Recently I heard retired Tory MP Flora
MacDonald on a Montreal AM radio station begging alms for the
more than 600,000 impoverished seniors in Canada. More than 70
percent of these seniors are women. Many seniors have
inadequate housing and not enough to eat. Visit
www.helptheaged.com for more information.
Then I read Northern Life's Tarnished Golden
Years - the all too common Ontario Disability pension story of
Laurence and Stella Legault.
All the vulnerable categories: the old, the
infirm, children, welfare recipients, First Nations, many are
in desperate straits. In addition, there is a huge underclass
of part-time minimum wage workers. Many businesses avoid paying
benefits by hiring people for no more than 20 hours a
week.
Or take the 560 families in Sudbury on
Ontario Works who are being docked a whopping 70 percent of
their take-home pay (20 percent income tax, 50 percent deducted
by province on a minimum-wage cheque).
I'd say all levels of government are
blatantly using poverty as a social control. As we are
approaching the fourth anniversary of Kimberly Roger's death,
I'd say we haven't come very far. And I think Canadians as a
society have a long, long march to dignity.
Catharine Burns
, Greater Sudbury