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Advocacy in Canada’s Affordable Housing and Homelessness Sectors

This blog was originally posted on the Calgary Homelessness Foundation website on April 24, 2017 by Nick Falvo, and is re-posted here with permission.

How Housing Policy Benefits from a Socioeconomic Perspective

On November 17, I delivered a webinar presentation for the Canadian Housing and Renewal Association titled “The Missing Piece: How Housing Policy Benefits from a Socioeconomic Perspective.”

The presentation focused on both macroeconomic factors and factors pertaining to Canada’s social welfare system in general; I argued that leaders in Canada’s non-profit housing sector should be mindful of such issues (and not just focus on housing and homelessness).  My PowerPoint presentation can be downloaded here; the entire webinar can be viewed here.

Here are 10 things to know:

10 Things to Know About Canadian Attempts to Count Homelessness

This blog was originally posted on the Calgary Homelessness Foundation website on November 30, 2016 by Nick Falvo and is re-published here with permission.

Alberta’s seven largest municipalities recently released early results of a provincially-coordinated effort to enumerate and survey persons experiencing homelessness. Most of these communities reported reductions in homelessness, and reported a 19% reduction in province-wide homelessness compared to the first provincially-coordinated count conducted in 2014.

Ten things to know about the CPP debate

This article originally appeared on Behind the Numbers on October 27, 2016 by Allan Moscovitch, Richard Lochead and Nick Falvo, and is re-published here with permission.

This fall, Canada’s Parliament will debate a recent proposal to expand the Canada Pension Plan (CPP).[1] Indeed, since the 2008-2009 world financial crisis, Canada has witnessed a renewed public debate on the CPP.  Two factors have prompted this. First, as a result of the crisis, employer-sponsored pension plans lost substantial value. Second, partly in response to this loss in value, many employers either reduced their pension coverage or stopped offering them to workers altogether.

With all of the above in mind, here are 10 things to know about the CPP:

Ten Things to Know about Central Agencies in Canada

From time to time, voluntary sector leaders—and advocates in general—come up with ideas for new spending and new social programs. When they do this, they often focus too much on influencing elected officials, and too little on influencing senior public servants. What’s more, it’s important that their proposals be supported by good research, in part because exaggerated claims about the benefits of their proposals may hurt them in the end. With all of this in mind, here are 10 things to know about central agencies in Canada.