Like, if the government should pass a law that says margarine is butter, the poor would be eating butter. The depth of this poverty should concern us, since an extreme degree of poverty has long term health effect on children and on the family's chance of breaking out of poverty. For years, an annual Gallup poll has asked Canadians what they consider to be the least amount of money a family of four needs to get along in their community. Since 1976, Canadians' opinion of what is needed has remained surprisingly close to the Statistics Canada poverty levels. People who depend on welfare or minimum wage are poor because political decision makers do not base themselves on poverty levels.
Provinces base their welfare rates on, well, on what money is left to spread around.
Minimum wage is pegged, not to the average wage or the cost of living, but to the political will. Recently, a national pilot project conducted in the province to help welfare recipients keep jobs by a panel of child welfare experts, appointed by the government after a number of child deaths, reported that the leading cause of family turmoil in New Brunswick is poverty. Indeed, work ought to be the remedy for poverty. The most disturbing thing about child poverty is not that 1.3 million Canadian children live in poverty. Instead, it is that, if we do not tackle poverty now that we have large budget surpluses, we may never.