Essay on Poverty in Canada

People generalize the idea of poverty that it is just homeless poor people. While this is part of it, the basic description of poverty is; people not having enough money to afford the basic needs to have a good quality of life like food, water, shelter, and clothing. Poverty is hunger. Poverty is lack of shelter. Poverty is being sick and not being able to see a doctor. Poverty is not having access to school and not knowing how to read. Poverty is not having a job, is fear for the future, living one day at a time. Poverty has many faces, changing from place to place and across time, and has been described in many ways. Most often, poverty is a situation people want to escape. So, poverty is a call to action - for the poor and the wealthy alike - a call to change the world so that many more may have enough to eat, adequate shelter, access to education and health, protection from violence, and a voice in what happens in their communities.

Poverty can easily destroy a person’s whole life. They can’t participate in community events and are more prone to illness which they can’t even afford to treat. Furthermore, if they have children or a child their life will be ruined as well; for example, they won’t they able to get a proper education, they won’t have many friends because parents wouldn’t want their kids hanging around them, and they won’t have a proper childhood which may develop some mental illnesses in the future. People in poverty can easily get taken advantage of due to their mental state and vulnerability. There is not one case of poverty, everyone has a different situation which resulted in poverty. Poverty is a big world-wide social justice issue that requires the attention of everyone to help one another and solve this issue, or to at least get one step further.

Poverty is a huge and growing issue in Canada; CPJ (Citizens for Public Justice) is a national organization based out of Ottawa that supports social justice issues like refugee rights, poverty, and ecological rights. They have released a Poverty Trends report on Canada for 2017. The support suggests that 4.8 million people in Canada (13.9%) are living in poverty. There’re particular groups that take up a large percentage of individuals that are in poverty, these groups include: Working age adults (14.7%), Single working-age adults (33.7%), People with disabilities aged 25-64 (23%), Children in single-parent families (43.4%, Indigenous people (23.6%), New immigrants and refugees (31.4%). The Poverty Trends report also entails the poverty rates for each province and territory starting with Nunavut at the highest rate (29%), then Manitoba (18.2%) and Northwest Territories (16.2%). Data rates are extremely important to decrease poverty because it shows which areas need the most help and which type of people to help.

Causes and Consequences

Poverty cases vary depending on the person, but there’re main causes that affect people before they go into poverty. A dominant reason is the denial of access to clean food and water. More than 2 billion people around the world don’t have access to clean water and over 800 million suffer from hunger. When people eat food, it generates into energy and that allows people to complete daily tasks without too much trouble, but if they can’t afford the food, they can’t work, therefore they’re not making any money. Moreover, without food, they’re more prone to illness and then they have to spend money on medicine or travel a far distance just to get to a clinic.

An equally important reason is no access to education or jobs. Jobs are people's main source of income, and when they don’t have a job they won’t get any money, which leads to poverty. People say, “Why can’t they just get a job”? It’s not that easy, especially in developing parts of the world and in Canada. In some cases of inequality, it can’t be controlled; for example, their skin color, a disability, gender, tribal affiliations etc. People are judged by other people every day and sometimes it can affect a family or person to the point where they enter poverty.

Education is essential for everyone to have. Education is the most important thing for a human being to have in life as it can give people opportunities, it allows people to work, and it is considered ‘the most powerful weapon’. In Canada, education is free until university/college, it is tax funded; but if a student doesn’t have proper living conditions, the school will take action. Climate plays a huge factor in poverty because natural disasters can cause destroy homes/land and ruin someone's farming business. Furthermore, in Canada, the weather is extremely bipolar and during the winter the weather can be pretty harsh and cold. This would just make living in poverty extremely difficult due to the lack of proper shelter and warmth. In addition, the weather destroys food making it harder for individuals to make a living, pushing them closer to poverty.

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Crime is a huge consequence of poverty. People become desperate for food and resources when they’re denied of them and this can sometimes lead to them having to rob stores to get what they want because they can’t afford it. Health issues affect almost all poor people because they don’t have the right living conditions and they don’t have access to clean water, food, and proper personal hygiene. In Canada, they have the benefit of free health care because all of the citizens are paying for it with taxes, right? That’s not the case. They can’t just walk in and receive treatment. The Street Health in Toronto has released a pie chart that has info on how people in poverty receive health care. The results are dated but it’s extremely resourceful and displays helpful information on understanding poverty. The largest percentage of poor people used walk-in clinics (38%) as their primary access to health care; followed by community health centers (20%), family doctors (18%), emergency centers (6%), outpatient clinics (6%), shelter clinics (9%) and (14%) poor people do not have a regular source care. Also, most poor people do not have OHIP cards, and this has prevented them from getting treatment.

Significant Events

1. First Upper Canada Statute (1792). Lt. Gov. John Graves Simcoe creates a government for Upper Canada but excludes British Poor Law freeing the colony from responsibility for the poor.
2. Charity Aid Act (1836). First declaration of public responsibility for the poor, but assigned to churches and charity.
3. Confederation (1867). British North American colonies of Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, and Canada joined together and formed the Dominion of Canada; this basically means the country of Canada. Newfoundland, British Columbia, North West Territories, Prince Edward Island, and Rupert’s Land were apart of British North America before confederation. After its creation, in the same year, Canada included four provinces: Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, Quebec, and Ontario. The reason confederation happened was due to the fact that they feared United States domination, these fears grew increasingly after the American Civil War and they also believed that the British were becoming unwilling to help North American colonies against the Americans. This is significant to poverty because it addresses responsibility for issues related to poverty and civil rights to provinces.
4. First Distinct Government Role in Poverty Alleviation (1889). Toronto (Ontario) takes responsibility and funds programs instead of letting the churches or charities pay. This creates the first relief workers in Toronto.
5. First Mothers Allowance (1920). First direct cash help for the poor. Widows that were fit mothers, were British subjects and had at least two kids got paid $55 a month in Toronto.
6. First Social Assistance Rates (1932). It led to the provincial Unemployment Relief Act in 1935. This made Queen’s Park favorable for people in poverty for the first time.
7. First Nutrition Standards in Assistance to Poor (1943). Assistance rates are introduced based on the cost of healthy food. This leads to forty-three Guides to Family Budgeting. It’s the first direct link between the nutritional needs of the poor and cash payments.
8. Canada Assistance Plan (1967). First Canada-wide cost sharing of social assistance with national standards.
9. Report of the Social Assistance Review Committee (1988). A most complete review of social assistance in provincial and national history. The main goal of the reduction strategy was to break the cycle of poverty.
10. 21.6% Cut to General Welfare and Family Benefits (1995). It led to the creation of Ontario Works. The Ontario Works required people in poverty to work, volunteer or train to receive help and followed by nine-year freeze rates.
11. Poverty Reduction Strategy (2008). Ontario becomes the second province to introduce a law to cut poverty and report annually on progress and the first time a government has adopted a poverty measure and set reduction targets.

Continuity and Change

This issue has shown dramatic change over the past 90 years. In the past, homeless people were just working age men trying to find jobs and food for their families and themselves. This is due to the fact that everyone was basically on equal grounds; meaning everyone was poor. A homeless person was just a regular man trying to make it in life. Although there are less homeless people now than in the past; the issue has in fact, gotten worst. This is because homeless people are viewed completely different now. They’re viewed as lesser beings and ‘trash’. The age ranges are different as well, there’re more youth and families in the streets in addition to men. The items of clothing are drastically different as well. People were decently dressed and they were mainly looking for shelter and food. In today’s society, homeless people have to re-wear clothes and most of their clothes are either ripped, dirty or not proper. They’re also spending their money on drugs and alcohol instead of buying essentials that they need. In the past, there were people in poverty spending their money on alcohol and cigarettes, but it wasn’t to the extent that it is today.

Historical Perspective

“Poverty is the worst form of violence” (Gandhi).

“The world is a dangerous place, not because of those who do evil, but because of those who look on and do nothing” (Einstein).

The quote by Mahatma Gandhi is self-explanatory, he’s saying that poverty is the worst form of violence. Poverty is an extremely bad thing to happen to a person; it leaves them homeless, jobless, without clean food and water, no way to participate in recreational activities, and you can possibly die due to all the stress or mental problems/drug abuse that might occur. It is a physically and mentally exhausting event to go through and is completely different from conventional violence like gun/knife play or getting in a fight. Albert Einstein’s quote explains that not speaking up and doing what is morally right is worst than evil people. That’s a very valid point because a lot of people see when evil is occurring on a daily basis but refuse to do anything because they’re scared or think it’s not their problem. There is a global phenomenon called the Bystander Effect; the Bystander Effect is when something is going wrong in front of a crowd but no one acts out because they’re mentally passing on the responsibility to other people in the area and no one steps in until someone else does, then everyone tries to help. If everyone in the world just watched evil, the people who’re doing it will continue doing it without any consequences, if they don’t get caught, they will do it again to someone else and keep doing it until they eventually get caught. But, if someone acts out and they get caught before even committing one crime, they might learn from their mistakes in the past and not commit them again. This relates to poverty because people walk by them every day and do nothing about it. There’s one warm-hearted individual for about 20 mean spirited ones that just treat them like they don’t exist.

Conclusion

Canada has already taken multiple steps to improving the issue that is poverty. For example, $22 billion has been invested since 2015 and about 650,000 Canadians will be lifted out of poverty during 2019. The Canada Child Benefit is a tax-free monthly payment made to help families in raising children, it has helped about 300,000 children out of poverty. Canada’s first National Housing Strategy is a 10-year $40 billion investment that will give Canadians new homes by removing about 530,000 families from housing needs; this reduces chronic homelessness by 50%. In addition to those, there are tons more ways the Canadian government is trying to help improve poverty. Although the government is doing work to fix poverty, there are other issues that need addressing as well; like Aboriginal education. The aboriginal high school dropout rate is four times higher than the regular average. When students drop out of school, their chances of going into poverty skyrocket because without a high school diploma, you can’t get a proper job that you can make a living out of. Improving literacy rates, developing new skills, and early childhood learning is all things that need to be accounted for as well.

Citizens with disabilities account for a large percentage of people in poverty. The income assistance and disability rates need to be raised. The government raised has raised it before, but it isn’t meeting their needs and they barely have money to survive and buy food. This issue is disappointingly not feasible to rectify in the next five years. The issue of poverty is an enormous social justice issue throughout the whole world and although the government is trying to improve it, it is simply near impossible in my opinion. I truly think poverty will be here for a long time because people will always end up on the streets. The numbers are getting lower and I think that it’s going to increasingly get lower during the years but there will be a small percentage that's in poverty. The main resource that needs to be used in helping poverty is money. That’s most likely how they got to that position in the first place, lack of money. The government needs to create jobs, raise the minimum wage, and support equal pay.