The UK?

"In the United Kingdom, the government set a plan in motion and reduced child poverty by almost 25 per cent in five years."

Are you sure? When was that?

http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2009/may/08/poverty-equality-britain-incomes-poor?intcmp=239

"National levels of severe child poverty
Key national findings
In the year 2008-09, around 1.6 million or 13% of the
children in the UK were in severe poverty. Children in
severe poverty made up about four in ten of all children in
overall poverty. 2008-09 saw a slight decline in the
proportion of children in severe poverty compared to
2007-08 of around 100,000. This was consistent with the
fall in the rate of overall UK wide child poverty since
2007-08 and a result of government measures at the time
which boosted the incomes of low income families (child
benefit and tax credit increases). However, since we first
introduced this measure we’ve seen an overall rise in the
number of children living in severe poverty, from 11% of
all children in 2004/05 to 13% in 2008/09."

http://www.leftfootforward.org/2011/02/tackling-child-poverty-wales/

hope this will too

Can you send thiese messages to her??
BC is / was a rich province before the lieberals drained the coffers - There are many ways to get rid of poverty but only those who are healthy in every way bother to look at these. Anyone can count the 44 spent on a corrupt governemnt and the waste in bc. Millions to shut up those involved with bc rail - Millions spent on Sallyanne for shelters - the bottom line is NO political will. CC must go Who is counting her lies while she was trying to get into gordos seat / job
CC get rid bc of poverty if you want to stay -

I don't tweet

so.....

Mary Jane

a) It's Liberals.

b) Here's the truth about poverty reduction plan - WE HAVE ONE, thank you Mary Rose Polak:

"There is no question that the best plan to elevate a family out of poverty is to make sure that they have a way of earning a living. We had a target of creating jobs. We've created jobs. We had a target of lowering costs for families. We've done that. We had a plan for lowering taxes. We've done that.

"All that a child could expect during the 1990s was that they had a one-in-ten chance of living in a family that was on welfare. That was a shameful record, and I'm so proud that that is not being repeated under this government."

15 Feb. 2011 BC Leg Question Period

Oh and BTW, now on YouTube is...

The BCLiberal Poverty Reduction Plan.

Kinda, sorta.

Segment of 15 Feb. 2011 BC Leg Question Period: http://youtu.be/ZoTFNJEqI1g

Note the BCNDP has NO PLAN, NO PLAN of their own. No plan to grow the economy. No plan to enshrine in legislation to debate. No plan to reduce costs for families.

Oh and spare me the HST rhetoric... low income people are getting cut cheques because of that and the carbon tax shift.

Ramona is quite right

Quite right, Ramona. Just so. Far more effective to send a wish list to Premier-Designate Christy before the boys in the real estate industry have their way with her as they did with her predecessor. Tell her what's needed and propose several ways she might get us there. Leave Twitter to the, um, twits.

Non-tweeters like myself

can forward this story to a friend, or politician. The basic idea is to raise awareness that BC lags in having a plan to deal with poverty. Spreading that word, in any way you wish, wouldn't seem to me to be a suggestion to be scorned. But some apparently disagree. Have a great weekend.

Economics 101

The only way to reduce poverty is to make it so everyone that wants a job can find a job. And the only way to do that is to eliminate the minimum wage.Instead of the unemployed competing for jobs, employers would compete for workers, with better wages and benefits.

It works in Hong Kong, which now has a higher standard of living than Canada.

Tweet if you must.

We hear this often, "B.C. has the highest poverty rate in Canada; ". Where does that come from? According to the non-profit, intraspec.ca and First Call, BC Child and Youth Advocacy Coalition, "British Columbia’s child poverty rate fell for the second consecutive year to 14.5 percent in 2008, using Statistics Canada’s Low Income Cut-Offs before-tax as a measure of poverty. The BCBC rate was just above the national rate for all ten provinces of 14.2 percent."

If we look at the figures without the LICO adjustment we see that five provinces have HIGHER child poverty rates and BC's rate is half a decimal higher than Québec (a rounding similarity).

Manitoba, Saskatchewan, New Brunswick, Nova Scotia and Ontario have HIGHER levels of Child Poverty, before tax. Yet BC has lowered taxes in the past couple of years so we can expect contemporary numbers to improve.

Charts show also that after government transfers, five provinces have HIGHER rates of Child Poverty.

So, what is LICO? LICO is an arbitrary estimate that also takes into account area of residence!

Here's what's called a, "Plain language definition:

Income levels at which families or persons not in economic families spend 20% more than average of their before tax income on food, shelter and clothing."

http://www12.statcan.ca/census-recensement/2006/ref/dict/fam020-eng.cfm

Nobody wants poverty anywhere, least of all close to home in our own province but the figures are really all over the map and are not 'pure' but they are manipulated and adjusted by arbitrary estimates and variables including averages and ages, location etc.

Add a grain of salt otherwise the bitterness might be too much.

R/M old man....

http://www.policynote.ca/child-poverty-how-does-bc-stack-up-against-those-provinces-with-a-plan/

Ricky, my son

Hey, thanks for that! I always wondered what the CCPA would think. Somehow, call me jaded, I didn't imagine that the CCPA would come out with guns blazing for the most successful BC Liberals. What else is new, eh?

I tried to find objective opinions.

Here's someone else:

"Canada has one of the highest levels of intergenerational mobility in the developed world. It is consistent with Scandinavian nations and trumps even Sweden. And Statistics Canada studies show that most of us who started with low incomes don’t stay poor.

Those who assert that an obvious fact—some earn more money than the rest of us—is then a cause of higher rates of sickness or crime, make a classic correlation-causation mistake.

According to that logic, even if prices stayed the same and the richest Canadians saw their income and wealth triple while the rest of us saw our incomes and wealth only double, social problems and pathologies would increase. It’s a ludicrous association. It simplifies complex reasons for poverty, crime, and sickness, important matters that ought to be soberly addressed.

Thoughtful politicians such as John F. Kennedy and provincial governments like Saskatchewan’s former NDP government saw the value of the private sector. It’s why before each left office, they reduced taxes—not the only aspect of prosperity promotion to be sure, but a critical factor depending on pre-existing tax levels. They understood flourishing economies help combat poverty through the creation of opportunity. Such politicians are the mainstream political practitioners of what Maddison observed worked in the past 1,000 years, but especially during the past two centuries."

http://www.fraserinstitute.org/research-news/news/display.aspx?id=17205

Take it away Rickie. You know your beat.

*sigh*

I really wonder how many of the 91% who want the government to work on solving the poverty issue would be supportive of the increase to taxes that would be required to do this.

It's so discouraging how many people believe that somehow cutting taxes is going to miraculously make things better for everyone (as opposed to businesses and the rich). If the government isn't getting money, it can hardly implement good social programs.

Anti poverty means anti rich

Lets get real here, if you want to fight poverty you need money. You don't get money from the poor, you don't get money from the working poor, or our diminishing middle class, who has been tapped to the maximum.

Our only true option is to, (God forbid) tax the rich.

Lets re-institute the bank tax that Carol Taylor gave away, lets put a tax on raw logs being exported from the province, lets!!!

The rich get richer and it would seem there is no ghost to make them help poor Tiny Tim. Boo!
,

Tax the rich?

Quick way for them to leave.

Kinda unsophisticated.

unsophisticated? Laugh out loud...

It seems to be a talking point of some that solving poverty will require an increase to the overburdened taxpayer, but this math has been disputed time and time again by inumerable studies (undertaken by people who can do math) that are readily available on the internet, by the way. Homelessness and poverty cost the taxpayer in both direct and indirect ways, and these costs are most certainly higher than the modest supports a reasonable society would put in place for the very vulnerable.

Here I am only going to point out a few simple (again, readily verified) facts. First, the majority of jobs in BC are created by small business, while at the same time most of the tax breaks and other creative ways of diverting money go to big business. Second, that doing business in a society where people are well-housed, fed, and educated is a huge benefit to employers - a benefit that they should share in paying for. Third, that small business - not to mention the working poor as well as the income-supported poor spend almost all their profits/wages here at home, in contrast to both big business and 'the rich'.

If 'the rich' (both corporations and individuals) decide to leave for less-taxed jurisdictions, it is hardly 'unsosphisticated' to let them go, just the contrary. With them out of the way we can concentrate on building an economy that serves the basic needs of all citizens.

There are advantages to getting on in years

No, really. The thing is you remember how things were in the 1960's and most of the 70's.
We actually had a fair tax system that didn't rip off the moderate & low income people. The rich paid their full share. As a result the governments had more money to build schools, colleges and highways, and pay teachers, and other staff.

Also we remember that in countries in Latin America where there were huge disparities of income there were in the end those inevitable nasty revolutions.

Why do our leaders think we'll be any different here?

Oh, and it's small businesses that create jobs (around 80% of them), and corporations that seem to downsize in order to maximize profits. That means they fire people.

We need to go back to move forward. Forward to a prosperous society, not just a few super rich folks who don't pay their proper share of taxes. Let's remember that flat taxes penalize those with lower incomes: If your income is 1,000,000 a year and you pay 30% income tax, you still have $660,000 left. If your income is $30,000 and you pay the same %, you're left with $20,000. (Pretty slim pickings, for those who don't know such a low income.)

In the 60's this would not have been possible, because the highest portions of the progressive income tax clawed back as much as 90% -- and rightly so. Noblesse oblige, right?

ChristyFan

The world is not as simplistic a place as you like to believe.

You say that if the rich paid more taxes they'd leave and that somehow we would be poorer?

The reality is that if the rich left the prices of houses would fall which would increase the standard of living for the rest of the population.

If the rich left and took their companies with them it would be a great day because the market and resources that made them rich would still be here and new companies would quickly appear and pay our increased tax rates which would again benefit all.

The rich having left and thus lost their incomes would have to find a place to put their money before inflation ate it all away and forced them to look for honest work.

Have you ever read an actual book critiquing capitalism?