Labour Day Blues

Sept 3, 2006: North Shore News, Viewpoint

Given recent complaints about the level of panhandling and poverty evident in Vancouver's Downtown Eastside, it is perhaps time our provincial government, in the interests of business, take a hard look at the way it treats its poor.

Calls have been growing this week for an increase in welfare payments. It would be in everyone's interests for our government to listen.

In recent years, British Columbia's wealth gap has been widening, with the few at the top getting an ever-larger slice of the pie, and the many at the bottom getting ever less. This is not good for anyone.

If money is the blood of an economy, that blood must keep moving for the economy to stay healthy. When wealth is allowed to pool in one extremity of the body politic, much of that body begins to wither, putting our economic health into decline.

When adjusted for inflation, welfare cheques have been shrinking for more than a decade, even as the cost of housing and other necessities rises. The province's most vulnerable are being pushed ever deeper into poverty, their role in the economy shrinking year on year. And some are being pushed out altogether.
This must be changed, or the problems we see today will only get worse.

We are not advocating an increase in welfare roles, only the opportunity for those on them to participate in the economy in a real way.

It is time our government showed some courage in its efforts to improve our province. It must open its mind, and open its wallet.