South Asians focus on poverty

from Inside Toronto

Campaign set to lobby Ontario's anti-poverty committee
BY TAMARA SHEPHARD

South Asians are mounting a campaign to combat their previous "invisibility" in talks about the face of poverty in Toronto.

The Council of Agencies Serving South Asians (CASSA) is actively seeking input from South Asian communities across Toronto in its bid to lobby the Ontario government as it develops an anti-poverty strategy.

"What should we do to address the racialization of poverty?" Andalee Adamali, program manager with CASSA asked at a local community forum Thursday night. "We need to decide on a shared framework for action to present to the provincial government."

Visible minority communities, like South Asians, experience ongoing, disproportionate levels of poverty, in part, due to individual and systemic racism, CASSA argues.

Next month, a CASSA-organized forum likely to be held in North York will prioritize three or four areas to discuss with the province, Adamali said.

Two-thirds of Toronto's South Asians earn less than $30,000 a year, Statistics Canada's 2001 Census indicates.

Some 41 per cent of the city's Punjabi-Sikh population lives in multiple family households, the highest percentage of any ethno-racial group, followed by 21 per cent of (East) Indians, a 2006 study Multiple Family Households by Dr. Michael Ornstein reports.

Pakistan-born computer engineer Noor Din advised CASSA against advocating for a $10 minimum wage.

"Minimum wage is never going to eradicate poverty in the South Asian community, or otherwise," he said.

"India and Pakistan is doing business abroad, including over the Internet, and making lots of money. We need to create economic opportunities for people in this country. We need to learn what we can do, individually and collectively, not to depend on others."

Noor immigrated to Canada 17 years ago. Soon after, he became a Masters student at the University of Toronto. He applied for a summer job - "a much different experience as a Masters student than applying as a new immigrant" - which turned into a full-time job.

While a CASSA community forum in Scarborough last month attracted dozens of South Asians, Din was one of only a handful to attend CASSA's Etobicoke forum last week at Humberwood Community Centre near Finch Avenue West and Hwy. 427.

The low turnout reflects CASSA's work largely with east Toronto-based South Asian social agencies, Adamali said.

Silence and stigma within the South Asian community about poverty must change, she added.

A visible overlap exists, Adamali said, between some of the city's highest South Asian concentrations - Jamestown, Malvern and Crescent Town in East York - and Toronto's "priority neighbourhoods," areas the city says need the most help to overcome a lack of public services and poverty.

"Yet we're not talking about this among ourselves, or at policy tables," she said.

That will change in coming months when CASSA presents its priority areas to combat poverty in the city's South Asian communities to Ontario's child and youth services minister Deb Matthews, chair of a powerful new anti-poverty committee.