Next Gen Insider

Morgan Sharp reports from Toronto on the city's young population and their civic engagement and impact on the local institutions that make democracy function.

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531 Articles

Ontario education workers ratify deal with government, but the fight continues

Ontario education workers approved a tentative deal with their employer, the union representing them said Monday, pledging to keep up the fight for more investment in schools after wrestling with the Ford government last month.

Morgan Sharp

December 5th 2022

Young women still not back to retail work lost in summer

Young women stayed away from low-paid retail work in elevated numbers in November, the latest Canadian jobs data shows, leaving a growing number of vacancies unfilled heading into the busy holiday shopping season.

Morgan Sharp

December 2nd 2022

Ontario has no plan to deal with growing urban flooding, auditor general says

The Ford government in Ontario hasn’t created a plan for urban flooding, which is already costing the province and its residents billions in damages related to climate change.

Morgan Sharp

December 1st 2022

Ontario Greens call for integrity inquiry into Ford's Greenbelt land development

Ontario Greens are calling for an integrity probe after the Opposition NDP asked the province's auditor-general to calculate the spike in value of property suddenly at risk of losing its Greenbelt status.

Morgan Sharp

November 30th 2022

Toronto soccer scene abuzz over World Cup controversies

A Toronto soccer team is on the lookout for armbands showing support for the LGBTQ community after officials forbid players from wearing them at the World Cup in Qatar.

Morgan Sharp

November 26th 2022

NDP asks for Queen’s Park unanimous consent in bid to improve trans health care

The Opposition NDP’s Kristyn Wong-Tam sought the unanimous consent of Ontario's legislature earlier this week to create a committee to improve access to trans health care. The government House leader rejected it.

Morgan Sharp

November 19th 2022

Chief Wilfred King waits for commissioner’s call

The chief of a First Nation community north of Thunder Bay says complaints about a police sergeant led to “mob rule” in Gull Bay First Nation as Ontario Provincial Police’s Armstrong detachment ignores calls for assistance.

Morgan Sharp

November 18th 2022

Ontario school strike back on the table as focus turns to service levels

Ontario's education workers have issued a second strike notice, saying contract talks are stalled over the Ford government’s unwillingness to invest more in services for students.

Morgan Sharp

November 16th 2022

Ford government repeals anti-strike law, updates budget as CUPE talks remain far apart

It was a busy day at Queen’s Park on Monday, with education workers getting back their right to strike and Ontario’s government projecting a budget deficit that critics warn could be used to avoid paying them and other public sector workers a living wage.

Morgan Sharp

November 14th 2022

Who won and lost — and what now — in Ontario labour snafu?

The Ford government tried to legislate away Ontario workers’ bargaining rights last week. Instead, it likely needs to sweeten the deal it’s proposing to emboldened education workers.

Morgan Sharp

November 11th 2022

A timeline of Ontario’s labour troubles in schools

In the space of nine days, Ontario’s Progressive Conservative government drew up, imposed and promised to withdraw a law that invoked the Charter of Rights and Freedoms’ notwithstanding clause to block any opposition to its enforced four-year pay offer to Canadian Union of Public Employees members.

Morgan Sharp

November 11th 2022

School’s back, as Ford backtracks on anti-strike law

“We won. They backed down,” Sharron Flynn-Bennett, a union organizer and special education worker in the Toronto Catholic District School Board, said outside Queen’s Park on Monday.

Morgan Sharp

November 7th 2022

Depave Paradise project challenges idea of urbanization

A Canada-wide initiative is showing people it's not too late to return the concrete jungle back to nature.

Nairah Ahmed

November 4th 2022

‘Bring it on’: Ontario education workers set to strike Friday in defiance of back-to-work law

To howls from opposition critics and growing outcry from those sympathetic to the education workers’ plight, the Ford government got its anti-strike law on the books ahead of a (now illegal) picket by tens of thousands of CUPE staff that will close many of the province’s schools starting Friday.

Morgan Sharp

November 3rd 2022

Teens turn to cannabis to ease their mental pain. But is there a better way?

New statistics on medical cannabis use raise questions about what qualifies as pain management and highlight the need for more open conversations between young people and health professionals, researchers and mental health experts say.

Nairah Ahmed

November 3rd 2022