ACF ECONOMIC JUSTICE AWARD WINNERS: TRAILBLAZING FOR A BETTER CANADA

Street Nurse, Cathy Crowe, received the third Atkinson Economic Justice Award at a packed house event at Holy Trinity Church in Toronto, on January 22, 2004.

In presenting the award, ACF President, Betsy Atkinson Murray described Cathy as the "saint of the streets" for her passionate and tireless work on behalf of the homeless.  The Economic Justice Award will support Cathy's work and assist in advocating for the "1% Solution" initiative: to have 1 per cent of the federal budget - with matching funding from the provinces and territories go toward a comprehensive national housing strategy.

Armine Yalnizyan, economist and the first recipient of the Atkinson Economic Justice Award, is generating a prolific amount of research and writing in support of a strengthened and more cost effective health care system.  Armine says that "without standards and objectives, commitment and leadership - without action- public health care remains in peril.  Doing anything less is a prescription for failure".

Armine, who is also a Research Fellow at the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives has recently completed a report entitled Paul Martin's Permanent Revolution Alterrnative Federal Budget 2004 Technical Paper #3.   On February 25, 2004 Armine co-authored a Globe and Mail article with Dr. Robert McMurtry, Roy Romanow's chief advisor on the Royal Commission on Health and who now serves on the Health Council of Canada.  This article, Waging War over Wait Times - Will Canadians Win? addresses the upcoming Supreme Court case that will test a bid to allow Candians the right to private health care.  The case challenges the fundamental notion behind Canada's universal medicare system: that health care should be equally accessible to everyone, regardless of ability to pay.

Former Health Commissioner and the second recipient of the Atkinson Economic Justice Fellow, Roy J. Romanow, spoke at the Health Council of Canada's (HCC) inaugural meeting on January 29, 2004.

Roy's speech, entitlted A Cure for Hardening of the Categories, was optimistic about the Health Council of Canada as an ideal common meeting room to sustain and improve our most sacred social program, universal health care.

He spoke of three themes to the council members:

Co-operation

We need to turn our increasingly disparate systems of health care into more of a pan-Canadian health care system;

Independence

Canadians need and deserve a truly arms-length independent Health Council unencumbered by political expectations;

Wellness

Greater emphasis is needed on preventative health measures to improve population health outcomes.

Roy also stressed that new measuring tools are needed to track changes in the key factors that affect wellbeing and quality of life, referring to Ron Colman's observation that , "indicators are powerful.  What we count and measure reflects our values as a society and determines what makes it onto the policy agendas of governments."

And speaking of Ron Colman, the Executive Director of GPI Atlantic, Reality Check #7 is available.  This issue focuses on one of the benefits of more comprehensive measures of progress: their capacity to demonstrate connections among a wide range of economic, social and environmental variables.  In this issue, Reality Check looks at fisheries, and at our industrial food and transportations systems.

Roy is working with Ron and others to ensure that the idea of a Canadian Index of Wellbeing becomes a reality.  To read more about this, see Realtiy Check, Vol. 1 Number 1.

For more information on the work of our Economic Justice Award recipients, visit What We Fund/Economic Justice Award. 

That's all for now.

Elizabeth Chan