GLOBAL LESSONS - CANADA

GLOBAL LESSONS - CANADA

Canada is experiencing a 'homelessness' problem now of massive proportions.

http://www.nrchmi.samhsa.gov/ResourceFiles/joudjdb1.pdf

The following excerpts and quotes are from a research paper written by JD Hulchanski - Centre for Urban and Community Studies, University of Toronto

"Canada stands out as one of the few Western nations that rely almost completely on the market mechanism to supply, allocate, and maintain its housing stock (Scanlon and Whitehead, 2004).

The market is the mechanism by which about 95% of Canadian households obtain their housing.

Canada also is one of the more inegalitarian Western nations. In fact Canada ranks near the bottom of the list in an eighteen-country comparison of net social expenditure by the OECD (Adema, 2001, Table 7).

Given Canada’s poor record on social spending, the United Nations Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, in its 1998 review of Canada’s compliance with these rights, issued a highly critical and detailed report on Canada’s social policies (United Nations, 1998).

Households living in extreme poverty with an inadequate social safety net do not contribute to market demand for housing. Markets respond to market demand. If households have too little income or wealth to stimulate market demand for a particular good, the market will ignore them."