Excerpts from the letter:
As the country's oldest not for profit social research organization, the Canadian Council on Social Development is encouraged by your government's commitment to the Canada Social Transfer (CST) as announced in the recent Federal budget.
The CCSD recognizes that the Canada Social Transfer, in and of itself, will not resolve all of Canada's social challenges. But it can &em; and should &em; be a key instrument that addresses some of these challenges.
In 2004, the CCSD published a discussion document calling attention to the importance of the CST. We made the case that problems with the Canada Social Transfer needed to be addressed if the provinces were to have the necessary resources and tools to effectively support their social programmes. We also showed that since the cuts of the mid-1990s, those programmes, and consequently many Canadian families, had suffered significantly.
On behalf of our members, partners and stakeholders we proposed a four point agenda:
1) splitting the CST into two parts (social programmes and post-secondary education) for better accountability and transparency;
2) increasing funding to the CST and then ensuring predictability and stability through an escalator mechanism;
3) finding common principles through broad engagement with Canadians;
4) measuring and monitoring outcomes, sharing innovation and sharing best practices.
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