April Reign

Speak your mind even if your voice shakes

poverty

Poverty Important to Canadians

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While our neo-con governments would have us believe that all Canadians feel as they do that poverty is but a moral failing it turns out that “The vast majority of Canadians want the federal and provincial governments to lead a war on poverty, including raising minimum wages and creating more low-cost child care” [survery by the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives] The Gazette

Got that? A war on poverty. Not on child soldiers or 3rd world countries.

This story though consisted of one buried paragraph while surveys from the neo con Fraser Institute are front page news. No wonder Canadians don’t recognize themselves. Their values are being buried under those that the neo con want us to have. Just keep chanting “War is Peace; Freedom is Slavery; Ignorance is Strength”. Now isn’t that better?

2008 Blog Action Day: Poverty

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With last night’s election results revealing another NeoCon minority government, it seems fitting somehow that today is Blog Action Day ’08 A call to action for bloggers to raise awareness on issues of poverty.

During the campaign Make Poverty History asked the leaders what they would do about poverty both home and abroad, not surprisingly “All of them except Conservative leader Stephen Harper agreed to answer our questions about their plans to fight poverty.” There is a take action section here to ask Harper what he plans to do about poverty. I think we can well guess his answer though.

From the Campaign 2000 sidebar “On November 24, 1989, the House of Commons unanimously passed a resolution to seek to achieve the goal of eliminating poverty among Canadian children by the year 2000.”

Well here we are in the year 2008 and child poverty if anything has increased. Incomes have been steadily eroded by regressive right wing policies. The constant cutting of social safety nets to provide funds to corporations that then take the money and run to other countries where workers are cheaper, have fewer or no rights and are often forced into labour, has resulted in more and more families making the choice between paying the rent and buying groceries. Between paying utilities or getting the kids new shoes/coats/birthday presents. There is no money for lessons or activities, no money for special treats, no trips. Children in poverty grow up in a war zone. The class war. The war no one speaks of unless the poor get a little rowdy and call into question the policies that have created a system where the boots of the few rest on the backs of the many, including so many children. So called “think tanks” like the Frasier Institute create formulae to determine that you only live in poverty if you are further than 500 miles from a shelter and there is no dumpster from which you can eat.

Deceit and manipulation has convinced that masses that social programs are too costly and any move toward *gasp* socialism would bankrupt the country/world economy. Yet if you look around after decades of rampant unfettered capitalism and corporate welfare the world economies are in collapse and governments are resorting to enormous amounts of socialist cash infusion into the banking industry to try to provide a solution to a world wide depression. No where near the amount of money spent on this fiasco could have provided decent housing, health care, eliminated, or vastly decreased, child poverty And proper regulations surrounding the treatment of workers and the expectations of corporations to keep jobs in Canada would have resulted in good jobs and plenty of cash influx into the economy. Yet instead we are told to tighten our belts while CEO’s reap obscene amounts of money even in a crashing economy.

If we as a country truly believe that it is acceptable that a child goes hungry while corporations that have no concern for or loyalty to our country or our citizens receive 50 billion dollars in tax cuts. If we as a country truly believe it is ok for people to live on the street while banks receive infusions of cash to prop up the obvious and glaring failures of a capitalist corportocracy. If we as a country truly believe it is more important to provide CEOs with multiple homes while others have no home or are in danger of losing theirs with just one missed day of work, then we have well and truly lost our humanity.

Let them eat mud!

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Mud, it\'s whats\'s for dinner
Mud, it's whats's for dinner

While most of us remember making mud pies as a childhood pastime, some mothers in Haiti have been serving them as a main course.

Ironically, many of these women were once rice farmers themselves. But in the 1980s, U.S.-grown rice began pouring into Haiti. Thanks to federal subsidies, the imported rice was sold for less than what it cost to grow it. Haitian farmers just couldn’t compete.

Neither could millions of other farmers around the world, who have been bankrupted by the influx of rice, corn, and wheat from the U.S., Europe and Japan. These farmers have gone from growing their own food and feeding their countries to having to buy food that’s priced on a global market. Now that these commodity markets have spiked, millions of more families cannot afford to eat.

SOURCE

From “A Women’s Declaration to the G8: Support Real Solutions to the Global Food Crisis “;

The root cause of the food crisis is not scarcity, but the failed economic policies long championed by the G8, namely, trade liberalization and industrial agriculture. These policies, which treat food as a commodity rather than a human right, have induced chaotic climate change, oil dependency, and the depletion of the Earth’s land and water resources as well as today’s food crisis.
Yet, in the search for solutions, the G8 is considering expanded support for the very measures that caused this web of problems. Calls for more tariff reductions, biofuel plantations, genetically modified crops, and wider use of petroleum-based fertilizers and chemical pesticides are at the forefront of discussions in Japan.

I read a comment on a website today that claimed our country has no poor because you don’t see children playing on garbage piles. As though a lack of decent housing, food. clothing were of no consequence. This person felt that all could live a wealthy existence with a little effort. The lack of both knowledge and compassion in those few words was astounding.

As we become more and more comfortable with the idea of those basics necessary for human survival (food, water, shelter, could air be far behind?) as commodities, those commodities are becoming more scarce and harder to afford. We have appropriated human rights, dignity and survival and replaced it with a false claims that it is acceptable to allow people to die and that their deaths are due to their own moral failings.

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Workers Rights

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This post will deal mainly with Ontario, though I would imagine similar situations are happening across the country.

In Ontario workers rights are being eroded at an alarming rate, most especially by the huge increase in Temporary Labour placement companies and their use by employers.

Temporary agencies, which require no licence to start up, are flourishing in Ontario where there are now 4,200 such businesses generating $6 billion a year in revenue. Yet Ontario’s Employment Standards Act, brought in 60 years ago to safeguard workers’ basic rights, makes no mention of them

The Star Jun 02, 2007

Temporary Agencies often do not provide proper training, do not provide benefits, do not provide the usual workplace protections from firing, and routinely refuse to pay stat holidays.

Now, when employers are caught, the fines range from only $250 to $1,000. While the labour ministry found employers violated employees’ rights in 11,358 claims last year and that almost $37 million in unpaid wages and benefits was owed to those workers, only four companies and two directors were charged.

[stats for 2006]The Star [Read more…] about Workers Rights

Protecting life

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What springs to your mind when you hear this phrase?

Perhaps programs which allow people access to the essentials for living– homes, food access to health care.

Perhaps you think of the bike helmet you bought your child, or your resolve to never drive drunk or tired or otherwise occupied.

Maybe you think of the aid you send to a foster child, or women’s shelter or other hands on charity.

I wonder in your deliberations if you ever consider refusing to fund abortions for poor women.

There has been much ado amongst the “I’m alright jack” and the “woo hoo lets legislate the hoo hoo” over this;

A clause was added to the Hamilton County indigent care levy contract 10 years ago to block the money from being spent on abortions for poor people.

Recently, that change almost was reversed.

Oh dear the horror!! That women would have the choice not to bring more children they can’t afford into the world!

Of course lets not forget that as poor women they shouldn’t be having sex at all. Nope no way, no pleasure for you lady. And that “sweet precious wonderful protected life” in your womb, well don’t get too attached to having it thought of that way because as soon as it’s born it becomes “another goddamn miserable drain on society that my tax dollars have to go to support“.

Right to Life of Greater Cincinnati had sent word of the clause deletion to more than 1,000 people on its e-mail list. It has since sent a follow up e-mail on the reinstatement.

Executive Director Paula Westwood said she was pleased that the clause is back in.

“Our foremost goal is to make sure that life is protected,” she said. “It looks like the language will remain on this, and that is a good thing.”

One can only hope that Ms. Westwood will put as much effort into ensuring that the resulting children are fed and clothed and babysat while their mothers try to support them. Perhaps she can also direct them to counselling for the depression, anger and terror they feel at being forced to carry an unwanted pregnancy to term. No doubt that would not fall under Ms. Westwood’s umbrella of protecting “life”.

But we have no class!

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I’ve often heard my brothers and sisters of the Great White North patting themselves on the back for our lack of class system. Unlike other countries where class divides are marked.

I always did wonder if we had no class system why we had so many classes. Working class, middle class, lower middle class, upper middle class, blue collar, white collar–I used to ask what very poor was, dirty collar?

There is without a doubt a very strong class system here and the idea that class lines are easily crossed is naive.

A child from a poor or working class home is unlikely to have the same opportunities for post secondary education as a child from a middle class home. This starts right from public school.

A child who speaks out, grabs toys, and is bossy with playmates receives very different attention depending on the income of the parents concerned. One child will be seen as a leader, confident, assertive, the other as aggressive, lacking self discipline and a future behaviour problem.

Interviews will be scheduled and the parents advised to seek help now while s/he is young enough to “retrain” and parenting classes will be suggested.

Even if s/he is gifted s/he will be treated differently. There will be no extra supports or encouragement merely a derisive attitude that you would even consider that your child could somehow be smarter than his/her monied counterparts.

This attitude pounded grade after grade into a childs mind ensures they will have little belief in their abilities. The cycle of poverty is not created by the poor it is forced upon them.

Are there examples of people having lifted out regardless? Of course there are. That doesn’t disprove the reality of most. [Read more…] about But we have no class!