NDP's Plan to End Poverty in Puerto Rico North
June 15, 2009 - 8:50pm
Jack Layton and the New Democrats will:
Introduce a Poverty Elimination Act to eliminate poverty in Canada by the year 2020:
- This act will set firm targets, and make the government accountable for achieving these targets.
- The act will make the government accountable for eliminating poverty in Canada by 2020.
- Every five years the government will have to report on its progress and deliver an action plan, to be approved by the House of Commons.
- Initial targets will include reducing child poverty by more than 50 percent and the overall poverty rate by more than 35 percent in the first five years.
- The act will establish a poverty elimination office housed within HRDC to assume overall responsibility for implementing our poverty-reduction strategy and developing concrete poverty indicators.
A pipe dream.......First he has to get elected. And even if he does he will never pull it off. Action plans and "doing it" are two different things.
Are these words supposed to sound inspiring?
How much will they pay the person who cleans the "poverty elimination office"?
Union scale I hope.
Announcing targets without explaining how they can be achieved is pointless. Why not announce a 'Death and Misery Elimination Act'? No more death! Eternal happiness! Joy, joy, joy!
Unless all you want is the headline, in which case: well done, Jack!
I really don't understand this trope about "child poverty". Such manipulation. Its like reading a United Way ad. Fact: children are poor because their parents are poor, not because their parents want their children to be poor.
Announcing targets without explaining how they can be achieved is pointless. Why not announce a 'Death and Misery Elimination Act'? No more death! Eternal happiness! Joy, joy, joy!
Unless all you want is the headline, in which case: well done, Jack!
Head lilne?? It wond even get on the back pages in between the classified adds.
"Announcing targets without explaining how they can be achieved is pointless."
Liberals do it all the time with regard to greenhouse gases and you applaud them!
Right. And if the Liberals do it, it must be good.
I really don't understand this trope about "child poverty"
Most people with only a casual understanding of poverty don't. But child welfare agencies with the UN track relative poverty in rich countries as well as absolute poverty in developing nations. It's statistical information about various child well being measures in developed countries, and especially Nordic and European countries that have made real progress toward eliminating child poverty since 1989. And anti-poverty organizations say much the same about the need for strong central government action on the matter and commitments to accountability.
For example, Canada has an abysmal record on CO2 pollution over 12 years of Liberal rule and continuing today with Liberals in phony opposition to the Harpers. What we need to deal with all backward situations in old line party Canada is accountability assigning to federal governments with independent agencies reporting on progress made toward specific goal statements and measurable achievements. The Liberals paid lip service to Kyoto and feigned plans to reduce GHG pollution in Canada, and federal Liberals basically lied their heads off and sold our environment to Exxon-Imperial and friends since 1994. So in that vein, before we can have accountability in this frozen Puerto Rico, we have to work toward closing the democracy gap in old line party Canada at the same time. And Canadians will never know political accountability as long as our two paternalistic and autocratic old line parties continue stealing phony majorities and propping-up the other in Ottawa and Queen's Park.
Are these words supposed to sound inspiring?
How much will they pay the person who cleans the "poverty elimination office"?
A lot more than Liberal MP Ruby Dhalla pays her nannies? In other words, considerably more than Ruby's wages of love and respect for the nannies working for her and her family in Toronto at $3.71/hr for 14 hour days.
What is meant by "Puerto Rico North"?
What is meant by "Puerto Rico North"?
In his book, The Vanishing Country, former Liberaler Mel Hurtig said that the vicious toadies in Canada who believe Canada could become a 51st US state are hopelessly naive. And that's evident now with many former advocates of CUSFTA and its expanded deal with NAFTA falling off that bandwagon since turn of the decade.
Hurtig says Canada is more likely to be transformed into a Puerto Rico with snow than we stand a chance of becoming a US state treated equally as one of their own. I think it was actor Martin Sheen who advised a Canadian audience that his country is a madhouse, and that the two old line parties in his country dont want to trade freely or fairly with Canada - the USA wants to dominate Canada. As Harry Belafonte said in lyrics, DAY-O!
Announcing targets without explaining how they can be achieved is pointless. Why not announce a 'Death and Misery Elimination Act'? No more death! Eternal happiness! Joy, joy, joy!
Raising min wage, redistribution through the tax system, and federal accountability where traditionally there is none. What's not to like about it?
And some have falsely claimed that the NDP is focussed only on raising min wage. I'm not sure why they insist this is the case, and it seems as though they either dont know that it's false or they know it's false and dont care(see Liberal Party creedo)In any event, British Columbia had one of the highest min wages in the country by 2000, and NDP Ontario had the highest nominal min wage by 1995.
Today Liberal BC's is one of the lowest min wages. Coincidentally, Liberal BC owns the highest rate of child poverty. And Liberal Ontario is home to the largest number of children living anywhere below poverty. The average poor family in Liberal Ontario is somewhere around $7000 dollars a year below LICO. And Liberal BC owns the dubious distinction of having disproportionately more people categorized as low income than any other province for the last eight years running
Adding to theoverall stagnant wage scenario, CCPA economists said last year that the median wage across Canada hasnt changed in a quarter century.
And the point about slave wage minimums is that in 2005, CCPA says 20% of Canadians who worked full-time jobs year round still made less than $15,000 a year.
"Working poor" should be an obsolete term in a rich country. But since Brian Mulroney promised "jobs, jobs, jobs" with neoliberal free trade rhetoric, Canada's economy reverted to hewer and drawer status as of 2005. And now another deregulation flop wrt financial capitalism emanating from the money centres in New York and London. When will capitalism cease being a car constantly on blocks?
Canadians turning to food banks in record numbers
OTTAWA - An increasing number of Canadians, many of whom have jobs, are turning to food banks to help ward off hunger, according to a new report that says usage jumped by a record 18 per cent in 2009.
Almost four in 10 of the 794,738 people who visited a food bank in March were children and youth under the age of 18, and a significant number, almost one in 10, were first-time users, said the report, which was released Tuesday by Food Banks Canada.
Canada is one of the largest countries in the world with unparalleled natural wealth. Our two old line parties would screw up a sure thing. And, in fact, they have.