It is encouraging to see that the Tamarack Institute is running a conference in Edmonton this week dedicated to looking at how municipal governments can and should make poverty reduction a major priority. http://events.tamarackcommunity.ca/cities-summit2016
The Event is called Cities Reducing Poverty: When Mayors Lead. Organizers are billing the conference is as a milestone event. I’m watching it from afar on twitter (#MayorsPovertySummit) and can say that the billing seems on the mark. It began yesterday and wraps up tomorrow (April 7th).
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| Pam McConnell |
Participants in the Conference include Mayors of major cities like Don Iveson of Edmonton, Brian Bowman, Winnipeg’s first Aboriginal Mayor, Fred Eisenberger of Hamilton and others.
Pam McConnell, Deputy Mayor of Toronto who leads Toronto's Poverty Reduction Strategy, is a presenter.
I’m hoping the conference will get the wheels turning faster to tackle problems like the impacts on gentrification on communities (and particularly on people with lower incomes) and also look at human rights issues. We’ve written about the Right to an Adequate Standard of Living before http://whenthemayorsmiles.blogspot.ca/2016/02/the-right-to-adequate-standard-of.html. Municipalities undoubtedly have a role to play here.
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| Calgary's Mayor Nenshi |
The Calgary Herald ran a story yesterday talking about Mayor Naheed Nenshi’s involvement in the conference and his call for a guaranteed annual income. You can read that story at http://calgaryherald.com/news/local-news/nenshi-pushes-guaranteed-income-as-canadian-mayors-gather-for-poverty-summit
Following this event on twitter yesterday it was encouraging that when speaking about poverty participants were going beyond the idea of reduction and actually talking about the “elimination” of poverty. Good to see.
