Federal Liberals would cut child poverty in half, Dryden tells Chatham crowd

from Chatham This Week

Karen Robinet
Chatham This Week

Despite the inherent challenges of tackling poverty, one prominent Liberal MP said last week he believes Canadians are ready to take action.

Ken Dryden, MP for York Centre, was at the Portugese Canadian Club last Thursday to speak at a forum on child poverty and heard that 6,000 children in Chatham-Kent are living in poverty.

Dryden said the federal Liberal party has drawn up a strategy which aims to reduce poverty in general by 30% and child poverty by 50% within five years of being elected to government.

Having met with Mayor Randy Hope earlier in the day, Dryden said one of the largest challenges to be met locally is the vastness of the municipality.

“The size of this area represents a challenge on how to provide services,” said Dryden, but added the problems are not insurmountable.

“People are living in our midst who do not live the way they should live,” he said. “That is undeniable and unacceptable.”

Tackling poverty in Canada “takes time, takes money and represents a complexity that’s extremely difficult to deal with,” said Dryden.

“It’s easy to decide it’s beyond the scope of what one can confidently achieve.”
However, he said other countries have succeeded in doing just that, including the Scandinavian countries and the United Kingdom.

Dryden said lessons could be learned from the UK, not the least of which is that poverty can only be successfully tackled by a sitting government.

He said an earlier proposal to tackle poverty in Canada failed because it was supported, but not initiated, by the government of the day.

And, as well as the federal government, the will to reduce poverty must be embraced by provincial and territorial, as well as municipal governments in the nation, he said.

Poverty in Canada is not at the level where people are likely to starve to death or find themselves living on the street.

Rather, Dryden likened the ongoing challenge of those living with less, to beginning a 100-metre race every day, 10 metres behind everyone else.

For children, that means a constant struggle to keep up, both in school, and in society.

Other speakers at the forum included Lucy Brown, Chatham-Kent’s general manager of health and family services. She said programs such as the municipality’s A.L.L. For Kids, provide a significant boost to youngsters whose parents cannot afford to enroll them in recreational activities.

With the fees covered, children can participate in the same activities as their friends and reap all the same health and self-esteem benefits.

However, because of funding issues, Brown said that program is always in jeopardy.
Coun. Marjorie Crew agreed with the importance of sports for children, saying it provides them with a focus that keeps them out of trouble.

However, she said the solution is not in providing tax deductions after the bills have already been paid, saying that “real people in poverty,” simply can’t afford the fees in the first place.

“It takes all levels of government and the grassroots community,” to really address poverty issues, said Crew.

“Chatham-Kent has 6,000 children in poverty,” she said. “One child in Canada is too many.”

Crew said it’s crucial to “break the cycle,” that sees generation after generation of children born in poverty.

Affordable child care that would allow single mothers to go back to school would go a long way to breaking that cycle, she said.

Dryden, who is chair of the Liberal caucus social development committee, is in the midst of a cross-country tour to examine the many facets of poverty in Canada.