This is on cpac now (Toronto 1:50 pm - Statements by members, at
present, 2:00 Motion debate to continue I think)
Your Canadian MP can be lobbied using the e-mail format such as Tony
Martin, MP Sault Ste. Marie <[log in to unmask]>
-------- Original Message --------
Subject: NDP Motion on Poverty Debated and Voted in the House Today
Date: Tue, 20 Feb 2007 11:33:20 -0500
From: Tony Martin, MP Sault Ste. Marie <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
The NDP Opposition Day Motion will be voted on in the House of Commons this evening:
That, in the opinion of the House, there is a growing prosperity gap in Canada that is making it harder for working and middle-class families to make ends meet and sees more and more Canadians, including women, children, seniors, aboriginal people in Canada, and people with disabilities, slipping into poverty and therefore calls on the government, in cooperation with the provinces and territories, to implement a national anti-poverty strategy beginning with the reinstatement of the federal minimum wage to be initially set at $10 per hour.
The following transcript is from Tony Martin, NDP Social Policy Critic on opening debate on this motion:
Feb. 20, 2007
(Opening the full-day debate)
Mr. Tony Martin (Sault Ste. Marie)
Thank you, Mr. Speaker:
It is an honour to stand in the House today to move our party’s motion that calls for a national anti-poverty strategy beginning with the reinstatement of the $10 dollar minimum wage. (I will be sharing my time with the Member from Parkdale High Park)
Over the course of today my party will lay out what we see as the elements of a national anti-poverty plan.
Before I got into politics in 1990, I was a soup kitchen director.
I got into politics to fight poverty.
Seventeen years later, I am still fighting. I wish I could say the fight was over.
As I traveled across Canada over the past two years, first on a tour looking at early learning for children and most recently meeting with people about poverty and the growing prosperity gap, I was struck by the deep level of compassion and caring that exists. However, people are clearly increasingly uneasy about the disparity they see around them and their own tenuous grip on some security for themselves and their families. They remember a time when community mattered and government could and did make a difference. Canada has a rich tradition and history of gathering together as community against geography, distance and weather to insure that no one got left behind or was forgotten. People are looking for a vision consistent with the Canadian story, where we wove a safety net of basic income, health care, education, unemployment insurance and pensions for all. The kind of vision that Canadians today still remember… It was no accident that Tommy Douglas was voted the “Greatest Canadian”.
Today there is a competing vision. One vision playing itself out over the last 15 years, rooted in the Margaret Thatcher thesis, is that there really is no such thing as society -- rather a world of individuals. It sees money and the market as the driving force behind all human activity. The result is a growing uneasiness and dissatisfaction. There is a poverty and inequality that are symptoms of a structural dysfunction affecting more and more of our citizens and newcomers to our land.
Mr. Speaker, Thomas Walkom wrote recently in the Toronto Star,
“The poor are the canaries in the coal mine. The deliberate attempts to reconfigure Canada over the past 30 years by gutting social programs, dismantling national institutions and insisting that market forces alone can solve every problem have affected everyone. But they have hit the poor first and hardest.”
Mr. Walkom goes on to say: “We should not care about poverty just to be nice. We should care about poverty because, in the end, this story isn’t about the 11% or 16% of the population (depending on your statistical source) officially designated as low income. It is about the deliberate erosion of middle class Canada. It is about us too.”
Mr. Speaker, over the past nine months I have traveled across the country to communities big and small. I have seen and heard the stories of misery and hurt and the tremendous efforts of good people with little resource trying to make a difference. It is what I call a Bad News, Good News, and yet more Bad News story.
The Bad News is the statistics flowing from institutions like the National Council on Welfare (August 2006) that indicates that poverty is more pervasive and deeper than ever.
The Good News is that we are hearing about it again. For too long it has been hidden and invisible. National newspapers are writing about poverty. People are willing to come to meetings to talk about it.
The even more Bad News is why we are hearing about poverty again. The number of homeless is estimated as high as 250,000 and in places that we would never expect. Studies are showing alarmingly high numbers of people working full time all year yet not earning enough to make ends meet.
Mr. Speaker, I have been traveling on an anti-poverty campaign to learn firsthand about its reality in our country. I made a commitment to bring those stories, hopes and recommendations back to Parliament.
•In Calgary and Victoria, two communities where the economy is booming, there is no affordable housing. Alarming numbers of people are living on the street as shelters, church halls and warehouses prove insufficient. The homeless are in the very shadows of the prosperous oil companies with their tax breaks.
•In Calgary I visited a shelter that beds down on floor mats 1,000 to 1,200 of the 3,500 plus homeless living in that city. I watched as two city buses took another 100 or so to the suburbs to be bedded down on mats in warehouses. The rest find refuge where they can, most under bridges and in parks while city hall passes laws making it criminal behaviour to do so. A few will turn to Crack and Crystal Meth since I am told by street-workers it takes away any feeling of hunger, cold and fear. But that lasts only five to ten minutes and then you need another one which in turn leaves our streets dangerous places.
Mr. Speaker, other stories emerge:
• In Halifax I was told of the disproportionate number of women facing poverty. “Women who go hungry to feed their children.”
• The disappearance of good, well paying jobs in the manufacturing sector in the Niagara/Hamilton corridor of Ontario.
• The overwhelming aboriginal face of truly destitute poverty in
Thunder Bay Ontario.
• The huge increase in health issues for people living in the poorer neighbourhoods of Saskatoon Sask.
• Whole families living in Motel rooms through the winter in the Penticton area of BC then disappearing with children gone from schools when the tourists arrive in the spring. It is thought they live in the mountains and camp grounds while picking fruit and working on farms to make a living.
• The more than 50 disabled people that I was told about living on the streets of Victoria.
• The deteriorating and diseased stock of affordable housing in Toronto and Vancouver (there has not been a national affordable housing program in Canada for over 15 years) and what does exist is being torn down and replaced with expensive condos at an alarming rate.
• About 175 people gathered in Castlegar B.C. and told me of struggles to get ahead, the road blocks and the lack of resources and cut backs, in particular to early learning and childcare.
• At Brock University in St. Catharines students told me the challenges they face trying to access post secondary education, ever increasing tuition and ancillary fees, the cost of housing and living expenses while summer work gets harder to get and pays more and more only minimum wage that does not keep pace with inflation.
Mr. Speaker, poverty is debilitating and mind numbing. Poverty can paralyze and kill the spirit. Combined with thoughtless, harmful public policy poverty can rip your heart and soul out. Poverty can actually kill.
I remember the summer of 2001 and the story of Kimberly Rogers. Kimberly lived on social assistance and decided to go to College to better her situation. She was in her third year, soon to graduate when she successfully applied for a student loan. What she didn’t know was that the Mike Harris government in Ontario at that time had passed legislation to make it illegal (criminal behaviour) to be in receipt of social assistance and also collect a student loan. She was charged, pleaded guilty and sentenced to house arrest. In the hottest day of August in the summer of 2001 Kimberly Rogers and her unborn child died in that apartment living out her sentence. That should never happen in this country. We should never let it happen again.
Today we are calling for a national anti-poverty strategy starting with the reinstatement of a federal minimum wage of $10.00 an hour. We do not have to reinvent the wheel here. Jurisdictions in the European Union and elsewhere are proposing national plans to combat poverty. They are doing this with noticeable early success and are now joined by a couple of our own provinces with an anti-poverty law in Quebec and a poverty reducing strategy in Newfoundland. . The National Council on Welfare has presented a framework for action – a poverty plan with targets and timelines, budget, accountability and establishing official poverty indicators. Groups across the country are doing some very creative things. They are looking for national leadership. Let’s take advantage of this opportunity in this minority government to do the right thing for our families, for our neighbours, for working men and women, for the “at risk” and marginalized.
We have in many parts of our country an economic boom.
Sadly, we also have a Poverty boom.
We can do better.
We must do better, for each and every Canadian and newcomer – for our poor on assistance and 650,000 working poor in our country, for women, children, seniors, veterans and persons with disabilities who all struggle with unacceptable levels of poverty.
We must fundamentally right the wrongs and honour the obligations for our First Nations, Métis, and Inuit.
It is all about human rights, justice and fairness.
Mr. Speaker, people are watching us today to see if we can find the political will to win this fight.
For their sake, for our sake, for Canada’s sake, we must.
-------------------
Problems/Questions? Send it to Listserv owner: [log in to unmask]
To unsubscribe, send the following message in the text section -- NOT the subject header -- to [log in to unmask]
SIGNOFF SDOH
DO NOT SEND IT BY HITTING THE REPLY BUTTON. THIS SENDS THE MESSAGE TO THE ENTIRE LISTSERV AND STILL DOES NOT REMOVE YOU.
To subscribe to the SDOH list, send the following message to [log in to unmask] in the text section, NOT in the subject header.
SUBSCRIBE SDOH yourfirstname yourlastname
To post a message to all 1200+ subscribers, send it to [log in to unmask]
Include in the Subject, its content, and location and date, if relevant.
For a list of SDOH members, send a request to [log in to unmask]
To receive messages only once a day, send the following message to [log in to unmask]
SET SDOH DIGEST
To view the SDOH archives, go to: https://listserv.yorku.ca/archives/sdoh.html
|
