment in socially beneficial innovation.

Saturday Morning Links

Assorted content for your weekend reading.

- Cameron Dearlove laments the fact that Canada is failing to recognize and replicate other countries' successes in using the social determinants of health to shape public policy:

Today we know that social and financial inequities — particularly the experience of poverty — has a greater impact on our health than our healthcare system, genetics, even lifestyle choices. For a society facing spiking healthcare costs, the social determinants of health (things like housing, food security, social inclusion, early childhood development, employment, and working conditions) arguably present the greatest public policy opportunity since the creation of our social safety net, after the Second World War. While Canada is at the forefront of research in the social determinants of health, we are laggards in turning this research into healthy public policy — while Finnish babies benefit from sleeping in their care-filled boxes, Canadian children rest outside the box.

If the social determinants of health hold such promise, what are we doing locally, provincially, and nationally to apply these ideas? How do we rewrite conventional wisdom so that governments, institutions and communities are using the powerful social determinants framework to encourage longer, healthier, happier lives?

- Meanwhile, Donald Hirsch writes about the changing - and sadly spreading - shape of child poverty in the UK. And Barbara Howard offers a moment of perspective on how the disasters which some people can easily brush off cause far more problems for the working poor.

- Paul Krugman notes that the Republicans' tax policy continues to reflect little more than bare class warfare by other names in cutting taxes on the rich while raising them for everybody else.

- Heather Mallick traces the demise of Sun News to its constant bullying, while Christopher Waddell sees it as having been based largely on a failed attempt to game Canada's broadcasting system.

As an aside, others are asking how it is that a network seemingly set up to further the Cons' interests didn't actually get enough preferential treatment to survive despite its lack of merit. But I'll note that the government isn't the only force which could have kept the network afloat - and given the massive amount of money put into corporate communications, it's telling also that Canada's plutocrats didn't have any interest in footing the bill for a media outlet which seemed to fit their political interests.

- Finally, Craig Forcese and Kent Roach offer a detailed look at the contents of the Cons' terror bill. Thomas Walkom - who deserves plenty of blame as the media originator of the theory that no opposition party would oppose C-51 - is finally beginning to recognize that the NDP is in fact standing up for civil rights against the Cons' fearmongering. Stephen Maher talks to a former CSIS officer and finds even more reason for concern with what the Cons are trying to pull. And Don Lenihan writes that he sees the Cons primarily as having made Canadian politics more authoritarian rather than more conservative - though I'm not sure it's an either-or proposition.

Sunday Morning Links

This and that for your Sunday reading.

- Mark Gongloff takes a look at social mobility research from multiple countries, and finds that there's every reason for concern that inheritance is far outweighing individual attributes in determining social status. And Left Futures notes that the problem may only get worse as our corporate overlords become more and more sophisticated at cannibalizing our commonwealth for profit.

- Speaking of which, Jake MacDonald offers an insightful (if maddening) review of how farmers are suffering from the demolition of the single-desk Canadian Wheat Board.

- Andrew Jackson comments on the Cons' glaring failure to do anything to combat child poverty. And Cameron Dearlove discusses why we shouldn't pretend that child welfare is merely a family matter:

Child poverty should be of concern not only to parents and those who work with children, it must be of concern to the whole community. The experience of poverty has detrimental impacts on any individual, but when it's experienced through childhood development, the impacts are even more acute. 

Not having enough to eat, or not being able to afford healthy foods, impacts a child's concentration in school and can lead to lower academic achievement, along with negative effects on physical health. The stresses of poverty affect psychosocial development, with higher rates of behavioural problems and emotional and mental health challenges. 

The connection between a poorer diet and poorer health are obvious, but research has shown an even larger association with poverty's impact on cognitive development. One study of children entering kindergarten found 72 per cent of the non-poor children were proficient in recognizing words, compared to only 19 per cent of children experiencing poverty. These differences are shown to compound throughout life into adulthood. 

The impacts of poverty on development are not equal across ages. The detrimental effects of poverty are most severe in early childhood brain development, when future cognitive, social, and emotional functions are being shaped. This makes early intervention in childhood poverty even more pressing.

- Theophilas Argitas reports on new polling showing that while the tar sands may be the Cons' one and only priority, Canadians on the balance would prefer that we not focus on developing them further. Bruce Johnstone links that public concern with the inherent dangers of resource reliance as reason for concern about our economic direction. And Jon Queally writes about Kinder Morgan's failed injunction against the people seeking to defend Burnaby Mountain.

- Finally, Haroon Siddiqui points out how the Cons' exploitative mindset fits with Canada's historic colonial attitude toward First Nations and the environment they rely on. And while Diane Francis is a bit too focused on profits, she too recognizes that it's long past time to stop shirking our responsibilities.

Saturday Morning Links

This and that for your weekend reading.

- Thomas Walkom notes that the CETA isn't particularly about trade, but instead serves to enshrine yet again the principle that investors come before citizens.

- Lana Payne highlights the contradiction between the promise that giveaways to the corporate sector will lead to good jobs, and the reality that employers are looking more and more toward exploitative structures such as unpaid internships and temporary foreign workers.

- Meanwhile, Konrad Yakabuski sees the Cons' set of minor consumer baubles as a poor substitute for economic development which would actually help working Canadians.

- Finally, Cameron Dearlove writes about the impact of income and social supports on overall well-being:

The study of the social determinants of health provides us with the best opportunity for reining in long-term health costs. The social determinants are the economic and social conditions that determine the health of individuals and communities. Research has shown that economic and social conditions are more important factors in determining health than individual and family behaviour.

Put simply, your income has a greater impact on your health than lifestyle choices. One oft-cited study revealed an astonishing 21-year life expectancy gap between two Hamilton neighbourhoods — one affluent, one with entrenched poverty. That poorer neighbourhood's life expectancy of 65.5 years isn't close to Canada's average. If it were a country, it would rank 165th in the world.

We find equally striking numbers when looking beyond communities to the health costs of individuals experiencing poverty. A study in Vancouver determined that the costs to the health system of one homeless individual accessing emergency services can reach $55,000 a year, a figure well beyond what it would have cost to house this person. 

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What about the social determinants of childhood development and education? Poverty can actually leave a mark on a child's brain development. A Berkeley study identified differences in prefrontal cortex development based on a child's socioeconomic background, a part of the brain responsible for problem solving and creativity.

Studies across age groups show that the stressful reality of poverty takes up so much mental energy that it can negatively impact an individual's pursuit of education. 

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People like to believe that our individual efforts and decisions determine our fates, but the social determinants expose the naiveté of this view. Pulling oneself up from one's bootstraps isn't impossible. But systemically, the dice are loaded. 

It's time we put to rest the assumption that cuts to social and health spending save money. Let's judge spending decisions instead on the social determinants of everything.

Monday Morning Links

Miscellaneous material for your Monday reading.

- Michael Harris asks why Stephen Harper is afraid to look Theresa Spence in the eye:

(Harper) believes that the government’s lying about all these things is far less important than the fact that it is the government. Incumbency is a magic potion. Under its influence, people are supposed to swoon. All too often, they do. That’s the way oligarchs think. Richard Nixon put it in a nutshell when he famously said that if the president did it, then it wasn’t a crime.

Stephen Harper has arrived at the exalted position of Tricky Dick. He thinks that the necessity to tell the truth binds other people, not him. He doesn’t adjust to facts, he manufactures them, and when that doesn’t work, he defies them. The F-35 doesn’t just prove his gross incompetence in the expenditure of mountains of tax dollars — it also shows the arrogant belief that he doesn’t have to explain himself to people he believes would be baffled by an elevated game of checkers.
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The PM’s view is that you win some, you lose some. Actually, he’s lost quite a few and will probably lose more in 2013 because of the alleged unconstitutionality of much of his justice legislation as contained in poorly-debated omnibus bills. And that is a universe the prime minister is comfortable in — the winner-take-all world of expensive court rulings and a grinding process — life as an elitist joust where he with the longest lance usually prevails.

Which is why Stephen Harper can’t understand Chief Theresa Spence. She is trying to get things done in the old way, using a habit of liberty not well understood by oligarchs or by people who are demoralized by the state of Canadian politics. She is asking for a face-to-face meeting with the man who is supposed to be working for her, for the people, not just his chosen people. She is asking for something Stephen Harper is not much good at giving — personal answers.

Chief Spence’s request might be the fatigue of a front-line respondent to the worst poverty in the country. It might be dismay at how Harper’s promise to forge a new relationship with Canada’s aboriginals has utterly failed to materialize. It might be the Harper government’s statutory war on the environment without bothering to get aboriginal approval for profound legislative change. It might be cuts to native health care or the abominable state of reserve education. Whatever it is, it has put Stephen Harper in an unfamiliar place — on the defensive.

- But then, Boris notes that if Harper manages to make matters worse by refusing to meet with Spence, he may only use the resulting popular outcry to consolidate his own power. And the fact that Idle No More is receiving plenty of attention on the world stage might not dissuade him from seeing that as an entirely acceptable outcome.

- Jeremy Nuttall takes a look behind the shadowy mining corporation responsible for deliberately establishing a long-term workforce of "temporary" workers:

"Extensive research by United Steelworkers employing sources in China indicates that while Huiyong does hold investments in mines in Shanxi province and the vice general manager of Huiyong, Ma Zhifu, is also the president of the board of a Shanxi mine, there is no publicly-available evidence that the company actually operates any mines," reads the report.

"The company itself seems to consist of little more than an email address, phone number and street address located in a modest building in a Beijing suburb. It has no obvious website -- none in Chinese, none in English."
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Recently The Tyee phoned Huiyong Holding's headquarters in Beijing looking for information about the firm, but was told by a receptionist only the company's head could answer such queries.

The receptionist refused to help The Tyee contact the company head or give the person's name.

- Finally, Cameron Dearlove points out how social determinants of health can be applied in an individual's life. But to me, the most important takeaway from the list is that the determinants themselves aren't of much use unless they're applied on a social level: indeed, a belief that it's enough to personally avoid poverty, low-paying jobs or poor housing may be part of the reason why so many people accept similar problems for others.