Our Research
What is Ontario going to do about its private schools? Cardus explores the need for a serious policy review in this discussion paper by Dr. Derek Allison, emeritus professor in the education faculty at Western University.
"Something of a chilly climate has developed toward non-public schools in Ontario," writes Allison. This report argues to politicians, bureaucrats, and fellow citizens that both private and public education are goods that can be intertwined and made interdependent to foster a stable, orderly, and integrated society.
Indwell is an Ontario organization that has worked for many years to establish effective and sustainable approaches to housing support for people suffering from mental illness.
Cardus studied Indwell because they represent an organization that has found an innovative solution for a significant challenge: Indwell combines three primary elements to achieve significantly improved, efficient and stable housing support for people suffering with mental illness. None of the three elements is unusual, but Indwell has found an integration method that allows organizational growth; greatly decreases transience among the people they serve; and prevents Indwell from relying on government funding.
Download the first entry in the Cardus Case Studies series today, and discover an organization renewing North America's social architecture.
David Sikkink examines whether religious high schools influence the type of job and career achieved by graduates. He considers college choice, college transfers, college major, graduation rates and occupational sector for Evangelical Protestant schools and Catholic schools, comparing them with public, private and homeschool students.
Cardus is interested in exploring how subsidiarity could rejuvenate and bring cohesion to public and private thought and practice including both civil service and political processes and engagement. Through papers, research, and events with key leaders and thinkers, we hope to strengthen the discussion and practice of subsidiarity. This white paper from Cardus explores what it might mean to re-engage the ideas of subsidiarity as a non-partisan underpinning for wider and more effective civic and public policy engagement.
Cardus presents a quick review of the Loyola High School v. Attorney General of Quebec case to date, including an introduction to the various perspectives of key intervening organizations. Published March 24, 2014.
The City of Edmonton is planning for continued rapid growth and therefore considerable effort has been put into long term strategic planning for current and new residents alike. However, a critical component of the municipal fabric appears absent in these documents: faith communities.
The first ever analysis of Statistics Canada data examining the link between marriage and income in Canada.
This report was published under IMFC auspices.
Canada is in the midst of a new industrial revolution which is changing the face of our economy. Resources— long lamented as the means by which Canadians served other, more developed countries—have instead held Canada steady through a global economic crisis and maintained an industrial core.
The Social Cities research report "Strengthening Vital Signs Through Urban Religious Communities" is now available. The report was supported in part by the Calgary Foundation and is based on a series of community roundtable consultations, primary research, review of official documents, and statistical data from the Canada Revenue Agency. While earlier work focused on Calgary's downtown, this report considers the city as a whole.
Calgary has a history of strong engagement between faith-based organizations and the communities they serve and are part of. After making changes to the Centre City Plan in May 2013 to make formal provision for the role of faith-based organizations in long-term structural planning, it was natural to continue to explore how that dynamic might play out across the city of Calgary.
One of the central findings of the report is that there are untapped resources in faith-based organizational networks that could enhance long-term structural planning in the city. At the same time, faith-based organizations are challenged by a lack of common organizational structures that would allow them to interact with established planning and development processes.
"Strengthening Vital Signs Through Urban Religious Communities" provides a review of the planning landscape of the city of Calgary, the size and extent of faith-based organizations in the city, and strategies for enhancing meaningful collaboration between these two significant strengths.
David Sikkink examined "What Parents Want," a recent Fordham Institute report based on a survey of American parents and the educational goals and the school characteristics that are most important to them. Sikkink looks closely at the differences between religious school parents and non-religious school parents.
This policy paper presents the case for a new framework of understanding labour relations in Canada. Taking insights which move debates about labour beyond the pendulum of pro-union and anti-union policies, it proposes a new policy within a new framework.
Canadian parents matter. They are the most important input into their children's lives. Unfortunately, those designing public policy don't often turn to parents to ask what they prefer when it comes to childcare choices.
This report was published under IMFC auspices.
On May 21, 2013, Brian Dijkema presented this briefing note to the Standing Committee on Transport, Infrastructure and Communities in Ottawa, ON.
A potential labour monopoly could increase costs by up to 40 percent on over a 100 million dollars worth of work in the Region of Waterloo, says a brief released by Hamilton based think-tank Cardus. The paper estimates
- A successful application in the Region of Waterloo could increase construction costs by up to 78 million dollars for 553,000 taxpayers in the Region of Waterloo
- 28 percent of Ontario taxpayers are affected by municipal labour monopolies in construction
- Labour monopolies affect almost a billion dollars worth of construction work in Ontario municipalities
For further information, or to arrange an interview, please contact Julia Nethersole at jnethersole@cardus.ca or via phone at 905.528.8866 x29
Why governments won't stop bullying until families step up.
This report was published under IMFC auspices.
Labour monopolies increase costs by up to 40 percent on nearly a billion dollars worth of Ontario construction projects, says a paper released by Hamilton based think-tank Cardus. The paper estimates,
- 25 percent of Ontario taxpayers are affected by municipal labour monopolies in construction
- Labour monopolies affect over 750 million dollars worth of construction work in Ontario municipalities
- The City of Toronto alone could save almost 60 million dollars using open tendering practices
How do Canadians students rate their education? How do they fare—years later, decades later—in their cultural and civic lives? The Cardus Education Survey 2012 report examines graduate outcomes of both government (public) and non-government schools, comparing them to each other and to the stated aims of every provincial education ministry. Data collected by Angus Reid's Vision Critical polling.
Download the 187-slide extended data pack, to review a larger sample of Cardus' findings than could be discussed in the 2012 report.
Canadian law values marriage as a short-term prospect through no-fault divorce.
This report was published under IMFC auspices.
The Old Testament is full of much which is confusing, violent, and ambiguous. We asked Ryan O'Dowd, lecturer at Cornell University and author of Old Testament Wisdom Literature: A Theological Introduction, to introduce and curate a series of articles on how and why we should read the Old Testament for public life today.
—Comment editors, Fall 2011
"It is incumbent on those of us who make it our business to think through such things to imagine how the 'Big Society' agenda could provide opportunity and hope within a cultural arc where both seem to be in short supply." —Ray Pennings
A transcription of proceedings from the Manning Centre Special Briefing, held June 10, 2011 in Ottawa. The papers served as the basis for initial presentations, followed by responses from panelists and questions from the floor. A joint project of Cardus, the Manning Centre, and the Institute of Marriage and Family Canada.
(See also the accompanying letter to Mayor Naheed Nenshi, and the Calgary City Council.)
Cardus is pleased to present Phase Two of its Calgary City Soul project. Undertaken in cooperation with the Arlington Group, the Calgary City Soul project was conceived following a one-day Cardus seminar in September 2008. At that time, it was noticed that the City of Calgary's Centre City Plan—a comprehensive and visionary planning document designed to attract an additional 40,000 to 70,000 residents into the civic core—had overlooked the city-building role that institutions of faith play.
Beliefs may be private or personal matters, but the institutions that nurture them have long been and remain public and part of, not apart from, the secular society represented by governments. Faith institutions have long played a critical role in the social fabric of vital cities.
Phase Two, supported in part by a grant from the Calgary Foundation, was assigned to the Arlington Group, an established urban planning consultancy. This study's comprehensive conclusions are available at length in the report, but in summary, indicate:
- Institutions of faith play a vital role in the enhancement of the civic culture, the availability of public space, and the provision of social services in a fashion that greatly benefits the wider civic community.
- The effectiveness and efficiency of these institution's social services often surpasses what can be delivered by government agencies, owing in part to the very localized and socially embedded nature of the service delivery represented by faith institutions.
- The nature of Calgary's faith community is changing dramatically and the current inability of the Centre City Plan to adapt to and reflect those changes is likely to lead to social exclusion, which will in turn increase pressure on both the delivery systems of government and the public money that fuels those systems.
- The physical infrastructure of faith institutions has been a vital part of the aesthetic landscape in the City of Calgary, and this valuable presence should not only be preserved but must also be extended in a way that is commensurate with other aspects of city growth.
Accompanying the report is a direct letter to Mayor Naheed Nenshi, and the Calgary City Council, with specific amendments proposed for Calgary's Centre City Plan. Read the Centre City Plan amendments proposal here.
Despite the depiction of married life in popular media as drudgery, social science has consistently shown that married people fair well across a number of measures of wellbeing.
Ontario's College of Trades will not be effective in solving the very real problems with trades in Ontario, and will almost definitely increase the financial and regulatory burden on an already troubled sector. The COT is a far-reaching piece of legislation offering little confidence the College will objectively and responsibly manage Ontario's trades.
Do Christian schools deliver on their promises? Cardus reports on the largest-ever sample of Christian school graduates and administrators in North America, focusing on students' spiritual formation, cultural engagement, and academic development. This report is available for purchase in PDF or book form, and and its accompanying curricula are available free of charge in digital form, and at cost in print form.