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If You Were to Vote Against Poverty

Which party deserves your nod? The NDP and Liberals have made explicit promises. Conservatives have not.

By Katie Hyslop, 20 Apr 2011, TheTyee.ca

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If you've been paying attention to this federal election, you've heard all about how much the health of the economy and the middle class matters to each party. But at least two parties are starting to pay attention to the lower income brackets, the roughly 10 per cent of Canadians who live in poverty, by proposing a national anti-poverty strategy.

Both the Liberal and New Democratic Party platforms promise to work with the provincial governments to provide poverty relief to Canadians in the form of a national affordable housing strategy, more affordable early childhood education, and increasing the Canada Pension Plan, to name a few promises.

It's not perfect, but it's a start for anti-poverty groups like Canada Without Poverty, who have been calling for a national strategy to combat poverty for years.

"All levels of government have very important roles to play and if governments don't approach this issue in a comprehensive way, there's a real risk of a fragmented approach and a piecemeal approach, which is essentially what we have seen over many years with various programs, various initiatives being brought in, but the bigger picture goes missing," says Rob Rainer, executive director of Canada Without Poverty.

Poverty hasn't budged under Tories

This election isn't the first time the parties indicated poverty is on their radar. The House of Commons Committee on Human Resources, Skills and Social Development and the Status of Persons with Disabilities tabled a report last November recommending the government look into creating a national anti-poverty strategy, including raising the Child Tax Benefit and the Guaranteed Annual Income Supplement rates.

The Conservative government rejected the report, with a spokesperson for then-minister of Human Resources Diane Finley telling the Toronto Star in March: "Our Conservative government believes that the best way to fight poverty is to grow our economy and get Canadians working."

Rainer doesn't buy this approach, though, and says the Conservatives haven't been adequately monitoring their own success on poverty reduction.

"There's been virtually no substantive movement on poverty numbers or instance or depth of poverty in the past four or five years as a result of government's approach, so they're not even looking seriously at how they evaluate measures of success," he told The Tyee.

Senate report pointed to guaranteed income

The Conservatives also rejected a Senate report on poverty last fall, which called on the government to invest in programs to keep kids in school and produce a green paper on creating a guaranteed annual income program for all Canadians -- an idea not included in the House of Commons report.

"Our group has also long been supportive of the concept of guaranteed income, and that concept's been around for some 40 or more years here in Canada. Its waxed and waned over the years in terms of support, but in terms of combating income poverty, providing more access to a baseline of income we think is definitely part of the solution," says Rainer.

Conservative Senator Hugh Segal is one of the report's authors and a huge advocate for a national anti-poverty strategy in Canada. Having grown up in poverty, Segal sees the equality of opportunity that a guaranteed income supplement would bring as an essentially Canadian value.

"I just think that any society holds together because all of us in various aspects of our life have some measure of hope," Segal told The Tyee.

"And when you remove hope from an individual, when you remove someone's sense that they can improve their circumstance or have a better circumstance for their kids, then you get the opposite of hope, which is despair, and despair is what leads to all of the negative pathologies: all of the substance abuse, all of the criminal issues, all of the issues around family violence and abuse, all of the issues in terms of non-productive, non-constructive behaviour."

HOW MANY CANADIANS ARE POOR?

There is no official definition of poverty in Canada, but one popular method of measurement used by many politicians and non-governmental organizations is Statistics Canada's Low-Income Cut-Off point. This measurement calculates how much an individual or family, depending on the number of dependents they have and the population of their community, would need to make in order to make ends meet.

The percentage of Canadians living under this unofficial poverty line hasn't dropped below 10 per cent since 1980: roughly 3.5 million Canadians today.

It's difficult to determine the true cost of poverty to Canadian taxpayers, taking into account the increased hospital stays from poverty-related maladies like diabetes and heart diseases, the loss for the workforce from kids who drop out and can't find employment as a result, or the cost of crime and jailing criminals whose poverty led them down that path.

In 2008 the Ontario Association of Food Banks recruited Don Drummond, former senior economist for the Toronto Dominion Bank, to calculate the cost of poverty in Ontario. Drummond estimated poverty cost Ontario $10-13 billion per year, and extrapolated the cost of Canada's poverty to be $24.4 to $30.5 billion per year. – K.H.

Looking to small town Manitoba

There is already a Guaranteed Annual Income program for Canada's seniors, and Segal says given the appropriate funding, the program has been successful in the past. He cites its first appearance in Ontario during the 1970s, when the poverty rates for senior women -- who often outlived their husbands and their money -- dropped from 33 per cent to just under 3 per cent in two years.

Then there's Dauphin, Manitoba, a small town that from 1974 through 1978 was the subject of a provincial-federal MINCOME project, where every resident's income was topped up to keep them above the poverty line. Research on the project was scrapped when governments changed, but University of Manitoba Prof. Evelyn Forget has received funding to study the outcomes of the project, which Segal says are promising.

"So things happened like: people stayed in school longer, and finished high school; the arrests went down; the amount of people who were in hospital went down; car accidents went down -- because the amount of financial angst that people face when they're on the line, and the pressure that causes, was also diminished," he says.

Neither the Liberal nor NDP platforms mention a guaranteed income supplement plan, though the NDP promises to re-introduce a federal minimum wage plan scrapped by the Liberal government in 1996.

Segal estimates the cost of a Guaranteed Income Supplement program would be $20 to $25 billion per year, or less than 10 per cent of the country's Gross Domestic Product. He estimates he's spoken on the issue of a national anti-poverty strategy 100 times in the last two years, including three times with Finance Minister Jim Flaherty, and a recent meeting with Liberal leader Michael Ignatieff.

"The fact that (the Conservative government) put $20 million in the budget for education right after (the Senate) report, I think was a huge step ahead because part of the real cost of poverty is kids leaving school early and having diminished job and life prospects as a result," says Segal, adding the Working Tax Benefit program, which lowers income tax rates for the poorest Canadians, has also been expanded twice under the Conservatives.

New Zealand among countries with plans

Rainer believes pulling everyone out of poverty will cost even less: $12 to $15 billion per year, which could be achieved by reinstating the two per cent the Conservatives cut from the GST in 2008.

But it isn't just about the money for Rainer. He says there's a moral, and even legal obligation for the next government of Canada to reduce the national poverty rates.

"I'm thinking of the Universal Declaration on Human Rights -- that articulates what we call a number of economic and social rights as being universal and states are under a moral obligation, and really, to some extent, a legal obligation although it's not enforced, to ensure that those rights are upheld," he says.

By implementing a national anti-poverty strategy, Canada would join the ranks of Sweden, the United Kingdom, New Zealand, and Ireland, which have implemented similar policies to some success. East Vancouver NDP MP Libby Davies believes we should learn from these countries, particularly Sweden.

"They do have a fair taxation system so they have the resources to provide accessible, affordable child care; they have the resources to provide affordable post-secondary education. And they're better off overall, they're way better off overall, and there are many, many academic studies that show that Canada is actually far, far behind on many of these questions, particularly things like housing and healthcare and First Nations," says Davies.

Davies points out the NDP have already introduced several poverty reduction bills, including a national housing bill, an anti-poverty bill, a child-care bill, and a post-secondary education bill.

"I do feel strongly that the NDP have been a very passionate advocate for anti-poverty measurements and what we've brought in Parliament," she told The Tyee.

"These are all bills that we all work on in our different critic areas, and when you kind of put it together, you can really see that it's sort of a major issue for us, saying that poverty is unacceptable in Canada." [Tyee]

Katie Hyslop is covering the federal election for The Tyee.

29 Comments:

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  • OhCanada

    1 year ago

    Embarrassing ...

    It's kind of embarrassing that a country such as Canada has to deal with poverty.

    It is embarrassing that in a land of plenty there are still about 3 million! people live in poverty - one in ten Canadians.

    So the Conservatives say:
    "Our Conservative government believes that the best way to fight poverty is to grow our economy and get Canadians working."
    That's kind of vague don't you think?

    Grow our economy? How? By not taking care of the environment? ie. managing resources and looking after water and land.
    The CPC (Corrupt Party of Conservatives) is the most anti-environmental government in Canadian history. If they can, they will sell all the resources of this country under the name of 'creating jobs'. Once the resources are gone, so will the jobs.

    ... and here is the other one - 'get Canadians working' Aha. Because they are not working now, right? So how do you get them working?

    By letting big corporations lay off Canadians and outsource those jobs to other countries like the Philippines, then give the corporations tax cuts to stimulate the economy. If your head is in the sand you'll probably believe this BS.

    Otherwise just vote NDP or Liberals. The Conservatives will ruin this country even further.

    Is this what you want in Canada?

    Over the years hundreds of jobs were outsourced from this country - have you noticed your internet and TV providers are now calling you from outside of the country? Did you allow them to make your personal information available to a foreign person not governed by this country's law?

    Those who lost their jobs will have a hard time to find other jobs and will just add to the already high poverty numbers in this country.

    Despicable and totally unacceptable to have children and adults living in poverty in this country.

    I hope you'll all vote with a conscience!

  • Kreditanstalt

    1 year ago

    "...a fair taxation system..."? Definition, please...

    If someone can come up with an anti-poverty plan which does not involve higher government expenditures, tax increases (on ANYONE) or re-distributing earnings from one person to another, I'll buy it.

    Because then it would be truly original - and "fair"...

  • sunnyokanagan

    1 year ago

    Reaganomics

    "Our Conservative government believes that the best way to fight poverty is to grow our economy and get Canadians working."

    This is nothing but a tired rehash of the "trickle down" theory that has been proven false for decades.

    "... people stayed in school longer, and finished high school; the arrests went down; the amount of people who were in hospital went down; car accidents went down ..."

    Surely budgetary savings from these types of outcomes suggests a program that would quickly become revenue-neutral?

    "... [a] plan which does not involve [...] re-distributing earnings from one person to another ..."

    And Konservative Kapitalism that is keeping 3.5 million people in poverty is working so well, eh?

    This "I'm alright, Jack" attitude is sickening. It is specifically what prevents the Harperkrats from even taking a serious look at anti-poverty strategies.

  • Rolf Auer

    1 year ago

    I'm voting against poverty: I'm voting against the Tories

    The theory behind favouring tax cuts to the rich and to business is that it is supposed to promote economic growth, which will benefit the poor supposedly with more jobs, etc. However, from David Korten (When Corporations Rule The World, 1996), p. 48:

    "Those who call for expanding the economic pie as the answer to poverty overlook an important reality. Whether or not a person has access to the resources required for survival depends less on absolute income than on relative income. In a free-market economy, each individual is in competition for access to the limited environmental space, and the person with the most money invariably wins….Without concurrent redistribution, an expanding pie brings far greater benefits to the already wealthy than to the poor, increases the absolute gap between rich and poor, and further increases the power advantage of the former over the latter. This advantage becomes a life-and-death issue in a resource-scarce world in which the rich and poor are locked in mortal competition for a depleting resource base. If the prophets of illusion who promote growth as the answer to poverty are really concerned with the plight of the poor, let them advocate measures that deal directly with increasing the ability of the poor to meet their basic needs—not tax breaks for the rich."

    Please vote!--@Rolf_Auer

  • jim1966

    1 year ago

    Tories Should Be Ashamed Of Themselves

    Yes they should. Harper has nothing in his platform to help those in the lower income brackets and has done very little to help those most in need. Sad really especially in a country such as ours. I wonder if the Tories have forgotten what is like to be disabled, a low income senior or just out of work. It seems to me that they just do not care enough about any of these people to offer hope or any sort of dignity, in fact based on their platform they have for the most part ignored these people. I won't be voting for the Tories. Yes it is true that after years of commissions and planning both the Liberals and the NDP have a platform that now includes lower income folks. This in my view is a very good start but we can and should do more, especially from a provincial perspective. I am in complete agreement that by getting out and voting we all can change the direction of where our country is going and no one deserves to be forgotten or left behind.

  • Fiat lux

    1 year ago

    It is interesting to see

    It is interesting to see demands for private medical, and other systems "for those who can afford it", by people who claim it is some kind of a "socialist conspiracy" to lump everybody together without taking into consideration the rights of those " who can afford to pay".

    With the exception of taxes, of course, because taxing high incomes is just another form of the "socialist conspiracy".

    As far poverty reduction is concerned, no party has any solution, withe the exception of jumping around with packages of Band Aids to cure compound fractures, because none of them dare to question the garbage being taught in our universities as "economics" the stranglehold of the stockmarkets on real economics, the criminal destruction caused by the fraudulent "free trade agreements", and the "free movement of capital" destroying real private enterpirse, with more negotiated by Harper.

    Topped up by the beautiful coalition between capitalists and communists, on their ideologically legalized way to take over the world to colonize and enslave humanity, with "wealth creating globalization".

    Will humanity ever wake up to the biggest Royal screw and the biggest crime wave in history,going on right before their eyes, with the Harper gang demanding more and the others just moaning and groaning over the effects of the obvious?

    Ed Deak

  • mary jane

    1 year ago

    bigger numbers

    There are far more poor people than there are rich.
    I wonder if not providing good medical care for everyone is wise - I don't think so. Serious germs don't care how much $$ you have.
    If there was a SARS put break who would catch it??

    Do we want someone running our country if they aren't respectful and honest
    Do we need planes with no engines or food for kids

  • questing

    1 year ago

    Poverty

    No amount of shuffling money is going to fix the problem of poverty. It cometh!

    The government has two ways of aquiring money - taxes or borrowing ... oh ya, and then tax to make the loan payments.

    If any political party was serious about the income of the public, the leader would have promised to work toward making Canada self-sufficient by putting a tariff on imports of products we can make ourselves for our own use and only importing what we cannot grow or produce ourselves.

    The next great step would have been to shorten the work-week in order to more evenly distribute needed work until we get establish more of our own production. As more jobs are available, start expecting more of people who are able to work. Create a plan under which welfare receipients can get jobs and keep a percentage until they earn at least one and a half times the amount they receive from social assistance.

    Poverty cannot be abolished as long as we have a monetary system based entirely on debt. If that problem is not fixed, we have only begun to see what poverty really looks like.

  • Fiat lux

    1 year ago

    What governments also never

    What governments also never talk about is that "wealth creating foreign investment" is nothing more than the inflation of another country's money supply, a perennial debt, the sale of the country from under the citizens' feet and the loss of independence and buying power for the citizens. As we now have it with homes and real estate all working people could buy at one time, now only by communist millionaires.

    Try to explain this to our university professors and bought politicians, working for directorships.

    Ed Deak.

  • cboo44

    1 year ago

    Political Promises?

    Since WHEN do they account for anything?

    The ONLY way to reduce poverty is for people to put their boots on, pick up their lunch bucket and go to work.
    Maybe Moe Sihota could give the poor some pointers on how to gain lucrative employment?
    OR, maybe unions could sponsor training/employment programs instead of maintaining "closed shops" ?
    OR, any resource development could be tied to local employment? (Oh wait, the BC Lieberals threw that out, didn't they?)
    OR, maybe the poor could be trained and employed in the new, BIG casino at BC Place.... oh wait, Mayor Moonbeam just s-canned that, didn't he?
    Oh well, it'll get built in the progressive city of Surrey, probably and Mayor Moonbeam could encourage all of Vancouver's poor to ride bikes to work in the new Surrey casino ?

    Does anyone actually believe that handouts are any kind of answer?

  • Fiat lux

    1 year ago

    Handouts to whom? More

    Handouts to whom? More taxcuts to our wealth creating multinationals ?

    I just got the bill for filling my farm gas tank on March 22 by Esso. $933.44.

    When the Chairman of Imperial oil retired a few years ago, in his 70s, after having received tens of millions in salaries for years, he was rewarded with a golden handshake of $500. million, by the grateful corporation and customers, including some from my pocket. Hope the poor guy won't starve

    In 2008 the highest paid Canadian took home $55. million. The Head of the Royal Bank $42 or 45 million.

    The average pay of, who now are John Manley's 100 Top Executives is around $5.million/yr and the lowest paid with $2. million.

    No wonder they want more taxcuts to survive on and to take more money to China, so their new millionaire class can come back and buy up Canada.

    Ed Deak.

  • Bob Watts

    1 year ago

    Don't Vote Conservative.

    I watched the day the Harper government took a vote to end poverty. It was what to do with that $60 billion surplus the Liberals had left a few years back.
    Harper did not even blink as he say NO!
    A Christian Party you say. Funny how Christians even with the power to end poverty. Vote for poverty!
    If all the Christians and other religious groups in Canada got together to end poverty, then poverty and homelessness would end within 48 hours.
    Hell no way all the good Christians say!!!!
    I went to a Christian boys school for years and some ask why I don't believe in God...

  • realisticman

    1 year ago

    Don't get Fixated on Money.

    The more important aspect of life is happiness. Siddhartha was not a rich man. This preoccupation with money and stuff is not the road to contentment. Most Canadians realise this. In fact, once again we're just one step from the top.

    http://www.gallup.com/poll/147167/High-Wellbeing-Eludes-Masses-Countries-Worldwide.aspx

  • Jerry Munro

    1 year ago

    Suckling the hind tit...

    Wellll, there is certainly a long history of tail chasing by all the status quo parties to our capitalism, no doubt, around this issue. And poverty is still with us, and growing again.

    Which says to me at least, that none of them understands the source of this poverty OR what do to about it. When the fact is, it ain't complicated.

    When you have a ruling class at the top end of the economy, controlling the "share spigot", and they as a matter of course, through good times or bad and in all kinds of socio-economic weather, give themselves the obscenely greater share... there is going to be "not enough" available, in steadily deteriorating degree, the lower down the class order you go. Simple logic. Not rocket science.

    Solution. Address the issue of classes, their share of the socially produced product of the economy, and the issues of power over the levers of the state and economic instruments. Again, simple logic. Not complicated.

    Which should tell the rational mind, as a matter of logical cause and effect course, that the problem is... none of the status quo parties to capitalism are prepared to address this unequal distribution of "class power" and "class share". Hence, poverty is and will remain ever with us until "something" happens to upset this "equilibrium".

    Certainly voting for any of the current status quo parties to capitalism is not going to produce any meaningful change around whose hands do and do not control this "share spigot" and the other instruments of "power" within society. Hence, don't vote for any of the shits. Walk away from their con game.

    Then what?

    Organize yourselves, your friends, workmates and neighbours to sort out and reconfigure this class, poverty and inequality producing mess. Raise hell. Take to the streets. Begin to build an alternate economic and political power in your society... that factors in your working class selves, and begins to put real, actual power in your hands... by wresting it away from their's.

    Almost certainly to be fraught with some "risk", no doubt, but again, not complicated or rocket science outside the understanding of the average person. As the capitalist knows, "risk" is an inevitable aspect of life and market activity. We need to know it as well. And we need to put our backs to the wall and go for it no less. Share and power rightly goes to those with the balls/ovaries to seize it and fight for it... everyone else suckles the hind tit, and probably deserves to, according to the logic of this "survival of the fittest" regime.

  • MacKenna

    1 year ago

    No surprise the Cons don't mention poverty

    Conservatives, especially this bunch of redneck trash, dismiss the poor as lazy. Worse, they demonize poor people as sapping the life blood out of the government. It's the same sickening lie the Tea Party specializes in. The number one priority for Reform is the wealthy class. Middle class come a distant second and the poor are left out altogether.

  • OhCanada

    1 year ago

    cboo44

    Something came out of your mouth again before you actually gave any thoughts to it, didn't you?
    Where the hell are you getting these pathetic ideas? "Pick up your work boots and go to work".
    Most people that I know work in 2 jobs so they can make end meets. Most people that I talk to and know work hard and take classes to improve their prospects. Even union workers. Believe it or not.

    Whether you get this or not - I doubt you will - poverty in society is NOT created by laziness. It is created by greed! And their is plenty of that here in North America. And any country that allows its government to rule and progress its neo-liberal, neo-conservative ideas will end up with huge differences between the rich and the poor. Poverty will be prevalent everywhere. Everybody will be out for themselves. Woohoo what a prospect of future society.

    Is there any surprise that poverty only grew in this country in the last 3(?) decades? How do you explain that? Oh, wait - with your logic I think people just became lazier, right?

    Anyone - Read this article as it explains some interesting facts...
    http://www.vancouversun.com/news/decision-canada/there+many+foreign+workers/4645413/story.html

    Why am I not surprised that Harper's hand is in this. Hmmm...people don't want to work for peanuts, let's bring in more immigrants that are 'stupid' enough to work for next to nothing.

    Isn't this a form of modern slavery? Lies, and deceit? Deliberately concealing the facts and promising great(?) employment to those who probably are the most vulnerable to begin with.

    What kind of human being do you have to be to do such thing?

    Read this! (excerpt from the article)
    The expansion of TFWs is a Harper government initiative that breaks with past policies. Looking at it closely reveals a policy direction that is heavily focused on business interests to the detriment of workers' wages. Whether that is the direction Canadians want should be debated much more than it has been.

  • mmphosis

    1 year ago

    Bring Canadians Out Of Poverty

    The excuses given by the two corporatist parties is that there is not enough money to help Canadians which is BS given the amount of debt money thrown at military misadventures. The only disagreement between the Cons and Libs is about which US corporation to give all of our debt money to. The proposed $35,000,000,000 to spend/waste on fighter jets would easily help bring Canadians out of poverty and all without creating more debt.

    Mayhaps, the NDP, Greens and Bloc need to form an alliance.

  • OhCanada

    1 year ago

    Elections 2011, a dark fiction

    Check out this - if you are still not convinced that poverty is a creation of this government and many others in the past - your head is in the sand and it is time to pull it out.

    http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/opinions/opinion/election-2011-a-dark-fiction/article1991748/

  • MacKenna

    1 year ago

    If this is true, is anyone surprised?

    "Trevor Harrison outlines in his book...entitled Of Passionate Intensity, that Prime Minister Stephen Harper was a member of the ultra-right wing Northern Foundation in 1989. Mr. Harrison documents that this Foundation was comprised of Neo-Nazi social Darwinist intellectuals.

    Mr. Harper would eventually "officially" break-away from this group. Indeed, it would be unfair to Mr. Harper, to continually link him ideologically to a group that he may have simply sought to explore, in his process of political exploration and outreach. However, upon closer examination, the substantive policy direction of the Conservative government, appears to be emphatically driven by the expressed agenda of the Northern Foundation. This includes massive cuts to programs aimed, for example, at advancing the status of women; and protecting minorities from institutionalized discrimination."

  • MacKenna

    1 year ago

    Forgot link

    http://www.agoracosmopolitan.com/home/Frontpage/2007/11/05/01929.html

  • Blake

    1 year ago

    Class Warfare

    The neoconservatives, known as the Conservative Party in Canada, are a revolutionary party along the same lines as the Bolshevik revolutionaries. The only difference is neoconservatives are waging a class war against the poor, and one they are not willing to lose. Economic growth, of the kind Harper pushes, is purely cynical and self serving. Harper is a sociopath who should undergo psychological evaluation, in fact all political leaders should undergo some form of evaluation to save us all from their madness. Doesn't anyone remember WW2, why we fought it, etc? I guess not because right-wing populism is back in full dress.

  • Jerry Munro

    1 year ago

    From The Time Loop...

    "Doesn't anyone remember WW2, why we fought it, etc? I guess not because right-wing populism is back in full dress." Blake.

    Friggin' scary, isn't it?

    And this "right wing populism", part of the run-up to fascism, is another one of the many shape shifting faces of capitalism... along with poverty. They walk down the aisle together, now as in the time of the Great Depression. And this marriage will occur and re-occur, like we are in a repeating "time loop", until capitalism is finally driven from the equation of the human condition.

    To repeat myself ad nauseum... it ain't rocket science. It simply requires that we have the elementary skill and ability to connect a child-like series of dots.

    Voting for one of these crew is a waste of time, manpower and limited resources. They are all part of, and integral to this repeating "time loop" we are all in.

  • Fiat lux

    1 year ago

    Another reason to NOT vote

    Another reason to NOT vote Harper.

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KmthTKSWFWw

  • morechatter

    1 year ago

    The Poor House

    The poor don't have a house they have shelters that some would rather not talk about. Like the rape and violence that has gone on in those places because of the criminaly insane. The low income are treated like they have leprae in a place they used to call their home, only now its the streets and the cold light of day that await them in their no man's land, because in order for the rich to get richer someone has to go without. And that is presently 33% of the population and that will also hurt consumption, which is all that is ever talked about. Instead of how it is tearing people and their families apart and bringing down entire communities. You just have to look at Chinatown to see how quick business can change the community you live in to know the poor don't count.

  • morechatter

    1 year ago

    There will never be enough money for big Corporations

    It is what corporations thrive on is greed. It is why corporations hire the greediest guy out there to head up the organization so nothing gets in the way of the bottom line. It is all you ever hear from government, is poor business as taxes are imposed like the HST along with record corporate tax breaks while profits are up. "How low can you go," as corporate lobbyists have governments convinced that they are the living end or the end of the poor because by no means can government afford both. Irony is no one can afford corporations because they want to own it all, no matter the cost all they need is to come out ahead of everyone else. There is nothing in writing about business investing in Canada much less jobs as corporations go for it all. Big business isn't lobbying for Canadians best interests although lobbyist may use it as a ploy, like jobs while corporations are busy downsizing to max out on profits. There is no pleasing some, and that is why big corporations are called a greedy lot, they thrive on people going without.
    It kinda makes me laugh instead of telling us the sky is falling it is the stock markets and jobs, as Canadians gamble away a sure thing for promises made so some can get richer yet the only sure thing so far is more will have to go without.

  • zalm

    1 year ago

    What's yours is mine too

    "If someone can come up with an anti-poverty plan which does not involve higher government expenditures, tax increases (on ANYONE) or re-distributing earnings from one person to another, I'll buy it."

    I'm trying to figure this one out. Redistributed earnings is the foundation for every taxation system in the world. I'd think a kreditanstalt (banker) would know that.

    Now, if you want to talk fairness, I'm all ears. Bring it on....

  • zalm

    1 year ago

    BWAAAAAHAHAHAHAHAAAAA!!!

    "Does anyone actually believe that handouts are any kind of answer?"

    No, but while we're waiting for business fulfill its part of the bargain and employ someone, we don't seem to have too many alternatives. If you know someone we can talk to to get business investing all their $2 billion of HST money in some jobs, I'd be pleased as punch to steer some of my underemployed acquaintances - sons and daughters of coworkers, people with degrees in engineering, social work, economics, and music now working in retail for $8 an hour - their way so they can start using the natural intelligence and initiative of the educated people of BC to build this province up and make a profit in the meantime.

    But it appears this kind of appeal generally falls on deaf ears. Too many CEOs sailing their 85-footers in Desolation Sound this week. It makes one wonder how closely our provincial productivity stats are tied to CEOs pay and perks...

  • Martin Campbell

    1 year ago

    The forgotten

    Let us not forget that 15% of Canadians live with disabilities. They are TWICE as likely to live in poverty. These numbers are further increased two or three fold for women and aboriginals.

    That again is 15% of our population. Our most vulnerable citizens, in one of the richest countries in the world.

  • Frank

    1 year ago

    redistribution

    When 3.8% of the population controls 66.6% of the wealth, any anti-poverty strategy that doesn't include redistribution as one of its components, is going to fail.

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