What a great morning I had on Tuesday, in the sense of thought-provoking and challenging. The York Region Food Network (not a TV channel but a group dedicated to food security) teamed up with the York Region Human Services Planning Board to present thinking on how to eliminate poverty in the Region and province. Guests from the Social Planning Network of Ontario were featured. Retired professor Marvyn Novick was the main speaker, and he was powerful and inspiring.
Novick described poverty as a moral issue, and called it "a moral stain" on Ontario. He's right. It is. We spend money on all kinds of things. We choose not to spend enough to lift every Ontarian to an income that would ensure their dignity. His address was called "Dignity for All." That's the real goal. Poverty is demeaning, and we need to agree to make it history. He's fed up with hearing that the time is not right. Unemployment insurance was introduced in 1941 during World War II. The family allowance came along in 1945, just as the war was ending, and the government was mortgaged to the hilt to pay for armies and munitions. People just made them priorities. They had an ethic of collective responsibility, an ethic that has suffered in recent decades with an onslaught of personal responsibility thinking.
Novick took on the big excuses for our inaction, the "buts" people add after they agree that poverty is bad. "Get a job." Over half of low income families get their income from work. Pay rates are just too low and the affordable housing supply is inadequate, meaning some people spend 80-90% of their income on rent and utilities. "Get an education." Over half of low income Ontarians have post-secondary education. And the small fortune they spent getting it are likely helping keep them from getting ahead. "Get out of that welfare family." Canada has a low proportion of so-called intergenerational poverty. That term was imported from the United States where some opinion leaders use it to refer to a racialized group, African-Americans. In actual fact, a very small percent of low income Canadians were born into poverty. In other words, working and furthering one's education will not necessarily be a springboard out of poverty. And the circumstances of one's early life are not a good predictor of one's later income level.
Novick has stopped apologizing for sounding militant. He points out that women first, then gay and lesbian people in the 20th century didn't care if some people's feelings were hurt when they set about getting their rights. And he goes back to the 1948 United Nations Declaration of Human Rights to find the basis of his call for "dignity for all."
I drove straight from the presentation in Aurora to the weekly community meal served by Trinity United Church in Newmarket where I am a minister. At my table, all three guests suffer from depression. They are articulate about how bad that disease is, and how important it is to have a reason, such as a community meal, to get out of the house each day. Could there be a more stark illustration of what people had been talking and thinking about all morning? The volunteers at Trinity work very hard to make the lunch a place of warmth and dignity, and I am proud of them for that. And they would likely go right on providing a community meal even if the Ontario government ensured all citizens of an adequate income because the lunch serves other purposes besides hunger for food.
So I was sad, and angry and hopeful again on Tuesday, thinking about what some people go through each day, and the fact that I/we let them. We can do better than this. Help make sure this becomes an election issue. Ask the candidates and parties what they will do to eliminate poverty. What are we waiting for?
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