Canada's other War against Povery

Blame for any financial crisis in this country usually falls on the shoulders of the poorest. They are a convenient target. They have no representation. Equal rights do not exist for Canadian poor legally. They are weak. And all other classes in Canadian society literally hate the poor.

You know why? They are one stroke, one heart attack, one arthritis condition, one mental health episode, one industrial accident away from being there. Canadian poor lose everything. The great Canadian social system is a wreck.

Yes the welfare system works for all immigrants. It works if you are Quebecois. It works better if you are female. It works if you are gay. It works if you are a visible minority. But if you are male, middle aged or older (female, or male), aged or even slightly overweight, the discrimination appears naked and unabashed.

The business executives in the city core complain about panhandlers all the time. And to them panhandlers equate with all poor. The solution is to disenfranchise and deepen the poor condition and contrive to remove the social safety net.

Billions can be spent on protecting the Canadian sovereignty over an Imperial Oil resource prospect and this is good. One dollar spent on Canadian poor is considered a waste of money. Yesterday I saw a guy who is dying slowly in agony because of stomach cancer. He has been deliberately shoved around from doctor to doctor because he is poor and has no power.

More on this guy. To the majority of the medical establishment money spent on him is wasted, indeed for the longest time they didn't even provide him with any comfort for pain. They didn't make sure he was put into a proper medical facility forcing him to return nightly to a Salvation Army shelter. A service club has since made sure he gets proper pain medication morphine when he needs it while he waits for a surgery to reduce his pain. His story is not the only one, it is only the most current.

I don't wish to single out the medical establishment alone. This sort of institutional bias swims in other areas like housing, or even a poor guy standing in a downtown mall under the great towers of power. I've seen avid security officers expel people who are poorly dressed out of the complex even if they only sit on a bench. The poor are a convenient target for a society that is becoming a mean, shallow and greedy nation.

People are blaming the panhandlers for a situation they did not create. A point here. Most poor people do not panhandle in Toronto. Quite the contrary.

The embarrassment of most people to be impoverished tops most emotions. In Toronto, at this moment most panhandlers are either alcoholic or crack addicts. When a mark places that spare change in their palms

The solutions are wrong. All this panhandling began with the Harris government 's arbitrary 25% reduction in welfare rates a decade ago. This was the neo-conservative stance discriminating against impoverished individuals.

Since the Thatcher Reagan economic policies were handed to political ethics the gap between rich and poor has been growing. The poor in Canada have been denied voice not only in the city but voice in politics.

Every single social, economic and political problem stems from the poor. The poor in Canada are the first to suffer and the last to benefit from any political turn. If the city finds its budget is in the minus, will they sacrifice road improvements in the richer neighborhoods? Will they increase the residential rates on the high end mansions of the wealthy, their campaign funders?

Answer no. The very first thing the city council does is to increase the transit fares which is a direct tax on the very poorest of the city. They reduce services in libraries and community centres all of which serve only the poorer members of the municipality. The mayor did not cancel his million dollar office renovation.

As a result we have food banks, severe reductions in shelter space, increased homelessness. And now the braintrust of city hall and provincial halls of power and the upper classes of society. Leaders of this society, the privileged want to legislate against the poor.

To reduce this problem isn't to reinforce the psychopathic political theory of canadian conservatives. Rather this whole situation can be solved by simply restoring welfare subsidies to the percentages of the mid 1980's, increase funding to social housing and assistance programs.

Increases in social spending like that would be more cost effective, more proactive than increasing funding to police. If done so, the discrimination and hopelessness that embraces Canadian poor can be solved literally as soon as tomorrow. It won't for the simple reason that politicians of all parties, even the one's claiming to be proactive against poverty won't have any target group to blame to mask their own incompetence.

If anyone ever asks me the biggest change in Canada over my lifetime? The answer wouldn't be the growing new cities. Or the growth of the richest people's property. Or technical feats which usually are exported to other nations. No its simply that compared with the Canada of 40 years ago, this country has become a cold, mean, and greedy nation.