Michael Polanyi

• Doctor of Philosophy
• Policy and Campaign Manager (Nature-based Climate Solutions) at Nature Canada

This report calculates for the first time, using the federal government data, the net greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions associated with logging in Canada. It shows that logging in Canada is a climate polluter at least on par with oil sands operations. It debunks the widespread myth that industrial logging is carbon-neutral, and exposes a massive hole...

Canada is underreporting total carbon dioxide emissions from the forestry sector by more than 80 million tonnes a year–the equivalent to the emissions of all buildings in Canada.

This report draws on the Statistics Canada 2016 Census and other new data sources to describe the level, distribution and depth of poverty among Toronto children, youth and their families. Its main findings are the following: •Indigenous families with children in the City of Toronto experience an extremely high poverty rate of 84%. •More than on...

This report draws from new data to update the 2014 report, The Hidden Epidemic: A Report on Child and Family Poverty in Toronto. It is the result of a collaboration between CAS of Toronto, Family Service Toronto, Social Planning Toronto, and Colour of Poverty – Colour of Change. It describes the level – and unequal distribution – of poverty and dep...

Update of level and distribution of rate of children living in low-income families in Toronto.

This report describes the hidden epidemic of child and family poverty in Toronto. It shows which children are most affected by poverty. Finally, it proposes that it is a crucial time for action by the City of Toronto, in collaboration with other levels of government, to reduce and eventually eradicate child poverty.

Changes in the nature and experience of work, and the emergence of new forms of injuries and illnesses, call into question the prevailing scientist-led, positivist approach to work and health research. This paper critiques this approach on epistemological, methodological and ethical grounds, arguing that it is not capable of understanding and impro...

The term ‘population health’ has supplanted that of public health and health promotion in many Anglophone countries. The ideas underlying the term are not new and owe much to the legacies of nineteenth-century public health radicalism, Latin American social medicine and, more recently, social epidemiology. Its influential modeling by the Canadian I...

Future Search has emerged as a widely used large-group process for building common ground and stimulating multi-stakeholder action on complex issues in a collaborative and participatory way. Yet there are few careful evaluations of the approach. Through a detailed qualitative analysis, this paper critically assesses a Future Search conference on re...

Numerous participatory approaches to action on complex issues have emerged in recent years. One approach, the Future Search conference, is said to build a shared vision and rapid action by diverse stakeholders. This article reports on a detailed qualitative analysis of a Future Search conference on repetitive strain injuries, an ambiguous, conflict...