This 2002 strategic planning paper was prepared under contract for Human Resources Development Canada, a federal government department with a broad mandate for income security, social and labour market policies and programs. While the historical analysis of the paper is now dated, the main findings related to policy challenges and responses have stood the test of time. The proposed directions for policy development, and the approach taken to strategic planning, remain relevant today The paper identified the main forces that were likely to dominate policy during the early 2000s: a continuation of the competitiveness and social cohesion pressures that had resulted in a preoccupation with lifelong learning; a new concern about a decline in percentage of the total population that will be employed; and a new shift towards incentives to later retirement. Five policy responses are indicated: First, the then current human development and skills agenda would continue as a dominant theme in the policy response for many years. In the medium-term, the emphasis should shift to learning (not skills) and to ways of translating the rhetoric of social investment into operational, evidence-driven programming. Second a policy shift towards encouraging life-course flexibility, which would reverse the trend toward policies that encourage longer schooling and earlier retirement. The goal of such a shift would be to support greater choice at the level of individuals and, at the level of society, more time being spent in work and learning over the course of people's lives, with a more rational distribution of leisure over the course of life. Third, there should be a gradual shift towards a more integrated approach to social policy. Today income-at-a-point-in-time concepts still dominate income security policies, while active, preparing-for-life policies are mainly found in separate and fragmented systems - education, labour market integration, childcare, etc. Tomorrow there should be a more integrated, enabling-society, citizen-centred approach, including a new emphasis on life-course and asset perspectives. Fourth, emphasis should be placed on building a new capacity for making social investments effective. Today, policy has the rhetorical goal of social investment (getting payoffs in the future). However, policy designs are actually based on expenditures (getting payoffs in the present). Tomorrow, we should bring policy designs into line with their underlying social investment goals. This means switching to self-learning policies that use new information processing technologies to automatically incorporate lessons from what has worked best in similar circumstances in the past - i.e., real-time, evidence-driven programming. Fifth, is a new emphasis on using current information management technology to resolve a long-standing and central machinery-of-government problem - reconciling vertical integration (decision-making by or near the citizen/group most affected, while maintaining accountability and ministerial responsibility) and horizontal integration (harmonized action across a wide variety of program streams and responsible agencies)' The paper provides practical examples of what needs to be done in all of these areas. The paper deals with the inevitable risks of planning for an unknowable future by providing scenarios that are based not on the traditional approach of forecasting ahead based on past trends, but rather on the kind of futures that governments have indicated they would like to help construct.

Written by researchers in education and urban policy, this volume offers useful insights into how to provide urban workers with the educational qualifications they need for real world jobs.

Changing Welfare States is is a major new examination of the wave of social reform that has swept across Europe over the past two decades. In a comparative fashion, it analyses reform trajectories and political destinations in an era of rapid socioeconomic restructuring, including the critical impact of the global financial crisis on welfare state futures. The book argues that the overall scope of social reform across the member states of the European Union varies widely. In some cases welfare state change has been accompanied by deep social conflicts, while in other instances unpopular social reforms received broad consent from opposition parties, trade unions and employer organizations. The analysis reveals trajectories of welfare reform in many countries that are more proactive and reconstructive than is often argued in academic research and the media. Alongside retrenchments, there have been deliberate attempts - often given impetus by intensified European (economic) integration - to rebuild social programs and institutions and thereby accommodate welfare policy repertoires to the new economic and social realities of the 21st century. Welfare state change is work in progress, leading to patchwork mixes of old and new policies and institutions, on the lookout, perhaps, for greater coherence. Unsurprisingly, that search process remains incomplete, resulting from the institutionally bounded and contingent adaptation to the challenges of economic globalization, fiscal austerity, family and gender change, adverse demography, and changing political cleavages.

This book explores the efforts of collaborative groups in six different Canadian cities as they work to reduce poverty, as part of Vibrant Communities, a cross-Canada effort of many cities to reduce poverty in Canada by creating partnerships that make use of the most important assets -- people, organizations, businesses, and governments. The six groups in this group are: a project that seeks to get long-term unemployed job seekers trained and transported to jobs across the sprawling region of Niagara; a coalition pressing Calgary City Council to pass (and maintain) a subsidized bus pass for people with low incomes; a grassroots network of citizens' partnership clubs in Montréal working to turn around a forgotten neighbourhood; an unusual collection of local organizations in Surrey working to get homeless day labourers back into the mainstream; a high-level roundtable of civic leaders in Hamilton mobilizing the community to make it the best place to raise a child; and a business-led group in Saint John that aims to reduce that city's poverty rate by one half.

"The ongoing COVID-19 pandemic marks the most significant, singular global disruption since World War II, with health, economic, political, and security implications that will ripple for years to come." -Global Trends 2040 (2021) Global Trends 2040-A More Contested World (2021), released by the US National Intelligence Council, is the latest report in its series of reports starting in 1997 about megatrends and the world's future. This report, strongly influenced by the COVID-19 pandemic, paints a bleak picture of the future and describes a contested, fragmented and turbulent world. It specifically discusses the four main trends that will shape tomorrow's world: - Demographics-by 2040, 1.4 billion people will be added mostly in Africa and South Asia. - Economics-increased government debt and concentrated economic power will escalate problems for the poor and middleclass. - Climate-a hotter world will increase water, food, and health insecurity. - Technology-the emergence of new technologies could both solve and cause problems for human life. Students of trends, policymakers, entrepreneurs, academics, journalists and anyone eager for a glimpse into the next decades, will find this report, with colored graphs, essential reading.

Is Canada becoming a more polarized society? Or is it a kind-hearted nation that takes care of its disadvantaged? This volume closely examines these differing views through a careful analysis of the causes, trends, and dimensions of inequality to provide an overall assessment of the state of inequality in Canada. Contributors include economists, sociologists, philosophers, and political scientists, and the discussion ranges from frameworks for thinking about inequality, to original analyses using Canadian data, to assessments of significant policy issues, methodologies, and research directions. What emerges is the most detailed picture of inequality in Canada to date and, disturbingly, one that shows signs of us becoming a less just society. An invaluable source of information for policy makers, researchers, and students from a broad variety of disciplines, Dimensions of Inequality in Canada will also appeal to readers interested or involved in public debates over inequality.