Cardus hosted Alexandre Havard, the Moscow-based leadership author turning heads across the world, in Ottawa earlier this month. Please enjoy some highlights from his discussion with Ray Pennings.

What makes your city vibrant, social, and thriving? Where do you see renewal happening in your neighbourhoods?Comment is looking for your original photo submissions on this theme, for the June 2014 issue of Comment highlighting the Cardus Social Cities program. Prizes The first prize winner will be awarded $250.00 (CDN)! Five runners-up will also receive signed copies of Discipleship in the Present Tense, by Comment editor James K.A. Smith. The best entries will win a spot in our iPad edition, and a few lucky winners will even get published in the print issue. Contest DetailsDeadline for entry: April 20, 2014. The contest is now closed. Winners will be notified and announced shortly! Maximum of five entries per person. All subsequent entries will be ignored. Emails must include (a) photo title, (b) your full name, and (c) your full mailing address. File formats accepted: JPG, PNG only. Photo dimensions: no limitation. Attachment must be 24 Mb in size or smaller. Grouping up to 5 entries in one email is preferred, but split out if total size will exceed 24 Mb. Submit only your own, original work. By submitting your work you grant Comment limited ability to reproduce your photo—with proper attribution—in our iPad and print editions of the June 2014 issue.

The Cardus Religious Schools Initiative released a report on occupational trajectories of religious school graduates, written by Dr. David Sikkink. What is the impact of attending a religious high school on jobs and careers taken up later in life? Do religious schools matter for educational and occupational career trajectories? In this report, we marshal evidence suggesting that religious school experiences shape the kind of majors their graduates take up and the jobs they attain. We explain school-work relationships with theories of educational and religious experiences of evangelical Protestant school graduates.Read the full report at the CRSI website.

Cardus president Michael Van Pelt will join Minister Jason Kenney as part of a delegation to Germany and the UK to learn about and share best practices on trades and skills development. The invitation follows on the heels of a conference held by Cardus in January in Toronto which brought together leaders in construction, resource development, labour, and government, to explore solutions to the economic and social concerns brought about by Canada's skilled labour shortage. Cardus's work on labour has focused on the broader social frameworks in which skilled trades are developed, and we welcome the opportunity to discuss these matters with industry partners in Germany and the UK. Read the official press release here.

The Canadian federal budget delivered by Finance Minister Flaherty this afternoon was his tenth, but is best understood as a stage setter for his eleventh. Officially, this budget outlines how the government proposes to raise and spend $276 billion between April 1st of this year and March 31st of next; in reality, it is about defining the terms on which the 2015 federal election campaign will be fought. This isn't to minimize the importance of the headline-grabbing initiatives like job-training infrastructure spending, taxes for smokers, or consumer protection. However, they take a back seat to the bottom line of a projected $6.4 billion surplus for 2015-16 and the "low taxes, more jobs" formula to which the government subscribes. This budget "cleans up" the final pieces of Canada's Economic Action Plan, the $63 billion stimulus package introduced after the 2008 economic collapse. New programs for apprentices and internships as well as a proposed Job Matching Service are intended to help more Canadians enter the workforce. Several consumer initiatives, including an attempt to force retailers to charge Canadians the same prices as they do Americans, reinforces the continuing appeal for middle-class support. The 419-page budget document contains hundreds of measures. Among the initiatives:A $500 million investment in specific sectors including automotive support, forestry and mining. There is also a $1.5 billion (over 10 years) commitment of new funding for post-secondary research. (Current funding is approximately $3 billion per year.) The intended focus of these initiatives is to encourage a closer working partnership between universities and business in order to strengthen Canada's research position. A renewed focus on the benefit costs for the civil service, with a proposed renewal of the government's disability and sick leave program and a change to government pension systems. Various measures designed to help families in specific situations. The Adoption Tax Credit will increase from $11,744 to $15,000; compassionate care Employment Insurance access for parents with critically ill children is enhanced; and a new program supporting workers who have to care for needy family members (e.g. parents) will be forthcoming. Legislation to address price discrimination across borders that will give new powers to the Competition Commission to prevent unwarranted price differentials on opposite sides of the border.The government's opposition critics will likely describe this as a "do little" budget, concerned that the fragile economy requires more significant present stimulus and is being threatened by the Conservative focus on returning to surplus as a campaign platform. On the other hand, a think-tank report released last week argues that the overall level of government spending (including the infrastructure stimulus) is evidence that the government's pragmatism has trumped its conservatism over its eight years of power. Budgets are complex balancing acts in which governments have to choose between competing priorities. This government remains focused on Canadians as income earners and consumers, with social infrastructure taking a back seat to physical infrastructure. Besides modest tinkering, this budget portrays a stay-the-course agenda which will put the pressure on the government in 2015 to deliver on its income-splitting promise made during the past campaign. The NDP and Liberals, then and since, have critiqued this initiative, arguing that focus on income inequality and middle class prosperity are more significant priorities. Cardus is not in the business of entering partisan debates. Different views regarding the responsibility and role of government divide the aisle of our Parliament. But most can agree that returning the government to a place where balanced budgets are again the norm is good policy and Canada is ahead of its competitors in achieving this. That the job market remains tenuous and that our workforce remains ill-equipped to take advantage of tomorrow's challenges remains a real issue. The extent to which government takes the lead in driving this agenda or facilitates other social institutions to prosper is a real issue for debate. Partisans will provide their own spin on the extent to which this budget is a step in the right direction or not. The small steps that are being taken in Budget 2014 are helpful but by no means adequate to address the broader challenge. However, they do help set the stage for a broader debate that will unfold in Campaign 2015.

Despite headline-grabbing initiatives, the bottom line of the Canadian federal budget delivered by Finance Minister Flaherty today comes down to a continued focus on Canadians as income earners and consumers, with social infrastructure taking a back seat to physical infrastructure.Read Ray Pennings' full report here. See more video clips: On JobsOn the Economic Action PlanOn Social InfrastructureOn Income Splitting

Speaking notes for The Honourable Jason Kenney, P.C., M.P. Minister of Employment and Social Development at a conference hosted by Cardus regarding skills mismatch in Canada and what it means for Canada’s future: "Cardus is a wonderful organization that digs deep on issues important to our society and our economy and reaches out to people both in the union and business sectors with a well-grounded intellectual framework to address these issues and I want to thank and acknowledge Cardus and all their supporters for the kind of work they do for example at this conference as well as the partner organizations who are involved here today, the Progressive Contractors Association, the National Construction Labour Relations Association, the Christian Labour Association of Canada and the Building and construction trades. All organizations with whom I’ve been very pleased to work in my brief tenure as the jobs minister and all of them, organizations that are trying to find practical solutions to some of the very big but good challenges that we are facing together as Canadians. I’m here today to talk about the strength of our economy and the challenges we face to achieve long-term prosperity and some of the solutions that we see to those challenges. You know, our country is facing a pivotal time..." Find the full speech here.

Cardus Senior Fellow and Program Director, Social Cities, Milton Friesen published an article in the Berkeley Planning Journal . The paper seeks to help planning scholars orient their research through a proposed discussion framework. To read the full paper, click here.

Cardus is pleased to announce the hiring of a full-time communications coordinator. Naomi Biesheuvel comes to Cardus with many years of experience in overseas media, most recently as Managing Editor of Advanced Studio Classroom magazine. Read Naomi's profile at her staff page: www.cardus.ca/organization/team/naomi/.