The debate in Canada on poverty lines goes back at least a decade and has produced much more heat than light. Some poverty lines are better than others, but none of them is perfect.
All poverty lines are relative .
Our view of poverty in Canada is profoundly different than it was a century ago, and it is profoundly different from current views of poverty in Greece, Peru, Nepal, Somalia and most other countries of the world. A century ago, people in Canada would have considered someone poor if they did not have a horse or some other beast of burden for their work and basic transportation. Today, poverty is more likely to be measured in terms of reasonable access to buses or subways in cities or access to an automobile or truck in rural areas. Poverty is also relative in the sense that every culture has its own ideas about what is needed to be part of the mainstream of society. Being able to afford meat products is considered necessary in many western cultures, but it would not be considered very important in a country where most people are vegetarians because of their religious beliefs.