FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASEApril 10, 2018OTTAWA –As Toronto City Hall gets set to regulate payday loan shops through zoning bylaws, it will need to put consumers first. Brian Dijkema, an economic specialist at think tank Cardus, tapped into extensive research on payday loans to create a new set of guidelines for municipalities. “Focusing on consumers means recognizing that the demand for short-term, small dollar loans will always be there,” argues Dijkema. “Let’s be careful not to do anything that pushes vulnerable people to use other worse options, like loan sharks or shady, under-the-table lenders.” The new municipal guidelines suggest the most important measure Toronto can take goes beyond creating new restrictions for payday loan shops.“The best way to keep people from getting caught in the payday loan trap is to offer them affordable, easy-to-access alternatives,” says Dijkema. “Cities can help create these alternatives by encouraging cooperation between community organizations and credit unions, offering the use of municipal space for these alternatives to use, and granting them access to public transit advertising space.”The guidelines also make several other recommendations:Cities should study the local market, get to know the borrowers and lenders, and collect unbiased data before enacting new payday loan zoning bylaws.Cities should avoid setting arbitrary caps on the number of payday loan shops allowed in any given area, leaving vulnerable people with fewer regulated options to use and more dependent on loan sharks or completely unregulated online lenders.Cities should take a targeted, neighbourhood-by-neighbourhood approach to zoning powers.Cities should avoid redundant licensing requirements, such as payday loan signage requirements or mandatory provision of credit counselling information, which provincial law already covers.Download a free copy of the guidelines here.-30-MEDIA INQUIRIES Daniel Proussalidis Cardus - Director of Communications 613.241-4500x508 dproussalidis@cardus.ca

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE March 22, 2018 OTTAWA – A newly released provincial and territorial breakdown of 2016 Census data shows that kids in Canada’s wealthiest provinces are the most likely to be growing up in families with two married parents. As Cardus reported in February of this year, less than 63 percent of Canadian kids are in families with married parents nationally now. If Quebec data are excluded, just about seven in ten kids in the rest of Canada are living with married parents. Ontario, Alberta, and British Columbia are the only provinces with more than 70 percent of kids live with married parents.***Specific data points available in report’s appendix.“Marriage is the gold standard for raising children, so it’s heartening to see that married parenting is still by far the norm in most of Canada,” says Andrea Mrozek, family program director at think tank Cardus. “Still, the trend in every part of the country is toward less marriage and more common-law parenting. Common-law relationships are more likely to break up than marriages are. And having married parents is also associated with more financial stability and kids doing better in school, so there are public policy implications as marriage declines.”The 2016 Census data also show that a majority of kids in Nunavut, the Northwest Territories, and Quebec, have parents in common-law relationships or live in single-parent homes. And with the exception of Prince Edward Island, only a small majority of kids in Atlantic Canada are living with married parents.“The research very clearly shows that marriage is more stable than cohabitation and stability matters for children,” says Mrozek. “We need to educate Canadians on this and enact public policy that reflects this reality.” The full provincial and territorial breakdown of 2016 Census family data is available online.To arrange for interviews with Andrea Mrozek, please, contact Daniel Proussalidis.-30-MEDIA INQUIRIES Daniel Proussalidis Cardus - Director of Communications 613.241-4500x508 dproussalidis@cardus.ca

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE March 13, 2018 OTTAWA – With even Bank of Canada Governor Stephen Poloz now suggesting that a national form of Quebec’s universal daycare model could help more women enter the workforce, it’s time to remind Canadians of what such a policy would mean. National, universal daycare decreases the choices available to mothers, makes little financial sense, and is bad policy for children and families. “Pushing even more mothers into the workforce – regardless of their desires or preferences – is using women as pawns in an economic chess game,” says Andrea Mrozek, family program director at think tank Cardus. “National daycare reduces the available choices by throwing the weight of government money behind one particular choice just to raise GDP. National daycare must by definition be coercive because shelling out billions of dollars for a program where mothers can also choose to stay home provides no impetus for the government to take it on.” Mrozek adds that Canada already has an 83 percent labour force participation rate among women, suggesting national daycare would be a frightfully expensive way of raising it even higher. “How many billions of dollars would taxpayers have to spend year after year to add a meagre four percent to Canadian women’s labour participation rate so that it equals Quebec’s?” she asks. Finally, a national imitation of Quebec’s universal daycare system would also be bad policy for children and families. A landmark study by UBC Professor Kevin Milligan, University of Toronto professor Michael Baker, and MIT’s Jonathan Gruber found Quebec’s system produces several negative outcomes:Children in Quebec’s system exhibited lower social skills, higher aggression, and higher rates of illness Parents of kids in Quebec’s system exhibited more hostile and less consistent parenting Parents of kids in Quebec’s system suffered lower health and lower quality parental relationships“National daycare isn’t done to help women or families. It’s done to help the GDP—and even there, it will fail,” says Mrozek. “Governments need to stop using gender equity language to cover up what is actually a coercive program that tells families—particularly mothers—what they ought to do.” -30- MEDIA INQUIRIES Daniel Proussalidis Cardus - Director of Communications 613.241-4500x508 dproussalidis@cardus.ca

March 1, 2018 OTTAWA – A new study finds that the Region of Waterloo’s policy of favouring one particular union for its construction contracts leaves taxpayers and most of the local construction industry out in the cold. Public policy think tank Cardus analyzed the awarding of $351.3 million worth of regional construction contracts between 2009 and 2017 for its report No Longer the Best: The Effects of Restricted Tendering on the Region of Waterloo.. The report found that the July 2014 decision to restrict construction contract bids exclusively to firms affiliated with the Carpenters’ Union had several negative effects: • Almost 84% of construction firms were shut out of the region’s construction contract work. • The average number of bidders for each project fell by 50% to less than four. • Construction firms that couldn’t win open competitions for Region of Waterloo contracts began to win contracts when their competitors were disqualified. • Contract prices began to face significant upward pressure. “The Region of Waterloo has created a coercive oligopoly that disproportionately benefits a small group of construction firms, which are able to increase their profits at taxpayers’ expense,” says Brian Dijkema, Work & Economics program director at Cardus. “This uncompetitive policy bars someone from working on a public project because of a private choice they’ve made not to be affiliated with a particular, favoured union. This is unfair, uneconomic, and uncompetitive.” Building competitive and livable communities requires effective procurement policies for construction. Cardus’s Work & Economics research program includes developing an understanding of how a competitive labour pool model can improve on some of the bidding policies employed by buyers of construction, including municipalities. As municipalities face increased infrastructure construction, maintenance, and repair costs, they will be forced to find innovative ways to ensure that their projects are completed in a cost-effective and sustainable way. Download a free copy of No Longer the Best: The Effects of Restricted Tendering on the Region of Waterloo. To arrange for interviews with Brian Dijkema, please, contact Daniel Proussalidis .-30- MEDIA INQUIRIES Daniel Proussalidis Cardus - Director of Communications 613.241-4500x508 dproussalidis@cardus.ca

February 15, 2018 OTTAWA – New data show that in 2016, about 62 percent of children up to age 14 were living with two married parents – a dramatic decline from the 73 percent who lived in such homes in 1996. At the same time, the proportion of Canadian kids living in households with two unmarried parents has hit 17 per cent – a 62 percent increase over just two decades – and now almost one in five children is living with a single parent. “Marriage is the gold standard for raising children, yet year by year we’re sliding away from that ideal,” says Andrea Mrozek, family program director at public policy think tank Cardus. “Marriage and cohabitation are not interchangeable and don’t have the same outcomes in terms of longevity, educational attainment for children, or financial stability.” Research within Canada and around the world also suggests that the decline of marriage is tied to income inequality. Higher-educated couples – who have typically higher incomes - are more likely to marry and stay married than their peers with lower levels of education and typically lower income. “Canadians need to learn about the differences between cohabitation and marriage for themselves but also for the sake of what’s best for children. More information is always better when making relationship decisions,” says Mrozek. The numbers on marriage and cohabitation come from Canada’s 2016 Census. They are being published for the first time by Cardus and are now available online. To arrange for interviews with Andrea Mrozek, please, contact Daniel Proussalidis . -30- MEDIA INQUIRIES Daniel Proussalidis Cardus - Director of Communications 613.241-4500x508 dproussalidis@cardus.ca

January 30, 2018 Christian high schools in North America help students remain faithful as young adults, new research confirms. Using Cardus Education Survey data, University of Notre Dame analysts say that attending a Protestant Evangelical school has a measurable effect on graduates that is distinct from the influence of family, socio-economic background, or church life. Among the findings in the new report, Walking the Path: The Religious Lives of Young Adults in North America, are three key ways in which graduates of Protestant Evangelical high schools are different than public school grads:Christian school graduates report significantly higher belief in orthodox Christian teachings, such as the belief that Jesus Christ is the only way to salvation and that the Bible is infallible in matters of faith and practice. Christian school graduates are much more likely to pray, read the Bible, attend church regularly, and tithe. Christian school graduates are less likely to switch religious affiliation or to turn from the faith of their childhood.“Church and family life are important in young adults’ spiritual formation, but our research reinforces the fact school plays an important role in this as well,” says Dr. Beth Green, education program director at think tank Cardus. “Church leaders, parents, and educators must know and understand just how important attending Christian school can be in bolstering young adults’ faith.” Dr. Green says the findings underline why families need access to diverse school options. “We must maintain Christian schools as an option for as many families as possible so that everyone who wants to can have access to Christian education,” says Dr. Green. Click here to read Walking the Path: The Religious Lives of Young Adults in North America online.-30- MEDIA INQUIRIES Daniel Proussalidis Cardus - Director of Communications 613.241-4500x508 dproussalidis@cardus.ca

January 11, 2018 HAMILTON, ON – Ontario gets an F for the new interest rate caps placed on payday loan operations as of January 1st. That mark comes in a newly issued report card on the province’s new payday loan regulations by think tank Cardus. Cardus Work & Economics Program Director Brian Dijkema notes that capping interest rates offers marginal help to consumers, but doesn’t give them any real alternatives for when they’re desperate for a small, short-term loan. “If you really want to help, bury the payday loan shops in competition so that consumers have better alternatives to predatory lenders,” said Dijkema. “You can cap interest rates all you want, but that doesn’t help anyone get off the payday loan treadmill.” A previous Cardus study, Banking on the Margins, found that capping interest rates too aggressively could put payday loan operations out of business, possibly forcing some desperate borrowers to use underground, unregulated lenders who charge even more exorbitant interest rates. By contrast, the province’s best mark is an A++ for moving to allow credit unions to provide alternatives to payday loan shops. “This rule change is something we’ve recommended before,” says Dijkema. “Freeing credit unions – which are obligated to benefit their members and their communities – gives them space to try new things and to offer new products.” To see the assessment of all the new rules and the full report card, click here. To arrange an interview with Brian Dijkema, please, contact Daniel Proussalidis at dproussalidis@cardus.ca MEDIA INQUIRIES Daniel Proussalidis Cardus - Director of Communications 613.241-4500x508 dproussalidis@cardus.ca

December 14, 2017 Providing government funding to religious schools is a popular idea in Canada. Fully 61 percent of the almost 2,000 adults in the survey support directing tax dollars toward religious schools – both public and independent. Almost one in three support full funding, equal to what public schools get. Another 30 percent back at least partial funding. Regionally, the poll found support for full funding of religious schools is highest in the provinces that fully fund a public Catholic system: Alberta, Saskatchewan, and Ontario. “It’s not surprising to see a poll confirming that Canadians like having a diversity of schooling options available,” says Dr. Beth Green, Cardus Education program director. “Government funding of public and independent religious schools makes those options available to families that might not otherwise be able to afford them.” In Alberta, Saskatchewan, and Ontario anywhere from one-in-five to one-in-three students attends a public Catholic school. The provinces of British Columbia, Alberta, Saskatchewan, Manitoba, and Quebec provide at least partial funding for independent religious schools. “Funding for independent religious schools is the norm in half the provinces,” says Dr. Green. “Ontario and the Atlantic provinces are the hold-outs, but even in those places there’s majority support for government funding of religious schools in general.” To schedule an interview with Dr. Green, please, contact Daniel Proussalidis. The Angus Reid Institute conducted the poll in partnership with Cardus. Full poll results and notes on methodology are available online. MEDIA INQUIRIES Daniel Proussalidis Cardus - Director of Communications 613.241-4500x508 dproussalidis@cardus.ca

December 6, 2017 Outdated rules that restrict bidding on municipal construction projects to a small group of companies are strangling growth in some of Ontario’s biggest cities, including Toronto, Hamilton, and the Region of Waterloo. Brian Dijkema, Work & Economics Program Director at think tank Cardus, presented new research on the issue today to a luncheon put on by the Greater Kitchener Waterloo, Cambridge, and Hamilton Chambers of Commerce. The report, Up, Up, and Away: The Impact of Restrictive Tendering in Municipal Contracting in Ontario, shows that restricted bidding more than doubles the upward pressure on construction prices for public projects. “The effect of restricting competition is akin to a kid letting go of a helium balloon: prices go up and up,” says Dijkema. “And the results are the same: you’re crying for more balloons. So, places like Toronto, Waterloo Region, and Hamilton can afford less infrastructure unless they raise taxes or cut spending in other areas, like social programs.” Up, Up, and Away: The Impact of Restricted Tendering in Municipal Contracting in Ontario also found that cities with restricted bidding rules can have zero confidence that they’re getting the lowest price for any infrastructure project. Dijkema co-authored the report with University of Toronto labour economist Dr. Morley Gunderson and Western New England University business professor Dr. Tingting Zhang. Download Up, Up, and Away: The Impact of Restricted Tendering in Municipal Contracting in Ontario by clicking this link. MEDIA INQUIRIES Daniel Proussalidis Cardus - Director of Communications 613.241-4500x508 dproussalidis@cardus.ca