RE-ORDERING PRIORITIES

(The following is an excerpt taken from a paper produced and made public by the Nova Scotia Association of Social Workers - "Re-ordering Priorities: How the budget can address poverty in a meaningful way", Submission to the House of Commons Standing Committee on Finance, Nova Scotia Association of Social Workers, September 2006)

The top priority for all levels of government in Canada should be the elimination of poverty, and that the national budget as a policy document embodying our values as a society should provide the means to this end. In the short run, efforts must be focused on alleviating the circumstances of poor and low income people. In the long run, though, what we should be aspiring to is a society in which everyone has sufficient means to live a fulfilling life, not excluded from the mainstream and able to take advantage of all of the benefits of our prosperous nation.

Policies directed towards reducing and eventually eliminating poverty represent a solid investment in our future. Social programs should have top priority, over-riding tax cuts which disproportionably benefit those who already are well off. Governments sometimes talk about the need for a program to be sustainable. By that they mean that it can continue to be funded over the long term. Obviously, that is important. But sustainability has another side to it which we ought not to forget. Is the current level of poverty sustainable? Are increasing levels of homelessness sustainable? At what cost? Until we acknowledge that our Canadian society cannot tolerate the inequity and injustice of poverty and we reach a collective decision to deploy our considerable national resources to address the issue in a meaningful way, then our country will not prosper.

It is not difficult to see how people get trapped in poverty, worn down by the constant effort to survive and unable to muster the resources necessary to move onwards. They must also deal with the stigma of poverty, a view espoused by some that the poor are somehow responsible for their plight. Such a punitive view does not take into account the structural mechanisms that render the poor powerless and leave them stranded because of an inadequate social program and the lack of political will to make meaningful changes.