"It took a recent controversy in the Cowichan First Nation to expose the serious, fundamental problems with the [Community Benefits Agreement]," writes Renze Nauta, work and economics program director at Cardus. "The program has not only failed to meet its stated objectives, but that the objectives themselves are fundamentally misaligned against the public interest."

"If every woman in Canada had exactly the number of children that she says she personally desires, Canada would have replacement rate fertility," Lyman Stone, a demographer and Cardus senior fellow, tells the Hub Dialogues podcast. "So you can either listen to what women say they want or you can think you know better than them." Photo by Juan Encalada on Unsplash 

"While many public schools and independent schools have created their own policies to ensure safety, there is no official accountability for partners such as recruitment agencies or homestay agencies," warns Joanna DeJong VanHof, a Cardus education expert and researcher as she calls for major improvements to Ontario's International Education Strategy.  Photo by Eliott Reyna on Unsplash 

Dr. Leonie Herx, the chair of palliative medicine at Queen’s University and a Cardus senior fellow, tells the Globe and Mail she's not impressed with the Parliamentary committee that recommended a massive expansion of medically assisted suicide to children and to those with mental illness. “The whole process was dismissive of the evidence," she says.

The Law Society of Ontario is heading into an April election where its controversial “statement of principles” about diversity and inclusion is front and centre. As the ideological conflict heats up, Brian Dijkema, vice president of external affairs at Cardus, notes, "One of the gifts of democracy is that you should not actually have to have a political opinion all the time."

"The troubles we’re seeing are only the latest symptoms of the [long-term care] staffing shortage, created by a nightmarish cocktail of mutually reinforcing problems that the think tank Cardus has outlined before," write Brian Dijkema, vice-president of external affairs at Cardus, and Johanna Lewis, a public policy researcher.

"This research suggests that Canadian fertility isn’t low just due to various direct financial barriers," writes Lyman Stone, a demographer and Cardus senior fellow. "It’s low because the entire modern life sequence in industrialized countries is becoming hostile to the biological timeline of fertility."

Nearly half of women in Canada have fewer children than they want, writes Andrea Mrozek, a Cardus senior fellow. That's one of the key findings in a recent Cardus report that surveyed 2,700 women in Canada on fertility issues. She argues it would be a win just to acknowledge that Canadian women would like to have more children than they do.  

When it comes to child care, one size does not fit all. As Cardus's Renze Nauta explains on AM640 in Toronto, that's why the federal-provincial $10-a-day child care deal doesn't help Canada's working class families.