Raymond Sheppard: “Many African Canadians are seriously struggling To see their efforts to pay for the bare necessities and try to keep up with utility bills and such is heartbreaking. Many have been forced to take out payday loans at unreasonable interest rates just to survive.”
After 50 years of promises there still is no universal child care program in Canada. Meanwhile, the Covid shutdown has brought women to the lowest level of participation in the paid labour force in three decades. Women’s unemployment surpassed men’s for the first time in 30 years. Is there an economic war on women? I ask you to judge for yourself, writes Judy Haiven.
Media release: Like all African Nova Scotian communities, North Preston, the largest Indigenous African Nova Scotian Community, has been besieged with racism and injustice.
A new booklet recently issued by Statistics Canada highlights the huge economic gap between Black people and the general population in terms of employment, income and child poverty. The situation is bad in Canada, and compared to other large cities the situation is especially bad in Halifax.
There is something very wrong with the way eligibility for EI is calculated, and people in rural Nova Scotia are paying the price. Brenda Thompson explains.
When you’re on income assistance EI benefits and CPP Disability are clawed back 100%. “Taking that money is insulting. People should be allowed to keep these payments, since they contributed to both CPP disability and Employment insurance while working,” writes poverty activist Kendall Worth in an open letter to premier Steven McNeil.
Proud and happy to publish this poem and essay on being Black and unemployed, by the very talented Guyleigh Johnson.
The headline says it all. Another 2016 census story, this time about unemployment and poverty among African Nova Scotians. The numbers are bad, much worse in fact than almost anywhere else in Canada.
You often don’t get sick in a vacuum. Having a stressful job, a mind numbing job, or maybe one that doesn’t make you feel appreciated, are all things that affect your health. The same is true for being unemployed. For part two of a series on the things that make you sick contributor Alex Kronstein focuses on unemployment and job security, and employment and working conditions.