[homeles_ot-l] THE PROSPERITY GAP: Why poverty threatens us all. by David Olive Toronto Star.

Tue Oct 30 13:37:23 EDT 2007

THE PROSPERITY GAP:  Why poverty Threatens Us ALL. 

The gap between rich in poor in this country has reached Third World levels. Will it take widespread unrest to convince people they have a stake in this?

Oct 20, 2007.  David Olive.<about:blank>  Toronto Star.

According to the latest statistics from the World Bank, the widening gap between rich and poor in Canada is now roughly on par with that of Indonesia.  Indeed, in the matter of income equality, Canada trails not only the Scandinavian countries, but Egypt and Pakistan, as well.

You might think that fact alone would place poverty high on the national agenda. But in this week's throne speech, Prime Minister Stephen Harper devoted no more than 98 of 4,000 words - less than 3 per cent - to the subject. 

More than a decade of tax cuts at the federal level and in certain provinces has not put a dent in the rising number of people in poverty, despite being among the advertised benefits of tax reduction. 

With an estimated 1 million children living in poverty, we risk raising a new generation of Canadians unable to contribute to our economic progress. And the continued decay of impoverished urban and rural communities threatens their demise, as gangs, drug-dealing and prostitution take over once livable neighbourhoods. 

So vague and relatively fleeting was the throne speech's attention to poverty that the Harper government's commitment to addressing the crisis is open to contrary interpretations. 

For instance, Liberal leader Stéphane Dion denounced it as a "complete and shocking indifference about poverty in this country." 

That's how the landmark annual address, which outlines the government's priorities for the coming year, struck poverty expert Hugh Mackenzie, as well. 

"A visitor from Mars would think the government doesn't have a clue about a social infrastructure that's in near-collapse," said Mackenzie, research associate for the Inequality Project at the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives (CCPA). 

Harper's throne speech includes issues of poverty, homelessness and the growing gap between rich and poor in neither what it describes as "our shared values" as Canadians, nor in its "five clear priorities" for the future. It does say, "Our government will continue to invest in our families and our future, and will help those seeking to break free from the cycles of homelessness and poverty." 

Yet, in a speech that denounces mere "rhetoric and posturing," there is no mention of the meagre $1 billion in current annual federal spending on housing, which is set to expire at the end of the 2008 fiscal year. There is, however, lengthy self-congratulations on the planned cut of another 1 per cent sliver from the GST, which will cost Ottawa about $5 billion in forsaken revenues that could instead be used to quintuple Ottawa's commitment to decent shelter. 

For those Canadians concerned about the social health of their country, here's a partial list of facts the Speech skipped over:

Statistics Canada reports that 2.8 million families, or one in five, live below the low-income cut-off, or LICO, the new politically correct term for poverty line.

The Federal Homelessness Secretariat estimates that 150,000 Canadians are homeless. Most groups that work with homeless people think the figure is at least double that amount. 

The gap between rich and poor has reached a three-decade high, a prosperity gap usually associated with underdeveloped nations. The Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives concludes from its study of income statistics dating back to the 1970s that a stunning 80 per cent of families have seen their earnings and after-tax income stagnate or decline, after inflation, over the past generation. 

Most of the significant income growth in Canada's booming economy of the past decade has been reaped by the top 10 per cent of income earners, whose share of national income growth by 2004 was 82 times that of the 10 per cent of least-affluent Canadians - compared with a ratio of 31 times in 1976. "The trickle-down theory might work if there weren't so many sponges at the top," says Armine Yalnizyan, an economist who prepared the groundbreaking CCPA report on income inequality released in February. 

According to Statistics Canada, the top 20 per cent of Canada's most affluent citizens accounted for 75 per cent of the nation's total household wealth in 2005, while those in the bottom 20 per cent of income-earners saw no growth in wealth over the past generation.

The Canada Mortgage and Housing Corp. (CMHC) calculates that 1.5 million households fit its description of "core housing need," meaning their housing is substandard - up from 1.3 million in 1995.  In the GTA alone, there are about 70,000 people on waiting lists for affordable housing.

Housing is the key to personal security - both income security and physical security for yourself and your family. Substandard or non-existent housing is the root cause of decay in portions of Peggy Nash's riding, says the MP for Parkdale-High Park. "People would love to stay," she says of districts like Parkdale and the Junction. "But housing falls into disrepair, or gets converted to luxury condos, and there are no affordable alternatives, so people move away." 

In addition, housing costs are soaring. The average home price in Vancouver is now $700,000. In the GTA, those who aspire to home ownership require household income of $80,000 to finance an average home. So, why is the gap between rich and poor growing?  Two reasons stand out:

Canada's spending on social services as a percentage of GDP ranked an abysmal 24th among the 30 member nations of the Organization of Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) in 2001, the latest year for which statistics are available. 

Under the Chrétien Liberals, Canada's system for income redistribution was significantly altered to emphasize tax relief rather than direct-payment assistance. Naturally, tax cuts are of use only to people with incomes, and offer the greatest windfalls to those with the highest incomes. 

In the 2000 budget, then Finance Minister Paul Martin announced tax cuts of $100 billion over five years, the biggest tax cuts in Canadian history.  In 2001, the year the tax reductions kicked in, there were 1.96 million families living below the poverty line. In 2005, that number was 2.04 million. 

"Those tax cuts didn't erase or even ease poverty," said Michael Shapcott, a veteran Toronto poverty activist and two-time federal NDP candidate who is now senior fellow for public policy at the Wellesley Institute. "The radical 1990s experiment in slashing social investment in hopes the private markets would be unleashed to bring the poor into prosperity has failed dramatically. If you really care about people's well-being, there is no substitute for investing in them directly." 

Poverty and the accompanying intellectual starvation of people in need is yet another issue, as with climate change, in which the public is several steps ahead of the political class. In focus groups and a recent national Environics poll commissioned by the CCPA, the overwhelming majority of 2,000 survey respondents insisted that a high priority be placed on eradicating poverty.

The Toronto Board of Trade, TD Economics and the City Summit Alliance, a coalition of GTA business leaders, all have described poverty as a brake on economic growth, contributing, among other things, to the nation's acute skills shortage. 

The governments of Newfoundland, Nova Scotia and Quebec are developing poverty-reduction strategies of their own. Ontario joined the group when Dalton McGuinty added a similar initiative to his re-election platform.

Meanwhile, John Rook, head of Salvation Army Community Services Calgary, tries to make sense of the jarring contradictions outside the window at his office at the Centre for Hope in downtown Calgary, one of the army's two shelters. 

"There are construction cranes everywhere you look," he says in a late-afternoon interview with the Toronto Star, "but there are about half a dozen homeless people sleeping outside City Hall across from my office, and under the trees nearby."

The words Calgary and boomtown have become synonymous for Canadians during the current era of rising world oil prices that began early this decade. Yet Rook and some of his staff tallied 3,400 homeless people in the city on just one night in their most recent homeless count. Rook expects upward of 20,000 people to use the Salvation Army's facilities this year. 

"People have been flooding this city for years now, expecting to make money, and many end up homeless," Rook said. During the interview, Rook described the scene across the street at Calgary's architecturally striking City Hall and the nearby Olympic Park, built to commemorate the 1988 Winter Games hosted by the city.

"People are bedding down for the night. There's one chap I recognize who makes $14 an hour at his job.  But he's out there with his blanket with the rest of them. There's an able fellow who's been sleeping in front of this building for some two years. Him I don't worry about so much. The folks who've left, though, I don't know what has become of them." 

-30-

Tuitio ad servitium pauperum: 

"La noblesse est soutenue au coeur -- Faire l'amour à la vie et le revel dans son esprit." ~François-Marie Arouet de Voltaire. 

Hunting of the Snark: "Oh, beamish nephew, beware of the day, If your Snark be a Boojum! For then You will softly and suddenly vanish away, And never be met with again! We should all of us grieve, as you well may believe, If you never were met with again -- For, although common Snarks do no manner of harm, yet, I feel it my duty to say, Some are Boojums." ~Lewis Carroll.

"Those who do not feel pain much, seldom think that it is felt. And yes, to wipe all tears from all faces is a task too hard for mortals; but to alleviate misfortunes is often within the most limited power: yet the opportunities which every day affords of relieving the most wretched of human beings are overlooked and neglected with equal disregard of policy and goodness."  ~ Samuel Johnson.

Live to make civil society every day -- Ne lache pas!

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