"Public policy," says Frances Lankin, "is not an exercise in sheer logic."
So call it an exercise in endurance, or an experiment in stamina. Lankin brings both qualities to her new role as co-commissioner of Ontario's Social Assistance Review Committee, a massive policy meditation spelled out in the province's 2008 Poverty Reduction Strategy. Lankin -- erstwhile provincial NDP cabinet minister and the former head of United Way Toronto who oversaw publication of the organization's seminal Poverty by Postal Code -- is joined by Dr. Munir Sheik, an economist and the former head of Statistics Canada.
The two of them will be mining programs like Ontario Works (OW) and Ontario Disability Support Program (ODSP). They'll examine the policy interface between different levels of government. They'll cut through the reams of red tape embodied in the approximately 800 rules bureaucrats and applicants have to navigate to access or disseminate benefits. Meetings have been ramping up in the past couple months. Come June 2012, the commission will deliver a set of recommendations, possibly to a government of a different political stripe than the one that commissioned their work."
So call it an exercise in endurance, or an experiment in stamina. Lankin brings both qualities to her new role as co-commissioner of Ontario's Social Assistance Review Committee, a massive policy meditation spelled out in the province's 2008 Poverty Reduction Strategy. Lankin -- erstwhile provincial NDP cabinet minister and the former head of United Way Toronto who oversaw publication of the organization's seminal Poverty by Postal Code -- is joined by Dr. Munir Sheik, an economist and the former head of Statistics Canada.
The two of them will be mining programs like Ontario Works (OW) and Ontario Disability Support Program (ODSP). They'll examine the policy interface between different levels of government. They'll cut through the reams of red tape embodied in the approximately 800 rules bureaucrats and applicants have to navigate to access or disseminate benefits. Meetings have been ramping up in the past couple months. Come June 2012, the commission will deliver a set of recommendations, possibly to a government of a different political stripe than the one that commissioned their work."
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