Monday, August 30, 2010
Saturday, June 19, 2010
An Interesting Insight Into Poverty...
...which has become a cottage industry in North America where you get the impression it would be treasonous to eliminate poverty and the social in-activists involved in the industry are more treacherous than the drug dealers.
Doug Saunders
No 'culture of poverty' here
Wednesday, March 03, 2010
Wednesday, March 25, 2009
Malkin Has Been On This.......
Just in case anybody needs a reminder of the American housing mess timeline.H/T Proud to be Canadian aking Sense with Nicholls
Saturday, March 21, 2009
Down And Dirty...But Reality
The real story about the economy lies with the poor
MURRAY CAMPBELL
E-mail Murray Campbell
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March 21, 2009
If you want to hear the real story about the economy, you have to go down the laneway off the busy Toronto street, past the dead raccoon lying on the electrical transformer and into the old garage that has been helping kids grow up for nearly four decades.
The men who run Canada's troubled auto companies don't come to the Cabbagetown Youth Centre and neither do their well-paid employees. It's not the sort of place where you would find David Dodge and Stephen Harper debating how long the recession will last. Here, the talk is more about the lack of affordable housing, the shrinking job market and the drudgery of getting on.
"We need more money," said Chrysantha Sahayarajah, who came from Sri Lanka eight years ago and is struggling to raise two children and to help her mother on $16,000 a year since her husband lost his job. "We are struggling here. It is very expensive, this country."
Ms. Sahayarajah told her story yesterday to Premier Dalton McGuinty as part of a staged event in which he maintained that he hasn't forgotten his commitment to thin the ranks of Ontario's poor despite the downturn in the economy. He is under enormous pressure to live up to the commitment he made four months ago to reduce child poverty by 25 per cent within five years.
Anti-poverty activists have been unnerved lately by their reading of the tea leaves. They note that Finance Minister Dwight Duncan didn't mention the poor in a recent speech about the economic stimulus plans in Thursday's budget. And they fretted when Deb Matthews, the cabinet minister responsible for the poverty file, suggested the recession could affect the government's strategy by noting that "things have changed."
So there was an element of damage control in Mr. McGuinty's visit to the youth centre. He said, as he often does, that reducing poverty is both the "right thing to do" and is also the purest form of stimulus because struggling families will spend every extra penny in their communities. But he went a step further by announcing that the government would speed up a planned enrichment of the Ontario Child Benefit and also spend $620-million in a partnership with the federal government on new social housing.
The increase in the child benefit - to $1,100 per child annually from $600 effective this July 1 rather than in 2011 - is particularly significant in a very immediate way. This $400-million expenditure will mean an extra $92 a month for each of the 1.3 million children in whose name the support is extended.
The huzzas rained down on the Premier from activists who saw the moves as a "good first step" and were delighted that there were any steps at all. "It matters that government is at least recognizing that poverty can be solved with good policy," said Sarah Blackstock, a policy analyst with the Income Security Advocacy Centre.
The pressure on Mr. McGuinty will not dissipate, however, despite a collapse in the economy that has taken Ontario quickly from a budget surplus to a projection of $18-billion in deficits in the next two years.
Ms. Blackstock noted that the rise in the benefit does nothing to help the growing ranks of single, jobless people. Activists want reform of a welfare system that requires people to divest themselves of their assets before getting assistance.
The Premier agreed it's a stupid rule. "Unwittingly, we have developed a policy that stomps you into the ground," he said. But he quickly added - with admirable honesty - that he hasn't got an answer yet.
Meanwhile, people like Ms. Sahayarajah hover in his view. "I have to say thanks to you," she said of the richer benefit her children will receive, "but it's not enough."
It's the real story of this troubled time.
mcampbell@globeandmail.com
Sunday, March 01, 2009
Small Price To Pay For The War On Poverty.....
$45Gs for muffin and cookie
Staff get together seeks to boost morale, get welfare workers on same page
By SUE-ANN LEVY
This Friday senior city officials will summon Toronto's welfare workers to the Metro Convention Centre for a $45,000 rah-rah session and lovefest.
The day-long event -- officially called the Toronto Employment and Social Services Professional Development Day -- will feature, among other speakers, a (morale-boosting) address from Mayor David Miller.
(That is indeed fitting given that he never met a government handout he didn't like. But I digress.)
Deputy city manager Sue Corke said the social services department has been through a "huge change" in the last 12 to 18 months and it's a way to make sure everybody who comes is "aligned with the new direction."
"We're bringing staff together to talk about the new vision and mission," adds Heather MacVicar, general manager of employment and social services.
When asked about the costs to hold the day, she insisted the budget was "minimal" and that only muffins will be served in the morning, along with coffee and one cookie -- nothing else.
"It's not a big story ... it's a muffin and a cookie," she said, reiterating at least three times that the cost is minimal.
Nizam Bacchus, the department's director of program support, said the $45,000 cost will cover the space (Rooms F and G go for about $7,500 each a day) and a continental breakfast for the 1,600 attendees.
(According to the convention centre's website, a continental breakfast goes for $16.50 per head and a deluxe continental breakfast is priced at $22 per person.)
Bacchus added that all of their offices will remain open ed by the remaining 391 welfare workers who will provide "full services" to all clients who show up that day. He also noted that those who attend will be asked to purchase their own lunches from the food court in the vicinity of the convention centre.
That said, the cost is hardly minimal.
If, during these hard times, senior city officials want to treat the 1,991 welfare workers to a muffin and cookie -- to use MacVicar's words -- buy them in bulk and deliver them to each office, along with a written message about the department's new "vision."
Or how about simply ensuring the welfare workers -- who by no means have an easy job of it -- feel like they're valued employees each and every day?
As one welfare worker who wrote me about the event contended, the city has "no money for basic services" but evidently enough to hold a lovefest at Canada's No. 1 convention and trade show facility.
Never mind basic services. What about money to handle the pressures on the welfare rolls seeing as Miller and Co. have managed to drain the social services reserve fund completely dry?
MacVicar confirmed the city has put an extra $36 million in the budget to cover the anticipated jump in the welfare caseload this year.
NUMBERS UP 8.5%
She said the numbers were up to 81,000 at the end of January, some 8.5% higher than the same time last year and they're expecting that to continue to increase to more than 100,000 by year's end.
I rest my case. This, folks, is but one very blatant example of a regime completely out of control and out of touch with the reality of the world around Socialist Silly Hall.
It did not escape my attention that the welfare lovefest is on the exact day the Miller regime will blow $230,000 on a day-long party to celebrate Toronto's 175th anniversary.
There will be many more examples like this, trust me, before the budget is finally approved on April 1.
But it makes it awfully hard to believe newly minted deputy city manager Cam Weldon when he advised the budget committee this past week that they've "addressed the recession" in this year's operating budget -- even if, I suspect, he was mouthing a carefully scripted party line from the Politburo.
Coun. Doug Holyday said everyone seems to have the message that "times are bad" but his colleagues at Socialist Silly Hall.
"They're addicted to spending," he said. "It's too bad there isn't some spendaholic clinic we could send them to ... they have a problem and no control to deal with it."
Tuesday, April 29, 2008
The Hypocricy Of Fighting Poverty......
| Food crisis grows in fields of poverty |
 Hunger is a movable feast. At the shocking worst of the '80s Ethiopian famine, politicians from nearly everywhere, rock stars and, yes, reporters, flew from the relief camps to plunder the Addis Ababa Hilton's daily international smorgasbord. MORE... |
Wednesday, October 31, 2007
Poverty DOES Exist In Canada And Will ALWAYS Exist
Dubious victory in war on poverty
We're winning the war on poverty, says Vancouver economist John Richards.
The employment rate among low-income Canadians has risen in the past decade. The welfare rolls have shrunk. And the overall rate of poverty has declined.
"The policy innovations of the last decade got much right," he concludes, in a study that is sure to delight hard-line conservatives and infuriate anti-poverty activists.
Richards, who teaches public policy at Simon Fraser University, wrote the 20-page paper, entitled Reducing Poverty: What has Worked and What Should Come Next, for the C.D. Howe Institute, a business-backed think-tank. That alone is likely to raise the hackles of social policy groups.
But his analysis deserves a thoughtful look. It is based on solid statistics. It is rooted in a sincere desire to improve the lives of low-income Canadians. And it raises important questions about the way ahead.
Richards compares the three provinces that implemented tough love policies – Ontario, Alberta and British Columbia – to Manitoba, which did not.
All three welfare-slashing provinces experienced a sharper decline in social assistance utilization rates and a more rapid increase in employment than Manitoba.
He acknowledges that economic conditions were favourable in the industrial heartland and the two westernmost provinces in the '90s. He also admits that federal policy changes – the launching of the National Child Benefit and the chopping of Employment Insurance – had an impact.
Nonetheless, Richards concludes, "changes in provincial welfare protocols probably explain much of the increase in the employment rate and the subsequent decline in Canada's poverty rate."
He maintains, therefore, that governments should stick with policies that make it difficult for employable individuals to get welfare. They should also steer clear of expensive new transfer programs such as a negative income tax.
Richards says nothing about increasing the supply of affordable housing. He says nothing about raising the minimum wage. He says nothing about removing the employment barriers immigrants face.
On the other hand, he does urge policy-makers to make child care accessible to low-income mothers, upgrade schooling on native reserves, be more generous to the mentally and physically disabled, and provide shelter for the long-term homeless.
Several things are troubling about Richards' study:
He leaves out Quebec, which achieved the most dramatic reduction in poverty in the country during the decade in question.
It took a markedly different tack than Ontario, Alberta or British Columbia. Its government passed a law "to combat poverty and social exclusion" then developed targets and timetables.
It enhanced social assistance, raised its minimum wage, implemented a working income supplement and put in place a universal family benefits program to support the province's poorest households.
Between 1996 and 2005, its child poverty rate fell to less than 10 per cent from 22 per cent.
To overlook such a large outlier raises questions about the validity of the findings and the motives of the author.
He compares three "have provinces" that enjoyed robust growth during the period in question to a "have-not province" whose economy did less well.
This makes it extremely hard to ascertain whether it was government policy or an expanding labour market that allowed Ontario, Alberta and B.C. to boost employment faster than Manitoba.
He mentions – then shrugs off – that an adult working full-time in a minimum wage job cannot lift his or her children "above standard poverty thresholds."
Surely policies that push parents into the workforce, without allowing them to support their children, cannot be deemed a success.
It is true that Canada's aggregate poverty rate (the percentage of the population living below Statistics Canada's low-income cut-off) did inch downward between 1996 and 2005. But it is far from clear that Mike Harris, Ralph Klein and Gordon Campbell deserve the credit.
While Richards celebrates this "substantial policy success," readers are left wondering what would have happened if the three premiers had chosen to share their provinces' wealth rather than punishing the poor.
(The report is available at www.cdhowe.org).
Carol Goar's column appears Monday, Wednesday and Friday.
Poverty rates higher in 1980s
Letter, Oct. 27
Prof. John Richards is wrong to criticize columnist Carol Goar with his assertion that poverty rates in Canada are substantially lower today than in the 1980s. Everyone – from TD Economics and Statistics Canada to the University of Toronto's Centre for Urban and Community Studies and the United Way of Greater Toronto – has documented deep and persistent poverty in Toronto and across Canada.
Canada doesn't have a widely accepted, reliable measure of poverty – a critical omission that Miloon Kothari, the UN's Special Rapporteur on Adequate Housing, noted with concern during his recent visit to Canada. If our national government can't be bothered to develop a solid statistical measure, how can we set realistic targets and measure our progress in implementing poverty-reduction campaigns?
Richards bases his claim that poverty is way down on Statistics Canada's low income cut-off (LICO), a commonly used poverty indicator. StatsCan reports that the percentage of Canadians living below the LICO before tax was an average of 16.54 per cent each year during the 1980s. For each year from 2000 to 2005, the rate had barely budged at 15.9 per cent. Each year during the 1980s, an average of 3,061,700 people were living in poverty. From 2000 to 2005, that number grew to 3,535,333 annually.
The conclusion: If you count real people, the number of Canadians living in poverty has grown by almost half a million from the 1980s – a whopping increase of 16 per cent. The poverty rate has only decreased slightly.
Richards alleges that drastic federal and provincial cuts to income-assistance programs in the 1990s were a kind of tough love that forced lower-income Canadians into the market economy. There's no question that there are fewer people today able to access employment insurance and other income assistance, but the facts clearly show that the poor haven't magically become richer as a result.
Michael Shapcott, Senior Fellow,
The Wellesley Institute, Toronto
About Me
- Unhypentated Canadian
- I lean to the right but I still have a heart and if I have a mission it is to respond to attacks on people not available to protect themselves and to point out the hypocrisy of the left at every opportunity.MY MAJOR GOAL IS HIGHLIGHT THE HYPOCRISY AND STUPIDITY OF THE LEFTISTS ON TORONTO CITY COUNCIL. Last word: In the final analysis this blog is a relief valve for my rants/raves.