Poverty
The persistence of poverty in Canada challenges our core belief in Canada as a caring nation. Millions of people are homeless or barely able to afford rent. Social assistance and Employment Insurance (EI) are inadequate to prevent people from living in poverty. Even those working full-time for minimum wage live in poverty.
While Canada has managed to cut seniors’ poverty rates in half, too many others continue to struggle to meet their basic needs. What will it take for Canada to eliminate poverty and address its deep root causes in this country?
Dignity for All: The Campaign for a Poverty-Free Canada is a national campaign that calls for vigorous and sustained action by the federal government to combat the structural causes of poverty in Canada. Dignity for All was co-founded by CPJ and Canada Without Poverty in May 2009 and we want you to be a part of it!
The Dignity for All campaign is mobilizing individuals, organizations, churches, and community groups across the country for federal action to address poverty. We need your support. To learn more about Dignity for All and to lend your support, please visit www.dignityforall.ca.
CPJ is actively engaged in exploring the underlying causes of poverty and developing concrete proposals for change. We are also contributing members of Campaign 2000, Make Poverty History, and BIEN Canada.
The recession has had a tremendous impact on Canadians. Job losses and a faltering safety net have added hundreds of thousands of people to the population of Canadians living in poverty. Economic stimulus and deficit spending are most certainly required to confront this vulnerability. Measures to create and sustain jobs and to build a strong and healthy country are needed. But this cannot be done at the expense of those on the margins, excluded from mainstream society. 
The Olympic Winter Games in Vancouver have grabbed headlines around the world. Canada’s attempt to go faster, higher and stronger (as the Olympic motto proclaims) aspires to bring home more medals than ever before - to be the best in the world.
In From the Margins: A Call to Action on Poverty, Housing and Homelessness, a comprehensive report by the Standing Senate Committee on Social Affairs, Science and Technology, Subcommittee on Cities, was released in December 2009. The proposals it contains could influence the lives of Canadians for generations.
The Prime Minister sent our MPs home to recalibrate the government agenda. The break was 20 workdays, he said.
The hope of Christmas extends beyond our homes and workplaces and into all aspects of our world. The good news Christ ushered in nearly two thousand years ago is a message of hope. Christmas is not simply that Christ has come, but that in that small baby lying humbly in a manger, we can hope. Despite all that is falling apart in our lives, our communities, and the world around us, we can hope for something different. 
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Citizens for Public Justice (CPJ) and our work of faith, justice and politics:
