Any one else see a trend here?

As with any budget there are winners and losers, with the true test of a budget at least in my mind being the determination of who wins and who loses. As the days pass and people have had time to scour the latest Conservative government budget a picture of who loses this time around has emerged and surprise surprise it is civil society, access to data and information plus the most vulnerable among us.

With election fraud,F-35's and cuts to the CBC using up most of the oxygen many of the smaller yet just as important cuts in the budget are gaining little notice, no doubt much to the Harper regimes delight. Lets take a look at three of those "minor" cuts that I feel will highlight just what this government is trying to accomplish.


The National Aboriginal Health Organization’s (NAHO) funding has been cut by Health Canada. NAHO which provides research and has formed partnerships with many in the healthcare sector provides vital information on the healthcare needs of people who are often under served by our healthcare system. Their website alone saw 640,000 publications downloaded by those seeking the latest information regarding the health needs of Aboriginals with another 250,000 sent out via snail mail last year alone


Plug pulled on public Internet access program ( CAP ) Started in 1995 this program was set up to ensure that those unable to afford internet access could at least access the net through terminals placed in public spaces such as libraries and community centres. The Harperites as usual play loose with the truth in their attempts to justify this cut. saying that since 79% of us now enjoy some type of access there is no longer a need for CAP to continue. Putting aside the fact that this ignores the 21% that do not have access, according to Eric Stackhouse, Nova Scotia CAP administration chair there is still very much a need for CAP to continue "All of our usage numbers are the same as they always were or increasing," Plus lets not forget that this government is actively forcing us to access more of it's programs online thus denying this population access to much needed programs.


Scrapping welfare council is a cheap shot by a government that doesn’t care about the poor Around since 1969 the National Council of Welfare has been an invaluable ally in the fight against poverty, perhaps too invaluable for it's own good given Harper's desire to strip us of the information we need to fight back against his ruinous policies. The government didn't even have the decency to announce its death,as former Director Steve Kerstetter pointed out in his article. "The budget papers included a table in one of the appendices that showed a cut of $1.1 million a year in the council’s budget beginning next year. What the papers didn’t bother to say was that $1.1 million is the council’s entire budget."  Check out this  table, 
A Snapshot of Racialized Poverty in Canada to get a sense of the type of research the council provides Canadians and why Harper is so bent on silencing them.

Any one else see a trend here?. Each of these organizations served marginalized communities and helped keep Canadians informed, leaving no doubt if there was ever one as to to what the Harperites agenda  truly is.

The Job: A Ticket to Poverty

Said the office worker to the poor person "Get a job you bum" I have three replied the poor person How many do you have?

Increasingly these days a job is anything but a ticket out of poverty, that is true right across the country but ever more so in Toronto. During the boom years from 2000 to 2005 the number of working people in Toronto who couldn't make ends meet grew by 42%, some six years on and a never ending recession later those numbers have likely skyrocketed. It is interesting to note given the Transit City debate that those rates grew fastest in the areas less served by transit.

The latest Statistics Canada’s Labour Force Survey shows that even these starvation level jobs are becoming scarcer while Toronto's unemployment rate increased by a 1/3 of a point the labour force dropped by 25%, showing that people are giving up in their search for a job any job. Worse yet as the CIBC report on job quality showed the few jobs that are being created are of declining quality.

Food Banks Canada surveys their members each year and publishes the results on food bank usage in a report titled Hunger Count,  the 2011 survey shows that 18% of people accessing food banks in Canada have jobs. The fact that more than 850,000 people a month used food banks in 2011 certainly highlights the breadth of the problem. But even those numbers mask the true scope of the issue, How many more have moved in with relatives or friends,how many are too proud to seek assistance and even more troublesome how many are homeless in the traditional sense,in other words, living on the streets.

“People who live beneath the poverty line are not, to use an unpleasant quote, sitting on a couch drinking beer and eating popcorn. They are, in fact, working,” Senator Hugh Segal

 The costs associated with poverty in general both economically and socially are enormous. Like it or not we live in a consumer driven economy and poor people are poor consumers. Those forced to live in poverty also tend to be less healthy due to increased levels of stress ( Try having to worry whether you can pay the rent or feed your kids every waking hour of every day and you would be sick as well) and the lack of access to an affordable healthy diet. Children who go to school hungry tend to under perform leading to increased costs to society again both economic and social.

 In the Toronto area, McMaster University professor Wayne Lewchuk says, as much as 45 per cent of the working population could be in non-permanent jobs.

The jobs being created in this"new workplace" also don't provide benefits like extended health meaning that should one become sick the public must pick up the full cost of care. The same is true of pensions, when the working poor are no longer able to work they will have no private pension or savings to rely on meaning again the public will need to pick up the full cost. In short this push to low paying precarious employment amounts to yet another huge corporate subsidy.

Good paying permanent jobs are not likely to return anytime soon, certainly not while the world is planted firmly under the jackboot of neoliberalism. So what to do? Well first and foremost we must start working together instead of fighting each other, this is a war against all working people not just those at the bottom of the pecking order. Everyone's wages and benefits are in decline whether union or not, whether you are skilled or not and no matter what colour your collar.

We can look at moving from the minimum wage to a livable wage concept or better yet bring in a Guaranteed Livable Income program. In the seventies Canada ran a Guaranteed Annual Income (GAI) pilot project called Mincome.  The results were startling. Contrary to what everyone thought at the time and still thinks today people receiving the GAI kept working, the exceptions being new mothers and teens, the latter of which stayed in school longer. Visits to ERs declined as stress related health issues ebbed and instances of domestic abuse also went down partly due to the reduced stress levels and the fact that the GAI was delivered to the individual meaning that economic factors were removed from the equation when considering whether to stay or leave.

 Another way in which we could help lift everyone out of poverty is by providing adequate housing support, something that is not only needed but as a recent study and action plan points out is eminently affordable. The majority of those helped by food banks are renters 63% pay market rent and 22% live in subsidized housing.

 Whether we ignore the problems posed by this new normal or we choose to tackle it head on, we pay no matter what. Better that we pay for solutions instead of band aids or worse yet do nothing. Of course having said all that defeating the neoliberals is our best option in the long run.

Shame on us: 600,000 Canadian kids live in poverty

I wonder what happened to the pledge to eliminate child poverty by the year 2000? While the goal of eliminating child poverty was likely never achievable, it isn't unfair to expect that at least we could have made some significant gains to that end. Instead while the percentage of children living in poverty has decreased from 11.9 % in 1989 when Parliament passed the resolution pledging to eliminate child poverty by 2000, to 9.5 in 2009, the number of kids affected has risen and likely has even worsened since 2009 given the persistence of unemployment and the move to insecure low paying jobs.

Campaign 2000 in it's 20th annual Report Card on Child and Family Poverty in Canada paints a bleak picture of the state of child poverty in Canada. Some of it's key findings include:

One in 10 children still lives in poverty in Canada. It’s worse for children living in First Nations communities: 1 in 4 grow up in poverty.

Employment is not always an assured pathway out of poverty: 1 in 3 low-income children lives in families where at least one parent works full-time year round and 1 in 4 workers is in a low-wage job earning less than $13.32 per hour. 

Public investments make a difference: without the income transfers in 2009, 1 in 4 children would have lived in poverty. Canada’s public programs brought the child poverty rate down to 14% (LICO Before-Tax).

 Although the rapid rise in the number of working mothers is one of the key social changes of the last century, Canada still has no societal response to the need for child care. Less than 1 in 5 children (0 -12 years) has access to a regulated child care space.

Housing is the single largest expense for low- and modest-income families. One in 4 households pays more than 30% of their income on housing. And 750,000 children (under 15 years) live in housing that is either unaffordable, substandard, overcrowded or all three.

Clearly we can and must do better, unfortunately with governments at all levels hellbent on instituting ruinous austerity measures and the continuance of corporate tax cuts the situation will only worsen and significantly so. All the more reason for us as citizens and caring human beings to rise up in opposition to this corporately driven agenda.

Hunger count 2011

Every March Food Banks Canada surveys it's members compiling comprehensive data on hunger and food bank use across Canada. Hunger Count 2011 was released yesterday and as always the numbers are staggering.

In March 2011 the number of people who used a food bank in this country was 851,014 virtually unchanged from last year but still up 26% from 2008. More than 93,000 Canadians turned to a food bank for assistance for the first time. Those that use food banks run the gamut from young to elderly,singles to families,urban to rural and unemployed to those with jobs.  

Here are some of the key findings in Hunger Count 2011

LEVELS OF FOOD BANK USE
• 851,014 separate individuals received food from a food bank in March 2011; while this is down 2% from 2010, it remains 26% higher than in 2008 and is the second highest level of use on record.
• 93,085 people, or 11% of the total, received help from a food bank for the first time during the survey period.
• In rural areas, 114,122 individuals – or 13% of the national total – received food from food banks; 10% of them were being helped for the first time.
• Food banks assisted 2.5% of the Canadian population in March 2011, compared to 2.6% in 2010 and 2.0% in 2008.
• Food bank use in 2011 was 20% higher than in 2001.

CHARACTERISTICS OF INDIVIDUALS ASSISTED
• 38% of those receiving food were children and youth under age 18.
• 47% were women and girls.
• 4.4% were seniors over age 65, rising to 5.7% in rural areas.
• 10% self-identified as First Nations, Métis, or Inuit.
• 11% were immigrants or refugees – increasing to 18.5% in large cities.
• 4% were postsecondary students.

CHARACTERISTICS OF HOUSEHOLDS HELPED BY FOOD BANKS
The 851,014 individuals who received food in March 2011 were members of 349,842 households:
• 40% of these households were composed of single people living alone.
• 24% were single-parent families with children.
• 23% were dual-parent families with children.
• 12% were couples without children.
Household income came from a variety of sources:
• 52% reported social assistance as their primary source of income.
• 18% have earnings from current or recent employment.
• 13% receive disability-related income supports.
• 7% live primarily on pension benefits.
• 5% reported having no source of income.
• 2% reported student loans and scholarships as their major source of income

HOUSING AND FOOD BANK USE
• The majority of those helped by food banks are renters – 66% pay market rent and 22% live in subsidized housing.
• Nationally, 7% are homeowners – in rural areas, this figure rises to 15%.
• 6% are homeless, i.e., living in an emergency shelter, group home, on the street, or temporarily with family or friends.
• 2% live in band-owned housing, increasing to 5% in rural areas.

With the world on the cusp of another recession, even though for many the last one never ended , these numbers are sure to worsen. But hey we weathered the last one better than most. We did, didn't we? Mr. Harper

Mapping the concentration of poverty in Toronto

It is no secret that income inequity and poverty have grown while the middle class has been decimated in the past three decades, well here are two maps created by the Cities Centre at the U of T, that vividly demonstrate this injustice and the polarization it breeds as it pertains to the city of Toronto. Keep in mind that these maps examine the period from 1970 to 2005 and the situation has most certainly worsened since then. The United Way's study Poverty by Postal Code 2: Vertical Poverty Also looks at the concentration of poverty in Toronto and is worth a look

For more maps and graphs see Toronto Divided? Polarizing Trends that Could Split the City Apart 1970 to 2005