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We must spend to fight poverty: report

Low-fee credit unions for the poor and a plan to help low-income households pay for heat and hydro are among a broad series of initiatives needed to fight poverty in Ontario, say the province's food banks in a report released recently.

Cutting poverty in half by 2020 would lift more than half a million Ontarians out of poverty and should be the McGuinty government's "commitment of a generation," says the report by the Ontario Association of Food Banks.

To do this, the report suggests more than two dozen new ideas aimed at giving Ontarians affordable homes in safe communities, financial security, social and economic opportunity and a government committed to the cause.

Nickel Belt NDP MPP France Gelinas said she agrees with the recommendations made in the report.

"Most of their clients live in poverty, if not all (of them) and a lot of the recommendations they put forward are very much in line to what the NDP has been putting forward as proven poverty reduction measures."

The report to the government's committee on poverty reduction calls on Queen's Park to invest $720 million next year and $2 billion by 2015 toward the goal.

Although the price tag is high, the consequences of doing nothing are greater, says Gelinas.

"Not doing anything costs us an awful lot of money," she says.

Premier Dalton McGuinty has given the committee, headed by Children's Minister Deb Matthews, until the end of the year to define poverty in Ontario and come up with a comprehensive plan to fight it with measurable goals and timetables to meet them.

In Sudbury, the single greatest problem affecting the poor is a lack of housing and social inclusion, says Gelinas.

Because of Ontario's recent economic prosperity, she says now is the best time to address the issue.

"Ontario has just gone through an economic boom that we haven't seen for years," says Gelinas.

"But yet, the poor got poorer, so now is the time to do something about poverty in Ontario. Ontario has gone through an economic boom where the rich got richer, but the poor got poorer. This is not the Ontario I want."

The food banks' report is among more than 600 submissions the committee has received since it started work this spring.

The report, based on six focus groups with more than 70 food bank users from across the province, notes that lack of affordable housing is a key cause of hunger in Ontario.

Allowing public housing companies to issue housing bonds could raise money to build 60,000 affordable homes by 2020, the report suggests.

The report advises Ontario to follow Quebec's lead and enshrine its commitment to poverty reduction in a law.

Legislation binds future governments to the task and keeps poverty on the political agenda, the report says.

Gelinas says she agrees with legislating poverty reduction.

"This way you have committed this government and every government from now on to have to report, to have to measure and be accountable," said Gelinas.

The Sudbury Star
Andrew Low
Tuesday, September 2, 2008 

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