Down But Not Out/poverty

Digital photoArt by Ronzig depicting people in poverty situations plus commentary on poverty.

Social Assistance Review to Begin Soon

The social assistance system in Ontario is broken. It doesn’t provide the financial supports people need to live, and it doesn’t give people the opportunities or supports they need to have the lives they deserve.

That’s why a broad review of social assistance is so important, and why ISAC has advocated hard for one over the past year.

So it was encouraging that the Ontario government committed to reviewing social assistance programs in Ontario as part of its long-awaited Poverty Reduction Strategy announcement on Dec 4, 2008.

This commitment is significant because it gives anti-poverty advocates and activists the opportunity to insist that government create a new social assistance system that provides adequate benefits and supports in a dignified and helpful manner.

The government has not yet announced the scope of or process for the Review, so ISAC is advocating to ensure the Review goes beyond tinkering with so-called “stupid rules” but instead completely re-imagines and redesigns the system so that it works.

We will send out information about how to participate in the Review when we know more. Check our website for updates at

www.incomesecurity.org/campaigns/OntarioPovertyReductionStrategy.html.        

Ending Poverty Project:

Nothing About Us Without Us

What would it take to end poverty in your community? That’s the question the Ending Poverty Project wants to help answer in nine communities across Ontario .

Since January 2008, 290 low-income people have been engaged with the Project to find solutions to the problem of poverty in their local area.

Working with partner organizations in the nine communities, ISAC and Ontario Campaign 2000 — the Project’s initiators — released a report in December 2008 on their first year’s work. Solutions Start with Us: Voices of Low Income People in Ontario recounts the experiences of low-income people and their ideas for steps governments can take to make life better.

The report was sent to key government ministers and the MPPs overseeing implementation of Ontario's poverty reduction strategy.

Now in its second year, the Project will continue working in the nine communities — Windsor, Ottawa, Thunder Bay, Sault Ste Marie, and Owen Sound, as well as families in Rexdale, youth in Scarborough, South Asian families in Scarborough, and people with disabilities in Toronto.

Key local issues identified by low-income people over the past year will be the focus for this year’s work in each community, as well as building awareness of local poverty and ways to tackle it.

The Report and more information about the Project is on ISAC’s website at www.incomesecurity.org/endingpovertyproject.htm.      

Website highlights:

ISAC has updated its website with new information and easier navigation. Have a look at: www.incomesecurity.org.

ISAC is a founding member of the 25 in 5 Network for Poverty Reduction. Information about 25 in 5 is at www.25in5.ca

Blood on the streets

I was at an Ontario Coalition Against Poverty meeting Sunday and if they are right, it will soon be time to get seriously organized. Check out "A Call to Action", "Take Back the Land" & "Slavery in Canada" on my video page at...

http://downbutnotout.synthasite.com/videos.php   

Scroll to the YouTube multi player near the bottom.

When these people speak of the coming clash between corporations and the people they don't seem to realize that the corporations WILL NOT give up their stranglehold easily or peacefully. They will utilize their police and armed forces to obliterate all opposition in the name of law and order. There will be death and destruction throughout the world. Only those who actively oppose this, who are smart enough to fight from a low profile will survive the first year of the conflict and remain at large. The others will be incarcerated or dead. We must fight when this time comes, but we must fight wisely. Our enemy is not the police or the armed forces; it is the elite who control these forces, the CEO's and presidents of the corporations and the politicians who have sold out to them. These must be our targets. All protest activity must be focused upon them.

Time for a little optimism

I'm starting to see things slowly turning here. Mainstream media over the past 6 months or so has been much more sympathetic and that seems to be influencing the views of the general population. Slowly, but surely the politicians are getting the message that they'd better do something real if they want to keep their jobs. I think the economic downturn has forced their hands too. When the working, voting, tax paying citizens start becoming homeless, unemployed and unemployable it begins to sink in. I hate to sound gleeful about more people being forced out of their homes, but I’ve been reading about people with seriously good qualifications and exceptional educations who have lost their jobs and been unable to find new ones and finally wound up eating in soup kitchens just like the rest of us. Perhaps this is what was needed to make the politicians sit up and take notice. If so, maybe some good can come out of the suffering that the economic meltdown is creating.

YWCA hub is coming downtown

Downtown will soon be home to a new $80 million supportive housing development and resource complex. Featuring 300 permanent affordable apartments for women in need and their families, the YWCA Elm Centre will take up a city block bordered by Edward, Elm, Chestnut and Elizabeth streets. The YWCA has received $5 million from the estates of the late Ken Thomson and the late Audrey Campbell in memory of their sister Irma Brydson, mother of Elmwood Spa founder Sherry Brydson. The complex will also feature several public venues including a 200-seat auditorium, meeting rooms, retail space, a restaurant, and the headquarters for YWCA Toronto and YWCA Canada. For more information visit www.ywcatoronto.org.This is good news indeed. Thank God the citizens in Toronto have more heart than our political leaders. If we kept waiting for them to do the right thing, it would never get done.

The Salvation Army's Gateway shelter on Jarvis St. is one of the best in Toronto.

Just in from OCAP   www.ocap.ca

It’s Their System, They Broke It, And We’re Not Paying To Fix It.
We are watching the greatest financial crisis since 1929 unfold before our
eyes.  Even if they manage to shore up their system for the moment, there
is no doubt that a serious international downturn in the economy is
getting underway.  As this situation begins to impact the lives of our
families and communities, we must understand and prepare to deal with what
the crisis will mean to us:

1.Financial bailout for the rich: Governments everywhere have responded to
the crisis of financial institutions by pouring hundreds and hundreds of
billions of dollars into various bail-out packages for the rich.  For
years, they have been telling us no money exists for decent wages, proper
housing, schools or health care and, certainly, no money to ensure that
poor people on assistance can pay the rent and eat properly.  Now we see
that this was all a lie.  When the banks and corporations are in trouble,
a Niagara Falls of public money suddenly becomes available to them.  Don’t
tell us, when we lose our jobs and can’t pay our rent or put food on the
table, that ‘we can’t spend our way out of a recession’. Government must
start spending for us as they have for corporate interests.
2.Get ready for ordinary people to feel the crunch:  This downturn is
unfolding in a context where EI and welfare systems have been cut back
considerably over the last few years.  Recently re-elected Harper
Conservatives have made clear they will not put resources into social
programs and other initiatives crucial to our survival.  In fact, they
will try to do the very opposite.  As the downturn cuts into government
revenues, government will try to cut programs, in order to balance their
books.  This should not only be expected from the openly right wing
Federal Government.  Ontario’s Dalton McGuinty has already made clear that
economic downturn will delay Queen’s Park’s ‘poverty reduction’ measures.
Undoubtedly, the ‘progressive’ Toronto City Council will respond to an
upsurge in welfare cases by ensuring local offices turn away as many
people in need as they possibly can.
3.Communities under attack will have to organize:  As the downturn hits,
we can expect a lot of jobs to be lost. In Ontario, this has already begun
in the manufacturing sector. Companies will try to lay off workers without
paying money owed to them.  The number of people facing eviction for non-
payment of rent will go up considerably.  Unscrupulous employers will try
to take advantage of the desperation of the unemployed by cutting wages
and not providing overtime and holiday pay.  People needing EI and welfare
will face a bureaucratic wall built to deny them income they need and have
a right to.  Already overcrowded shelters for the homeless will face a
huge increase in the numbers turning to them.  We will need to bring
people together to take action.  Delegations from the community will have
to confront government agencies that withhold income.  We will have to
mobilize to defend families facing eviction and fight to ensure evictions
are banned during the crisis – a tactic already being employed in the US.
Additional resources for income support programs for those without work
must be provided.  To win such things, we’ll need to take strong and bold
action. Grassroots organizations must work together, to demand necessary
government actions. Local committees will have to form, to take up this
kind of work. We’ll need the strength of trade unions, with their strike
weapon, to be set in motion.  If the leaders of these unions are too timid
and conservative, their members will have to make them take action or get
out of the way and make way for those who will.  There will have to be a
major fight-back in Toronto and across the country, to prevent poor and
working people from being saddled with the costs of a mess created by the
greed of banks, corporations, and the governments who serve their
interests.
4.We must fight for what we need: We live under a system of capitalism
expressly organized to make profit for a few at the expense of the great
majority.  As this system moves into crisis, those few will seek solutions
that work in their favour.  For at least thirty-five years, capitalists
and government have worked to rescind the concessions they made at an
early time.  Social supports have been removed, workers’ rights
undermined, and the world markets have been given a free hand to engage in
a wild frenzy of parasitic speculation.  Now, it seems to have blown up in
their faces, and the response will be to make working and poor people
cover the cost.  And yet, money remains available for the things their
profit system requires.  The federal government still finds money to wage
war in Afghanistan.  Dalton McGuinty has just announced that $635 million
to fund the Pan Am Games is available, but a $500 million budgetary
shortfall exists, so hospitals and schools should expect less funding.
The banks will be allowed to come back with their hands out as many times
as they like, and public funds will be thrown at them without delay.  For
the needs of poor people, however, nothing will be provided, unless we
fight.  We will become a priority when we pose enough of a problem that
that they have to treat us as one.  Otherwise, we will be the ones paying
for this crisis.  Get ready to fight back.
If you would like to work together, to organize in your community to
ensure people under attack are supported, to demand and win our basic
needs and rights, please get in touch.
THE ONTARIO COALITION AGAINST POVERTY (OCAP)
(416) 925-6939 - ocap@tao.ca – www.ocap.ca

Make Poverty History

Here are some statistics from the “Make Poverty History” website

One in six Canadian children is poor.

Canada's child poverty rate of 15 percent is three times as high as the rates of Sweden, Norway or Finland.

Every month, 770,000 people in Canada use food banks. Forty percent of those relying on food banks are children. These statistics point to a betrayal of Canada's children. What makes the persistence of child poverty all the more disturbing is that Canada is a rich country, a country that ranked fourth in the world on the 2004 UN Human Development Index.

All three levels of government share the guilt for this appalling situation. The Federal Government has for years been downloading the responsibility to ensure all Canadians have adequate shelter and nourishment as a human right. The Provincial Governments in turn have been passing the burden on to Municipal Governments who lack the political clout to prevent it and have no resources to adequately protect the less fortunate in our society from homelessness or malnourishment.

Our politicians say that employment is on the rise, but fail to mention that people who historically worked in industry at decent levels of income are being forced into subsistence employment at or near the minimum wage. They continue to ignore the fact that it is virtually impossible for anyone to pay for housing and nourishment let alone all the other necessities of life if they are employed at minimum wage or rely on social assistance.

• Why does being poor exclude good people from the protection that our politicians are supposed to guarantee?
• Why are people forced to live and die on the streets of our cities and towns while million dollar condos are sprouting up like mushrooms?
• Why is it that honest citizens are forced daily to choose between buying groceries or paying the rent?The answer to these questions is GREED.

GREED dictates that our political leaders and their cohorts ignore the problems or their constituents unless there is power or money in it resulting in ever more draconian laws being passed with the sole purpose of driving homeless and poor people out of our cities. But where can we go?

GREED declares that building condos will provide higher profits and a faster return than building rental housing. The result is a vast shortage of rental accommodation which drives the rental rate up beyond the ability to pay for an ever increasing segment of our society.

Our law makers have decided to balance their budgets on the backs of the poorest people in our society by first reducing social assistance rates to well below the poverty level and second by failing to peg the minimum wage and social assistance rates to inflation with the result that price increases continue to eat into our food budget. The politicians say that it is acceptable to require a huge segment of our population to rely on charity to survive. They say that food banks provide enough food to live on, so why should people be able to buy groceries? This attitude ignores the fact that a full belly does not necessarily mean adequate nourishment or that a consistent diet of Kraft Dinners and the like becomes so unattractive that we lose the desire to eat, not to mention the destruction of self esteem which is resultant from being forced to wait in line for hand outs with no variety or consideration to special dietary needs. I say that if it is not for GREED, why do the poor have to bear the brunt of balancing the budget while the rich just keep getting richer.

I’m 62 years old. I’ve lived long enough to see good times and bad, booming economies and recessions. I tell you this. Never has Canada been richer and never during my lifetime has homelessness and reliance on food banks been so wide spread. GREED says it’s ok to allow people who are your neighbours to sleep on the streets while you sleep in a luxury condominium. GREED says it’s ok for you to dine on treats from your local delicatessen while your neighbour makes do with a steady diet of Kraft Dinners if he’s lucky enough to receive sufficient help from the food bank to be able to eat regularly at all.

Canada used to be world renowned for its social conscience. It used to be that a Canadian citizen was guaranteed personal dignity, security and a fair piece of the pie. Today our poor live and die without a home. They go hungry most of the time. Police use Gestapo tactics to harass and brutally assault homeless people whose main offense is poverty. They receive no protection from the politicians who make the laws. Instead, the politicians and bureaucrats who are supposed to ensure our rights tacitly approve of this police brutality and in many cases secretly encourage it.

We are going to have an election soon. It’s time that Canadians told the politicians that this situation is intolerable. I can’t tell you who to support, but I can say that The Harper government has turned a blind eye to the situation long enough. Mr. Harper will probably say that if re-elected, he will make poverty a priority. I say a leopard can not change its spots. Let the record speak.

I used to be proud to be a Canadian. Now I am ASHAMED. We all should be ashamed.

Of course we all know how the government loves to study an issue to death. If you'r3e studying an issue, you don't have to do a thing about it. It will be up to all of us during the upcoming hearings to keep pressure on them to make sure they don't just bury it afterward.

NDP celebrates hearings on national poverty plan

Fri 4 Apr 2008

OTTAWA – A national poverty plan that would help people and communities remove barriers to reach their full potential and productivity moved closer to reality today as the NDP won parliamentary hearings on a poverty-reduction strategy.

NDP Poverty critic Tony Martin (Sault Ste. Marie), who has been fighting over a year for the hearings, said the study could lay the groundwork for a truly national plan where governments set firm targets, create timelines, and report annually so everyone can see the progress being made against poverty.

"As The National Council on Welfare and other groups have said, if there is no vision, no plan, no leadership, no resources assigned, and no accepted measure of results, we will be mired in the consequences of poverty for generations to come,” said Mr. Martin.

National social policy, labour, and faith communities have called on the government of Canada to adopt a poverty-reduction strategy.

The Human Resources and Social Development Committee will conduct the hearings beginning in May after the latest reports indicate one in six Canadians, which includes nearly 1.2 million children, still live in poverty.

Martin has asked that the study include consultations with Canadians living under the poverty line and a review of federal programs.

Ireland has had a national poverty plan since the mid-1990s, which has reduced poverty levels from 15 per cent to 6.8 per cent. Newfoundland and Labrador also has an anti-poverty strategy committed to becoming the province with the lowest poverty rate by 2016.

“Our goal is nothing short of a comprehensive national plan to reduce poverty in this land of plenty,” said Mr. Martin. “These hearings are an important step to that goal: in Canada, no one should be left behind.”

Well we haven’t heard much about this in the election campaign. I wonder what happened to it? lol

Kevin Clark at OCAP protest in Nathan Phillips Square