I was off this week and doing lots of house work which gave me time to read and think:

• With outrage in our streets and social media channels you could forget that genocide by another name is quietly occurring in China
• Below is a a super interesting chart from John Haldeman which indexed municipal expenditures to 2009 by service areas from earlier in June. I missed this but stumbled across it this week.

• Photos of Locust swarms in East Africa in the Middle East.
• An interesting podcast with one of my favourite economists (yes that is a thing) Andrew Leach on Alberta’s Petro-patroitism.
• Summer camps are going to start at 2 Community Centres – WFCU and Capri. I am curious how those facilities were selected, socio-economically putting the camps in parts of the City where families can afford childcare and likely have access to vehicle while the City Core do not receive camps is certainly interesting and races some equity questions
• As part of the City’s budget mitigation measures in response to COVID Pathway to Potential is receiving a $550,000 reduction/non expenditure reallocation. Whether this is cuts to programs or just savings from non-expenditures (for example fewer transit subsidies given out) it isn’t clear in the report.
  • Just because low income people and families didn’t access programs (because they were not provided) doesn’t mean that those funds should just be shunted into the general reserve. Odds are those individuals and families have new needs that those dollars could support in response to COVID.
  • To put in context United Way only received $926,000 while our community foundation received approximately $600,000 respectively from the Federal government to support COVID relief efforts.
  • Now the City has invested in COVID relief in a number of ways – redeploying staff, space in kind at WFCU etc. another $550,000 for low income populations could still do a lot of good.
• I received some good feedback on the Indigenous Population post that went up on Canada Day. I appreciate it as I am pretty ignorant on these issues.
  • I didn’t mention Truth and Reconciliation which is entirely fair. I will admit to “settler ignorance” on this, it just didn’t occur to me to talk about it. That being said having read the T&R report previously I am not sure how much local data would align with the Recommendations that could be discussed in the context of the post.
  • I didn’t talk about Caldwell first nations at all. Although I discussed reserves in a very general sense, I have learned that Caldwell is attempting to establish one following a successful land claim. I was vaguely aware of the land claim but unaware of the reserve process.
    • The Census data does not break out this specific population vs others unless either Inuit, Metis or First Nations. Digging into the socio-economic and demographic make up of the Caldwell community would be great, but I don’t think that data exists in the public form.
  • The relationship with Walpole Island and this region with many of it’s members living hear or utilizing the University or Health Care in our region.
    • Walpole Island’s Census data is available but doesn’t tell us how it connect to Windsor Essex.
      • The only piece of data that I could find for Walpole Island that might connect to Windsor was their Journey to Work Data which Windsor (nor Walpole a destination from Windsor) was not a destination location for regular employment.
      • There are also data gaps ex. no low income data.
  • The scope that I put myself under for that piece really had me focusing on the populations data that was readily available and the comparative data that I used for the Racial Inequality posts. I also set myself the time frame for having the piece ready for July 1. The challenge with the points above is that they actually can’t measured in the data that is publicly available.

• Honestly it doesn’t look like Leamington and Kingsville will be getting out Stage 1 on Monday.
  • Other parts of the province are thinking about Stage 3.
• From the outside, I honestly don’t know how we sort out the Migrant worker outbreaks. There is no quick solution beside isolation for 2 weeks. We are now just past the 3 week marker on the chart above, so initial cases may be resolving.
• Meanwhile in Texas:

On Sunday, the medical staff at a Houston hospital ran out of both space for new coronavirus patients and a key drug needed to treat them. https://t.co/0nCMwOWbgg

— ProPublica (@propublica) July 5, 2020

• Later this month will see the first national infection rate data which should be interesting.

• Nearly 10% of US adults are living with parents or grandparents – That’s almost the population of Canada (about 33 million people).
• As I wrap up, I am going to see how many of the readers that I get on this post each week are actually paying attention 😛
  • So I am going to do a little AMA of sorts over the next week. What is a data or policy question that you want to unpack about Windsor-Essex?
  • I will answer good ones (or only ones) in next week post (or a special post if demand warrants it) as soon as I can write it.
  • Either respond in the Facebook or Twitter posts that I share this article in or below in the comment section.