What can municipalities do about homelessness?

I recently contributed an essay to a paper series published by the University of Toronto’s Institute on Municipal Finance and Governance. The focus of my own essay is the role Canadian municipalities can play in addressing homelessness. A ‘top 10’ overview of the essay can be found here (in English): https://nickfalvo.ca/what-can-municipalities-do-about-homelessness/ A ‘top 10’ overview of the essay can be […]

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Guest editorial: Homelessness in Canada

I’ve written the guest editorial for a special edition of the International Journal on Homelessness. The guest editorial provides a general overview of homelessness in Canada (and I believe it serves as a helpful stand-alone reading for practitioners, researchers, students and advocates). My guest editorial can be found here (in English): https://ojs.lib.uwo.ca/index.php/ijoh/article/view/14810/11659 My guest editorial can be found here (in […]

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Affordable electricity Decarbonization in OECD countries? Part I

After eight extensive posts about the Ontario electricity sector, I am expanding my geographic coverage to look at the electricity sectors in selected OECD countries. My focus will be on the historical and relative performance of each country’s sector with respect to decarbonization and prices. As in the case of Ontario, whole volumes could and have been written about each […]

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the federal NDP’s housing platform

With a federal election taking place in Canada on September 20, the NDP has released its platform, which includes important housing-related measures. I’ve written a ‘top 10’ overview of the housing components of the platform. My overview is available here: https://nickfalvo.ca/ten-things-to-know-about-the-federal-ndps-housing-platform/.

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Ontario Electricity VIII: Now also going backwards on climate

There have been a number of important developments in the Ontario electricity sector since my last update when I summarized my arguments in front of the Standing Committee on General Government of the Legislative Assembly of Ontario against the proposed provincial Conservative legislation, now enacted, that eliminated the provincial Liberal rate-based borrowing scheme to subsidize electricity prices and replaced it […]

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David Hulchanski class discussion

I recently participated in a panel discussion in David Hulchanski’s graduate-level social housing and homelessness course at the University of Toronto. Points raised in the blog post include the fact that all English-speaking countries of the OECD have relatively low levels of public social spending, relatively low levels of taxation, and serious affordable housing challenges. The link to the full […]

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Behind Chile’s political crisis

More than one million people marched in Santiago on October 26 to protest the Government’s security response to Chile’s current political crisis and to demand structural economic reforms to reduce inequality and increase social services. In this post I analyze these grievances from a quantitative perspective and explore what it would take to translate them into policy. This is my […]

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Electrification and Climate I: Scale of the Challenge

Many elements have to come together if Canada is to significantly reduce its greenhouse gas (“GHG”) emissions. There is now a technical consensus that “electrification” – the replacement of fossil fuels with electricity as an energy source – is a necessary condition for decarbonization, and that electrification will require that zero/low-emission electricity generation double or triple by 2050. In this […]

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Newly-signed FPT housing framework agreement

I’ve just written a blog post about the newly-signed federal-provincial-territorial housing framework agreement. This agreement builds on (and helps move forward) Canada’s National Housing Strategy, which was released last fall. One of the points made in the blog post is that the federal government’s stated objective of removing approximately half-a-million households from core housing need is very ambitious, in light […]

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Inequality-redistribution in Canada update

Two years ago I posted my first guest blog focused on income inequality, specifically how changes in Canada’s redistribution over the last three decades have increased after-tax income inequality, and how these changes compared to OECD trends. The figures and analysis in this post update the earlier blog, based on the most recent OECD data to 2015. I also look […]

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Ten proposals from the 2018 Alternative Federal Budget

I’ve written a blog post about this year’s Alternative Federal Budget (AFB). Points raised in the blog post include the following: -This year’s AFB would create 470,000 (full-time equivalent) jobs in its first year alone. By year 2 of the plan, 600,000 new (full-time equivalent) jobs will exist. -This year’s AFB will also bring in universal pharmacare, address involuntary part-time […]

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