Public Service Alliance of Canada BC

Low-income women in Canada face increasing inequality in terms of their health, according to a report just published by the Canadian Association of Social Workers (CASW).

The fourth in a series of CASW reports on women and poverty, The Declining Health and Well-Being of Low Income Women in Canada: A Preventable Tragedy explores the connectionsbetween the income of women and their health and concludes that the health of low-income women is being compromised.

“The socio-economic links to health are well documented nationally and internationally,” says Veronica Marsman, president of CASW. “This paper finds that significant differences exist in the life expectancy, onset and intensity of illness, and frequency of violence in the lives of low income Canadian women.”

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In 2001, the B.C. Ministry of Social Housing released a document reviewing the research on the relationship between homelessness and the health,social services, and criminal justice systems and estimated the cost of homelessness to governments …

Executive Summary

Some observers argue that homelessness costs the health care, social services and criminal justice systems at least as much as decent affordable housing. In fact, as one observer noted: “we continue paying to put the homeless in hospital beds, while not providing them with ordinary beds of their own,” (Starr 1998). The question is do we pay now by providing those ordinary beds or do we pay possibly more later by not providing them? The costs of dealing with the consequences of homelessness, such as increased health needs, must be weighed against the cost of investing in longer-term housing solutions. This research provides a preliminary estimate of the costs of homelessness to the British Columbia government.

The specific objectives for this exploratory research are:

• To present a cost analysis of homelessness in terms of the British Columbia health care, social services and criminal justice systems.
• To analyse whether the provision of adequate and affordable housing is a preventive cost to the government.

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(Vancouver) A major study released today finds that BC’s welfare system is systematically discouraging, delaying and denying assistance to many of the people most in need of help, with harmful consequences for some of the province’s most vulnerable residents.

Denied Assistance: Closing the Front Door on Welfare in BC examines why the number of people receiving welfare has plummeted in the wake of changes to eligibility rules and the application system, and looks at what is happening to people who seek and are denied welfare. It is the first in-depth assessment of the new application system, drawing on data obtained through Freedom of Information requests and extensive interviews with people who have applied for welfare, front-line community advocates and Ministry workers.

“The provincial government says its policies are a success. It claims that more people are leaving welfare for work, and that the new application system is ‘diverting’ people to employment,” says Bruce Wallace, Researcher with the Vancouver Island Public Interest Research Group (VIPIRG), which undertook the study with the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives (CCPA). “This is true for some people. But our research found that many others are being ‘diverted’ to homelessness, charities, survival sex and other forms of hardship.”

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OTTAWA – A new study by the Canadian Labour Congress confirms that the job market discriminates against workers of colour, and more so against young workers who are Canadian-born.

Analysing closely data from Statistics Canada’s 2001 Census, the study “Racial Status and Employment Outcomes” by Leslie Cheung, a graduate student in public policy at Simon Fraser University, in Vancouver, explains that “the fact that Canadian-born workers of colour are doing badly cannot be explained away by reference to lack of Canadian credentials and experience.”

“As Canadians, individually and collectively, we must come to grips with harsh realization that every day we are straying further and further away from our goals of equality,” says Hassan Yussuff, secretary-treasurer of the Canadian Labour Congr ess about the findings of this study. “Can we predict a strong future built on hope, respect, solidarity and citizenship when racial discrimination prevents workers who are more highly educated than average to find and keep steady employment at decent wages?”

“Racial Status and Employment Outcomes” is available on the Canadian Labour Congress web site.

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Canada’s 130,000 Registered Nurses today challenged Stephen Harper and the other political party leaders to explain clearly how they would protect our public medicare system from the private for-profit medical entrepreneurs who are poised to destroy it.They issued the challenge as a new Ipsos-Reid poll (pdf) showed that Canadians strongly support our not-for-profit medicare system and fear more private health care will draw health care professionals away from our public system and lead to a for-profit American health care system.

Read more at bcnu.org.