A blueprint for poverty reduction in Ontario

This past Monday, I went to a very interesting talk by Marvyn Novick at First United Church in Ottawa. Marvyn is a Professor Emeritus at Ryerson University and a social policy consultant who was a co-founder of Campaign 2000, a coalition campaign to end child and family poverty in Canada.

He presented the draft of a Blueprint for Poverty Reduction in Ontario that was prepared for the 25 in 5 Network by the Social Planning Network of Ontario. The Blueprint details specific suggestions of steps the Ontario provincial government should take in order to achieve a 25% reduction in family and adult poverty over the next five years.

In his presentation, Marvyn outlined three primary ways in which poverty is addressed by governments and civil society: through alleviation (by providing support through programs such as food banks that lessen the impact of poverty); through prevention (by supporting childhood learning and development to ensure children have a positive start to life); and through poverty reduction (by directly changing the living conditions of those living in poverty).

He emphasized that all three of these strategies are crucial to effectively addressing the issue of poverty in our society, but that poverty reduction is often the least used of all of them. Social attitudes that view adults living in poverty as being responsible for their situation often lead to poverty strategies that focus primarily on children and families.

Marvyn praised the poverty reduction strategy recently announced by the Ontario government for not stigmatizing people living in poverty. However, he also viewed this initiative as just the “first building block” for a far more comprehensive poverty reduction strategy in the future.
He questioned the breadth and seriousness of the strategy, pointing out that the report does not once mention the words “hunger”, “food”, “dignity” or “adequacy” – four key issues that have a crucial impact on the lives of those living in poverty.

He also stressed that, while investment in social programs is important, raising the basic income levels of those living in poverty is also crucial to making a difference. Up to 45% of Ontario children living in poverty have at least one parent working full time, and the report does not provide a strategy for raising the minimum wage to a living wage.

The blueprint outlined the reasons why poverty reduction is as a social, economic, political and fiscal imperative for our society. Marvyn described poverty as a “health hazard” that is currently threatening the wellbeing of 1.3 million people in Ontario alone. Poverty reduction is essential to our future economic prosperity and is a fiscally responsible investment, especially in times of recession.

In Canada, provincial poverty reduction strategies are being pursued in Quebec, Newfoundland & Labrador and Ontario, and are being explored in Nova Scotia and New Brunswick. In addition, four of the five federal parties had strong commitments to poverty reduction in the recent election. Clearly, there is growing political momentum for change with regards to the disgracefully high levels of poverty in Canada.

I found Marvyn’s talk particularly timely to listen to, as I had just responded to Monte Solberg’s article in which he expressed some of the stereotypes about poverty that Marvyn deconstructed in his presentation. It gave me a much more rounded perspective on how comprehensive a poverty reduction strategy must be in order to be effective, and the crucial importance of this type of strategy in creating a healthier and more prosperous society for us all.