The Need to Address Poverty in Canada

Canada, the most affluent of countries, operates on a depletion economy which leaves destruction in its wake. Your people are driven by a terrible sense of deficiency. When the last tree is cut, the last fish is caught, and the last river is polluted; when to breathe the air is sickening, you will realize, too late, that wealth is not in bank accounts and that you can’t eat money.

A nation-wide social issue in contemporary Canadian society is relative poverty. Universal basic income (UBI), or ‘basic income’, is a model which aims to eliminate it. In this response, I will argue that UBI can reduce relative poverty in Canada. Subsequently, that the reduction of relative poverty will also improve both physical and mental health as well as diminish income discrimination in Canada. Since income inequality not only creates poverty but also is a social determinant of health. To accomplish this, I briefly outline the current state of Canadian poverty, the tenets of UBI, and the benefits that can stem from its establishment. Concludingly, discussing a measuring mechanism to ensure that the relative poverty is being resolved.

Although Canada is a rich country there are still people who live in poverty, “In 2011, the government classified about 4.7 million men, women and children –– almost 15 percent of the Canadian population –– as poor” (Macionis, Janson, Benoit, & Burkowicz, 2017) but Canada calculates its poverty rate by “one popular measure known as the LICO, a family has an income below the low income cut-off of it spends more than 63 percent of its after-tax income on the necessities of food, clothing, and shelter, including corrections for different family sizes and the cost of living in particular communities.”

2007).People, who live in poverty in Toronto, are having a hard time, because they can not get enough of life necessities such as clothes and food, and they can not care about their health.

Poverty is an ongoing problem in Canada. Poverty is defined as the inability to obtain the necessities for life . Despite poverty being an ongoing problem, how to properly measure it is disputed among scholars. There are two basic formations for the measurement of poverty: the relative measurement and the absolute measurement. In Canada they are called the low income cut off, or LICO, measurement and the market basement measure, or MBM, measurement. The LICO measurement is individuated to Canada whereas the MBM measurement is a worldwide standard. Of the two the LICO measurement of poverty is most relevant for Canadian politicians. This because a relative measurement allows for policy makers to understand poverty based upon what it means

Even though Canada sits in the middle of the scale, while considering inequality, it stays behind countries like Denmark, Norway and Sweden. In wake of the globalization, public austerity programs, middle class incomes are getting lower and fiscal challenges at all government levels are threatening education, pensions, and public health care. It is more difficult how for 20 and 30 years old people to get a better life than their parents had. In Canada, middle class is vanishing and a big gap is between poor and rich. The wealth is in the hands of 1% going after US strand and disparity between C.E.Os. and workers is so evident. In 2012, the ratio was 1:122 while a decade earlier

Income inequality is increasingly becoming a significant concern for many countries around the world. The income difference between the highly-educated, skilled, wealthy class and the poor, low to mid-skilled workers is growing larger and larger. In fact, the incomes of the rich are increasing significantly, while the low skilled workers’ incomes have been declining (The Economist, “Wealth Without Workers”). According to The Economist, real median wages have been decreasing since 2000 in half of the member countries in the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD). In the United States, there was a 4% increase from 1980 to 2012 in the share of national income that was distributed to the top 0.01% (The Economist, “True Progressivism”). Canada is facing a similar problem of rising inequality.

How can there be so many people in poverty? It is all around us even though Canada has made the G20 Richest Nations; they still have one of the highest poverty rates for in the industrialized world. Through reading many articles such as Ann Duffy and Nancy Mandell’s “Poverty in Canada”, others that I have found online, and my own personal experience I have learned the numerous reasons why so many people in a well industrialized nation such as Canada are struggling with poverty.

According to Chapter 1 of the book "Poverty In Canada", poverty refers to conditions where people lack resources to attain proper diet, participate in community activities, and the living conditions in the society they live in. Poverty can be absolute where people do not have enough resources to survive, or relative where people are not able to participate in common daily activities. The groups who are most likely to experience poverty in Canada are Aboriginal Canadians, women, unattached adults, people of color, persons with disabilities, and recent immigrants to Canada. The reason many of these groups live in poverty is because they work low-wage occupations. For groups such as, people with disabilities, people receiving social assistance,

Toronto holds onto it 's shameful title: Child poverty capital of Canada, article written by Laurie Monsebraanten, social justice reporter was published on October 13th,2015. According to the article in 2011, $16,456 Measures for the low income of a single person and for a two parent family with two children under the age of 16 the measures of low income was $39,912. This article talks about Toronto having the highest percentage of poverty within the youth community followed by Montreal that is 25%, Winnipeg that is 24%, and Hamilton with 22% of children under 18 years of age growing up in poverty. According to the Revenue Canada tax filer data 140 neighborhoods in Canada have child poverty rates above 40%. The highest concentrations of child poverty in Toronto are in the city 's north-west and five are downtown, including Regent Park which has the highest rate at 63%. Two years ago, Sureya Ibrahim; Community engagement worker created a sewing and catering collectives program for local women in Regent Park to help women use the skills to earn money. Ibrahim has participated in a member of the hall meetings on the issue of anti-poverty efforts. She seeks more training for the youth to get jobs but it 's also challenging because their online access is limited or not assessable at all. This article also points out that the poverty rate for working adults is 24% while just 10% of Toronto seniors live in poverty, children disabilities, Single parent, indigenous, and not white

There is a national consciousness in Canada about global poverty reduction, with 94% of Canadians saying it is important to improve health, education and economic opportunity for the world’s poorest, and 76% of Canadians agreeing we have a moral obligation to help expand health, education, and economic opportunity for the world’s

Poverty is a significant threat to women’s equality. In Canada, more women live in poverty than men, and women’s experience of poverty can be harsher, and more prolonged. Women are often left to bear more burden of poverty, leading to ‘Feminization of poverty’. Through government policy women inequality has resulted in more women and children being left in poverty with no means of escaping. This paper will identify some key aspects of poverty for Canadian women. First, by identifying what poverty entails for Canadian women, and who is more likely to feel the brunt of it. Secondly the discussion of why women become more susceptible to poverty through government policy and programs. Followed by the effects that poverty on women plays in

In the spectrum of OECD (Organization of Economic Cooperation and Development) countries, Canada has higher poverty rates and inequality of incomes than most. From 1994 until 2008 Canada has shown steady economic growth, yet the increase in wellbeing of Canadians was not strong enough in comparison. 1 After the 2008 recession, the gap between the Canadians at the top and the ones at the bottom of the pay scale continue to grow, resulting in the decreased wellbeing of those on both extremes of the socioeconomic ladder, often seen in unbalanced societies. With the living wage in Toronto being about $18.52 an hour between two working parents with two children in 20152 about 3.3 million workers earning less than $20,000 in Ontario as

Inequality in Canada is not as prominent as many other places around the world, although it does remain in certain segments of Canada. There are many forms of inequality in Canada and internationally, although this papers main focus is going to be the inequality of wealth. According to Steven Kerstetter “Canadians may view their country as a land of opportunity, but it is also a land of deep and abiding inequality in the distribution of personal wealth” (Kerstetter 2002). The “gaps between the rich and poor remain evident in Canadian statistics” (Kerstetter 2002), Canadians have always kept financial security as an essential element of life and have tried to obtain and sustain it within their lives. Frank Cunningham’s article, “What’s

Currently there are many problems and flaws with the way the Canadian government’s policies deal with healthcare, income inequality and poverty. Time to time changes in policies have been made, perhaps to improve these issues, however, the gap between rich and poor keeps increasing and there is very little improvement in healthcare and the economy. In fact, healthcare keeps on becoming costly. Major issues like income inequality and poverty are not being taken care of by the government. According to Dr. Raphael (2002) poverty is caused by several reasons such as inequality in people’s income, weak social services and lack of other social supports (p.VI). He states, “Poverty directly harms the health of those with low incomes while income