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Housing and Homelessness Are Disability and Labor Issues

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Housing instability and homelessness are often discussed as separate problems. They are not. For many people, the path into housing insecurity begins with injury, illness, or disability. A workplace injury. A mental health collapse. Chronic pain. A condition that limits capacity temporarily or permanently. When labor systems fail to support recovery and accommodation, housing becomes the next system to break. Work is tied to income. Income is tied to housing. When employment becomes unstable, housing quickly follows. Disability often interrupts this chain. Injured or disabled workers may wait months or years for decisions, assessments, or approvals. During that time, income can be reduced or eliminated. Savings disappear. Debt accumulates. Rent does not pause. Mortgages do not wait. Housing insecurity is not a personal failure in these situations. It is a predictable outcome of system delay and denial. Mental health plays a central role. Trauma, anxiety, depression, and neurodivergence...
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Disability, Labor, and the Systems Meant to Protect Workers

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Cold weather does not affect everyone equally. For people living with disabilities, injuries, chronic pain, or mental health conditions, extreme conditions expose vulnerabilities that already exist within labor and support systems. Work is often presented as a simple solution to hardship. For many disabled workers, it is not that simple. Disability is not always visible. It does not always arrive neatly. Many people become disabled through workplace injury, cumulative strain, or psychological harm. Others live with conditions that fluctuate, allowing them to work at times and limiting them at others. Labor systems are rarely designed with this reality in mind. When injury or illness occurs, workers are often pushed into complex administrative systems meant to provide protection. In theory, these systems exist to support recovery, accommodation, and safe return to work. In practice, many workers encounter barriers instead. Delayed decisions. Fragmented assessments. Inconsistent communic...
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When the Cold Exposes the Cracks

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Extreme cold does not create social failures. It reveals them. When temperatures fall to minus 27 Celsius, homelessness does not pause. Mental health deteriorates. Physical health becomes fragile when shelter, warmth, and safety are uncertain. Each winter, familiar responses emerge. Get a job. Not my responsibility. This is awful. It is the other party’s fault. These reactions may feel like engagement, but they do not change outcomes. They also allow systems to remain unexamined. This is not a partisan issue. It is an economic issue tied to affordability, disability, and access to work. It is a social issue shaped by isolation, trauma, and mental health. It is a systemic issue shaped by policy design, service delivery, and accountability. Blaming political opponents simplifies a problem that demands coordination across institutions and communities. People living outside in extreme cold are not debating ideology. They are managing risk, pain, and survival. Unity is often mis...
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When Systems Meant to Protect Become Barriers

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Accommodation is one of the clearest tests of whether a system actually serves the people it exists to protect. In theory, accommodation is simple. When a barrier is identified, the system adjusts. Communication changes. Processes adapt. Participation becomes possible. Dignity is preserved. Trust is strengthened. In practice, the experience can be very different. Some organizations respond to accommodation needs immediately. They listen. They remove friction. They understand that access is not a favour but a requirement. The result is meaningful participation without conflict or delay. Other systems struggle, even when clearly notified. Despite having explicit mandates related to rights, oversight, or fairness, the response becomes procedural rather than human. Process takes priority over purpose. Policy is treated as immovable. The burden shifts back onto the person who needs accommodation. This contrast reveals something important. Accommodation failures are rarely about ...
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Being Elected Isn’t the Same as Having Power

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Being elected doesn’t automatically mean having power. Power isn’t a title. It isn’t a label. And it isn’t guaranteed by alignment with any political identity. I’ve spent enough time working inside systems, alongside communities, and with people across the political spectrum to know this: much of the division we experience is not organic. It is constructed. Designed. Reinforced. That doesn’t mean there aren’t bad actors. There are. On every side. But they are not the majority. Most people, quietly, consistently, want the same fundamental things. Integrity matters. Kindness matters. Community matters. Food stability matters. Housing matters. A functioning economy matters. At the core, people want freedom; the freedom to live how they choose without harming others. We want our children fed, educated, and able to build meaningful lives. We want safety, a home, a living wage, and the opportunity to grow or simply to live where and how we choose. These aren’t radical ideas. They’re human on...
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This conversation is uncomfortable. But it is overdue.

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Sovereignty, Borders, and the Questions We Avoid at Our Own Risk There are questions many societies instinctively avoid,not because they lack merit, but because they unsettle inherited assumptions. Sovereignty in North America is one of those questions. I’m not opposed to asking it plainly: What does sovereignty actually mean in today’s Canada? The Canada/U.S. border was not drawn by Indigenous peoples. It was imposed over nations that already had laws, territories, trade networks, and treaty relationships that long predate the modern state. Those treaties still matter. They are not symbolic. They are living agreements. But intellectual honesty requires us to hold more than one truth at the same time. Sovereignty in Theory vs. Sovereignty in Practice Roughly 76% of Canada’s trade is with the United States. Our economies are deeply integrated. Our energy systems, supply chains, defence posture, and even regulatory standards are increasingly aligned, often asymmetrically. That raises leg...
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Capacity, Urgency, and the Work We Leave Unfinished at Home

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In recent months, I have found myself thinking more deeply about how we set priorities as a country and as cities. Canada has demonstrated, time and again, that when an issue is clearly identified as urgent and important, we are capable of acting quickly and decisively. We can mobilize large sums of money, coordinate across departments, and align political will when the moment demands it. That capacity exists, and it matters. At the same time, here at home, communities across the country are facing crises that are neither new nor abstract. Homelessness continues to rise. Addiction continues to claim lives. Food insecurity is affecting families, seniors, and working people. Mental health and trauma remain deeply intertwined with housing instability and poverty. These realities are visible on our streets, in shelters, in emergency rooms, and in the quiet exhaustion of people trying to hold their lives together with limited support. This reflection is not about choosing one re...
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