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Ontario parties won't be pinned down on child poverty |
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Written by Michael Swan, The Catholic Register
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Monday, 23 July 2007 |
 TORONTO - Campaign 2000 wants political parties to present voters with poverty reduction plans, including hard targets for reducing Ontario’s 17.3 per cent child poverty rate before the Oct. 10 provincial election.
The antipoverty lobbyists cite former British prime minister Tony Blair, who committed his government to reducing child poverty by 25 per cent over five years between 1999 and 2004. Blair’s Labour government missed its target by two per cent, but having a target and measuring results set the conditions for positive results, argues Campaign 2000.
Minister of Community and Social Services Madeleine Meilleur said her government is all for measuring the results of government programs aimed at reducing poverty, but they’re still trying to figure out how to measure poverty.
If we want to see whether it’s working or not, it’s good to measure it,” Meilleur said. “We’ve been debating how to measure it. Because there are different ways to do it.”
As for setting a target for the 2011 child poverty rate, Meilleur won’t be pinned down.
“As long as there is one child in poverty this government is going to work to help those children in poverty,” she said. “Is five per cent the right number, I don’t know.”
All the nordic countries in Europe have child poverty rates below five per cent, which means that it must be possible, argues Campaign 2000 Ontario co-ordinator Jacquie Maund. As for the right way to measure poverty, there are four different, widely accepted measures of poverty in Canada already out there, said Maund.
“The important thing is to identify a measure, identify a target to reduce that measure, and then track progress over time,” she said.
“All measures indicate that Ontario has a high, double-digit, child poverty rate,” said Maund.
The Progressive Conservatives are the first of Ontario’s major parties to have released a platform, including two pages dedicated to “Fighting Poverty.” Among the commitments the Conservatives make, the platform proclaims that PC leader John Tory “believes that no-one with a full-time job should have to live below the poverty line.”
In 2008 a worker who spends all year at a full-time, minimum wage job in Ontario will make 70 per cent of the income it takes to reach the before-tax Low Income Cut Off, according to Campaign 2000.
Without mentioning expenditures, the Conservative platform promises more co-operative housing, rebuilding old public housing, aboriginal programming, plus a yearly review of the minimum wage. As for hard targets in the poverty rate, there are no plans for the Conservatives to make that kind of promise, said Conservative Community and Social Services critic Julia Munro.
“John Tory is the kind of leader who is not going to put out that kind of number unless it’s going to be met,” said Munro.
Over the summer and into September the Conservatives will lay out the costs of their platform, but poverty reduction targets haven’t yet been a part of that discussion, she said.
As for eliminating child poverty in the next generation, Munro doesn’t believe it’s possible.
New Democratic Party housing critic Paul Ferreira promises his party will cost out its entire election platform, including its proposal for a $100-million dental insurance scheme aimed at helping poor families. But hard targets for reducing the poverty rate are not on the table.
“If I was to give you a target right now, it would be akin to pulling a number out of a hat,” said Ferreira. “It would please some folks, but how are we going to reach that target? What are the benchmarks? And if we don’t reach it, what will be the implications?”
NDP poverty-fighting proposals will concentrate on housing, job training, and subsidized, regulated day care spaces.
“Within those areas, we will have hard and fast numbers,” Ferriera said.
The Green Party, which has no seats at Queen’s Park but has polling numbers that show support of between one per cent in a July 18 Environics poll and 13 per cent in a May 1 Decima poll, says it’s willing to entertain the idea of targeted reductions in the child poverty rate.
“Hard targets are always important, because otherwise we can’t hold our policies accountable,” said Green Party of Ontario deputy leader Victoria Serda.
The Green Party platform for the Oct. 10 election is still being written, but Serda promises it will be fully costed. Though Serda has no illusions of the Greens forming the next government, she said her party planned to propose practical policies to force the more established parties to respond to their agenda.
Serda believes that as a long-term goal, eliminating child poverty within a generation is possible.
“I think it’s definitely attainable. There are some stringent measures that need to be taken,” she said.
Campaign 2000 is proposing a 10-year timetable for poverty reduction, which would include a 25-per-cent reduction from the 2005 child poverty rate by 2012, and a 50-per-cent reduction by 2017.
Society of St. Vincent de Paul Ontario Council president John Staley believes politicians should commit themselves to concrete, measurable poverty fighting policies.
“Get in there and say these are the priorities that we think can be done financially and politically,” Staley urged.
But it isn’t just politicians who need to be convinced, said Staley. As the poor and the rich lead increasingly separate lives, many Ontarians fail to see how poverty is their concern.
“OK, we have people in our society that are hungry and thirsty and needing caring – they’re lonely, they’re strangers,” Staley said. “If you read Matthew 25, it lists all those points. If you refer those point back to the reality that we’re facing, we have (poor) people in downtown Toronto, and how can we change that?”
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Michael Swan, The Catholic Register |
| About the author: |
| Michael Swan is Associate Editor of The Catholic Register. He is an award-winning writer and photographer and holds a Master of Arts degree from New York University.
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