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Aboriginal people are the poorest of the poor, Toronto-based community organizer Mike Balkwill was told by Chief Shining Turtle of Whitefish River First Nation.
The Ojibway community of 600 near Manitoulin Island was Balkwill’s first stop on his northeastern Ontario tour to meet with people living in poverty and with service providers.
Balkwill is the organizer for a campaign called Put Food in the Budget, which was started in January 2009, a month after the provincial government announced a poverty reduction strategy. There was no corresponding increase in social assistance rates as part of the strategy.
“We said, you gotta raise the rates, put food in the budget. So our campaign started.”
“We’re trying to build an organization that gives voice to poor people,” said Balkwill. “There’s lots of non-profits that have some kind of program where they bring in people who are poor. They might talk about advocacy, but they don’t connect them to anything else. Local work is good, but reducing poverty really depends on increasing income and increasing affordable housing and local community can’t do that.” Put Food in the Budget is a way to connect groups across the province and to build a campaign strong enough to influence at the provincial level, he said.
“The worst thing about poverty, Chief Shining Turtle told me, is how it affects the spirit. It takes away hope. The hopelessness that people feel, the perception is it won’t change, it’s not going to get any better.”
Living in poverty is a traumatic experience; falling into poverty is a traumatic experience, said Balkwill. People in the north are surviving, Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal, because humans are programmed to survive and because of the goodwill and generosity of others. Front-line agencies and food banks do what they can by providing food, Christmas dinners.
“But there are a lot of people who are not surviving and who are not thriving, and we are diminished as a society because of that.”
In a large city like Toronto, he said, poor people have more options to supplement limited incomes – more food banks that can be visited with greater frequency than once a month, free meals, but poverty is still poverty no matter where you live, and “food banks are a Band-Aid solution, rather than a cure for hunger and poverty in Ontario.”
Balkwill’s tour showed little evidence that Premier Kathleen Wynne is living up to her promise to be the social justice premier. There’s a big difference in the Ontario government’s official policy and their operating policy, said Balkwill.
“The official policy is Wynne wants to reduce poverty. The operating policy is, let’s privatize Ontario Hydro, sell it to Bay Street and watch the heating costs and hydro costs go up which will hurt poor people. There’s lots of nickel and diming cuts that happen to people who are poor. Clawbacks, rising health costs, reductions in subsidies for housing. Those have to be made obvious so we can say, the government’s not acting in the public interest, but in the private interest. The government won’t act until they feel like they’re losing public support.”
The poverty reduction strategy has become the strategy to make it look like you’re doing something about poverty, said Balkwill.
“They haven’t done anything around housing. Social assistance increases are lower than inflation. Inflation runs around two per cent a year. Social assistance increases have been around one per cent a year. Food inflation rates are higher, around three per cent to five per cent and now they’re going to be higher.
Chief Shining Turtle of Whitefish River First Nation told Balkwill that after paying rent, hydro, telephone landline and $60 for a trip to town to buy groceries, a single person on social assistance has $3.67 per day for food and all other personal necessities. The band council subsidizes hydro costs in the winter, up to $50,000 a year, for the households receiving social assistance. If cauliflower is $8 in Toronto, like it was this week, said Balkwill, it’ll probably be $16 or more in the north.
“We consistently hear from people of all political backgrounds that we’re a wealthy country, a wealthy society and people should have enough money to buy food and not depend on a food bank. We need to have a conversation about values. What kind of society are we? Are we a society where it’s okay for people to be poor and neglected?”
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