Thursday August 21, 2014 – 11am
Posted Aug 21, 2014 02:23:38 PM.
This article is more than 5 years old.
11:00- Gerry Nicholls, Canada’s Post-Partisan Pundit and communications expert
As Liberals gather in Edmonton this week for their summer caucus, a new poll shows Justin Trudeau has widened his lead over Stephen Harper on who Canadians prefer to be prime minister. The poll, one of the questions of the weekly Nanos Party Power Index that surveys 1,000 Canadians every month and was last out of the field on August 15, found that 31.8% preferred Trudeau for the top job. That compared to 25.5% for Harper, 18.7% for Thomas Mulcair, and 6.3% for Elizabeth May. Trudeau and Harper have generally been in a much closer contest in Nanos’ rolling four-week survey. Over the last 12 months, Trudeau has averaged 29.6 % support against 28.6% for Harper. But Trudeau is now more than six points ahead of the prime minister. And it is not just that Harper is performing below average – he is also near his lowest level of support over the last year (25.2%). The Conservative leader has been plunging of late, as three months ago it was Harper who had 31% support on who Canadians preferred as their leader.
11:30- Elizabeth Clarke, CEO of YWCA Kitchener-Waterloo
The news of the closures of four of Kitchener and Waterloo’s Out of the Cold sites was greeted by the public with a level of concern that is testimony to our community’s compassion and caring. But I believe the Out of the Cold story is really a good news one. But over those 15 or so years, some profound changes occurred within the year-round shelters. The Region of Waterloo assumed responsibility for the homelessness system’s co-ordination, and increased shelters’ funding substantially. When announcing their decisions to discontinue their Out of the Cold programs after 15 years of operations, the churches talked about volunteer exhaustion. They talked, too, about the fact that their volunteers are typically untrained and unequipped to support people with addictions and serious mental illnesses. But the main reason those churches gave was the fact that the formal shelter system has evolved and expanded and greatly enhanced the support services that it can offer to homeless people – services that the Out of the Cold sites simply can’t. And these reasons are legitimate.
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