Le spectre d’une grève générale dans le réseau des 310 Centres de la petite enfance (CPE) affiliés à la CSN – avec les tracas et les pertes de revenus qu’il cause aux parents – représente le fruit amer de la quasi-nationalisation des garderies en 1997. Depuis lors, la négociation d’une convention collective à l’échelle du Québec a engendré des grèves causant la perte de 73 000 jours personnes de travail, soit plus du double des 34 000 jours personnes perdus de 1990 à 1997 inclusivement.

A reform now taking place is modifying the social assistance program, in particular by increasing the appeal of work and encouraging recipients to make more effort to work. For this to happen, paid work has to be more remunerative than the alternative, which consists of receiving a cheque and putting one’s time to other uses.

The reasons behind high gasoline prices.

A number of university researchers and pressure groups have suggested that the housing crisis affecting Quebec’s main metropolitan areas is caused by greater poverty among the population, reduced budgets for construction of social housing, or the inability of private business to adapt to new lifestyles in Quebec. The most recent data show us, however, that these explanations fail to stand up.

How to interpret statistics on poverty.

Globalization is good for the poor.

Some public statements in the media on the topic of poverty contain exaggerations and even downright falsehoods. We often get the impression that low-income people are very numerous and that this is a permanent condition for most of them. This perception in fact runs counter to reality. The duration of poverty is one area where social mobility research can provide answers. Greater social mobility is allowing for better adaptation to continuing economic change.

Some of the myths circulated by opponents to Free Trade in the Americas.

"The rich are getting richer, the poor are getting poorer." Here is an oft-repeated assertion that serves as a ready-made conclusion for debates on various topics, from free trade to tax reductions. Indeed, one broadly held view is that economic growth does not benefit the poor. The revenue of the poor might not increase at all or not increase as fast as that of the rich, so that economic growth would create more inequality. What do the facts tell us?

A widely held view suggests that the main function of government is to help the poor. Do the data we have for Canada justify this opinion? Slightly under one-third of spending by all levels of public administration in Canada is devoted to social services, in other words to the various transfer payments supporting individual incomes along with related administrative expenses. If social programs are defined more broadly, we would have to add the 28% of spending that goes to health care and education (in roughly equal proportions). In Canada we thus have about 60% of public spending going toward social programs in the broader sense.