The Canadian Index for Well Being

The Canadian Index for well being has a number of recommendations for improving our lives. Below I have cut and pasted directly from their site a 11 of their ideas. Please read them and consider which ones you think are important.


Ideas for Positive Change

Canadians believe that the path to a meaningful life is built from, among other things,
balanced time use and fulfilling leisure and culture activities. Our quest to improve upon
the current situation will require both “remedying the bad” and “enhancing the good”.

Below are a number of ideas that could help bring about positive change. The list is by
no means comprehensive, nor is it intended to be. One of the objectives of the CIW is
to engage Canadians in a dialogue about the types of policy solutions that would
improve our quality of life. The CIW hopes that its research findings and ideas for
change will help spark such a dialogue.

1. Upgrade and effectively enforce employment standards to ensure all
workers have access to basic labour rights, including those in precarious
circumstances facing demands for flexible and non-standard employment. As a
way to improve enforcement of existing standards, the Workers Action Centre
(http://www.workersactioncentre.org/) has proposed the idea of extending investigation
of individual substantiated employment standards violations to cover all
employees within a workplace. This would help curb offences while reducing
duplication of individual claims against the same employer. Pilot projects within
sectors with a history of violations – such as cleaners, business services,
temporary employment agencies, small-scale manufacturing – could be a first
step in testing this approach across various jurisdictions.

2. Dig deeper on how time use, leisure and recreation are affecting
particular groups by collecting better and more frequent information. Some
groups of Canadians – defined by race, ethnicity, religion, socioeconomic status,
dis/ability, gender, sexual orientation and language proficiency – experience
particular systemic barriers that further compromise time use patterns and limit
participation in leisure and health enhancing activities. By looking at the different
experiences of Canadians, we can more effectively pinpoint research and policy
development.

3. Reduce the time crunch through family friendly work policies. As a
result of a growing awareness of work-life balance issues and the impact on
employees, many companies are addressing the issue by offering parental leave
top-ups, onsite daycare, earned time off programs, working from home, job
sharing and other initiatives. For examples of good practices in Canada, check
out the list of Canada’s Top 25 Family Friendly Employers at
www.canadastop100.com/family.

4. Meet the needs of modern families through family friendly social
policies that are balancing caregiving of aging parents and/or younger children.
Expanding access to early learning and childcare is one part of the equation. The
OECD has identified access to early learning and care support (including out of
school hours care services) as a key family friendly policy. Parents in Québec
already have access to $7 per day childcare while Ontario will begin rolling out a
full day early learning program for 4 and 5 year olds starting in September 2010.
Strengthening eldercare and equitable access to aging at home options is the
other side. Polling by the Canadian Association of Retired Persons (CARP)
shows that Canadians of retirement age would want to bring care services into
their home, even at a cost, rather than going to a facility for care. However,
seniors also report that not enough quality in-home or in-facility care services
are available in most provinces to meet the need – www.carp.ca.

5. Encourage neighbourhood “walkability” through the urban planning
process, to improve infrastructure, aesthetics, traffic safety and closeness to
stores. Walkable neighbourhoods offer diverse benefits to the environment, our
health, our finances, and our communities. To find out how your home stacks up
on “walkability” check out www.walkscore.com. It calculates the “walkability” of
any address based on the distance from that address to nearby amenities such as
stores, parks, restaurants, libraries and other services.

6. Invest more in school-based health promotion as a proven strategy to
boost young peoples’ physical activity, nutrition, and mental health as well as
contributing to moderating how much time young people spend in front of TV
and playing video games. FoodShare’s Good Food Café bills itself as “the future
of school lunches.” It serves healthy, affordable, and nutritious food to students
of the College Français, which shares the same building as the Café in west
Toronto. Mindful that students come from across the city, some are from
families with limited food budgets, Foodshare is working on ways to make
subsidized meals "invisible" through a debit card system. It's also boosting local
sourcing, and encouraging farmers/growers to visit the students or vice versa,
bringing food into the curriculum – www.foodshare.net.

7. Read to young children as a sure way to improve their learning and
communication skills and help them get ready for school. To find 'tips for
parents' on how to foster early literacy, visit the Canadian Council on Learning
(CCL) website at http://www.ccl‐cca.ca/CCL/Reports/LessonsInLearning/LiL‐1Feb2006.htm?Language=EN. To find a good read for a younger person, check
out the shortlist of candidates for the annual Book of the Year for Children
Award of The Canadian Association of Children’s Librarians available on the
Canadian Libraries Association website www.cla.ca.

8. Expand opportunities for lifelong learning, recreation and social
interaction for seniors through age-friendly community planning. Age-friendly
spaces reap benefits for urban populations as a whole. Barrier-free buildings and
streets enhance the mobility and independence of people living with disabilities,
young as well as old. Ensuring affordable and accessible public transit as well as
social and community supports for older people ease the stress of families caring
and allow for the kind of work and volunteering on the part of older people that
helps build strong communities. Ensuring participation also helps the local
economy profit from the patronage of older adult consumers.

9. Encourage barrier-free arts and culture activities though support and
promotion of performing artists, productions, festivals and venues. A good
example is the annual Luminato festival (www.luminato.com) , a ten-day
celebration of the arts where Toronto's stages, streets, and public spaces are
infused with culturally diverse theatre, dance, classical and contemporary music,
film, literature, visual arts, and design. Luminato provides many free, accessible
events, ‘accidental encounters with art’, and incorporates Toronto's cultural
diversity in its programming.

10. Promote inclusive environments for physical, leisure and social
activities by ensuring everyone has the opportunity to participate. Inclusion
can be enabled through initiatives such as discounted or free programming
available for those with limited incomes, as well as tax credits to allow all families
to better afford these programs. In the area of sports, True Sport
(http://www.truesportpur.ca/) is a growing movement of people across Canada who
believe that sport can transform lives and communities – if we commit to
organizing community sport activities that are healthy, fair, inclusive, fun and
stand against cheating, bullying, aggressive parental behaviour, and ‘win at all
costs’ thinking.

11. Engage volunteers from diverse backgrounds with various interests by more
effectively harnessing the opportunities and knowledge of the community and
voluntary sector. Volunteer Canada (www.volunteer.ca) is proposing the idea of a
Canadian Volunteer Support System for communities across the country. This
system would target training, knowledge sharing, innovation and basic volunteer
management resources for those at the grass roots level who must deal daily
with the challenges of finding willing volunteers and assuring that those
volunteers are effective in providing vital services.