Dear Dalton,
Last year, I took a horrible class called Introduction to Sociology. It wasn't so much the course that was awful, but the teacher just didn't teach, if you know what I'm saying. Regardless, I learned something very important in that class. Towards the end of the term we had a large paper to write and she gave us all the same topic: child poverty in Canada. Now, I'm going to be honest here, I thought that topic was really dumb. Canada's one of the richest countries in the world, this is going to be a rather fruitless research topic, isn't it? Actually, no, it was a horrifying research project that showed me how much more well-off my mid-to-low income family was than many others in this country. So, I thought I would share some information that I gleaned from my research last year.
There's this organization called Campaign 2000 that gets its name from our dear Prime Minister Jean's vow to end child poverty in Canada by 2000, which he made way back in 1989. Now, I don't think child poverty will ever really be ended, I'm too much of a pessimist/realist for that, but surely we can do better than this? Since I live in Toronto, I did some research into Toronto neighbourhoods, and I found this: A Community Growing Apart: Income Gaps and Changing Needs in the City of Toronto in the 1990s, published in 2001.
One of the quotations from that document that really got to me was this one:
Sometimes many families share a single family dwelling in a middle-income area. Many middle-income people continue to live here and nearby with few links to newcomers. "Many aren't aware of the difficulties their neighbours are going through, including extreme poverty and hunger. There is a huge denial of these problems in the community (and) denial on the part of many politicians... People are going to bed hungry here in Third World conditions, and no one knows." We provide a food program to children... the program is busting at the seams, and yet there is the perception that there is no (hunger) problem in the area.
They also noted that it is basically impossible for a single person to sustain themselves in Toronto from welfare alone. Is that not unacceptable? Surely there's something to be done about such things, such as looking at the astronomical rent prices here (is it just me, or is $500/room a lot for students who usually work for $6.85/hour?) or adjusting welfare to match the regional cost of living.
I don't have any constructive ideas here, it just bothers me to know that in my parent's hometown there's a doctor shortage, while here in Toronto there are thousands of doctors who speak little to no English and are therefore denied jobs, and their children go hungry. It bothers me to know that some of my friends grew up in violent neighbourhoods because they couldn't afford anything more than subsidized housing. It bothers me that, in 1998 in Toronto, the average low-income lone-parent family spent 95% of their income on rent. The Toronto Transit Commission is complaining that TTC ridership is down this year, could it be that maybe there are millions of people in this city who can't even think about buying bus tokens because they have to think about where food is going to come from? And without the TTC, how are they supposed to find work? There's only so many jobs in walking distance, particularly in the winter.
I think our poverty problem is aggravated by one of our political problems. Canadians don't know much about it and they don't really care. Until last year, I didn't think poverty in Canada was a problem at all. I mean, sure, there are poor people, but I didn't think they were a significant part of the population. However, Campaign 2000 reports that one in six kids live in poverty right now in Canada.
I have been watching this political satire program from France called Les Guignols (it's on CanalPLUS, you can watch it on their website) and there's a character on it who gives crackpot suggestions to Jacques Chiraq about dealing with the poverty problem in France. His suggestions range from putting all the poor people in cannons and shooting them into Germany to opening the mines, shoving them all in, and closing the mines. Problem solved! No more poor people!
I hope you have a better plan than Les Guignols. Do you?
Heather Ann Kaldeway
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