Child Poverty? - Humbug!

Re: A Call To Arms Can we unite to battle child poverty? by Dale Eisler [The Spectator Wednesday, December 20, 1995]

Eisler's article opens by referring to a 'poignant' speech by Ed Broadbent about the 'shocking' level of child poverty in Canada. Well, Ed Broadbent is one of those chronic do gooders who care so much about the poor that they make a career out of spending other people's money while at the same time seeming to do rather well for themselves. He serves as a wonderful example of the definition of a liberal I heard once on a radio talk show, "One who would give a poor man the shirt off someone else's back."

Anyone truly interested in eliminating poverty in the nation would do well to avoid invoking the likes of Ed Broadbent for support. He and his soul mates have done nothing but undermine the capacity of this country to produce the wealth that, of necessity, must precede the elimination of poverty.

If you marooned Broadbent, Bob Rae and a whole entourage of "anti-poverty" activists on an island populated exclusively with poor children how much success would their passionate speeches, legislation, placard waving and "caring" have in providing those children with the needed food, clothing and shelter? The emperor who has no clothes is hardly in a position to provide them for the poor.

At the time of Mr. Broadbent's touching speech, according to Eisler, "Statistics Canada estimated 1.1 million children lived without adequate food, clothing or shelter." Eisler later states that "Not much has changed in the six years since Mr. Broadbent's words (talk is cheap - what did you expect?), other than the level of child poverty -- which has gone up. True, there was a recently-reported decline from 1993 to 1994, but that left the total at 1.3 million children in poverty."

ONE-POINT-THREE-MILLION children living without adequate food, clothing or shelter! Such a degree of child poverty would indeed be "shocking" if it were true.

Fortunately, the situation isn't as bad as Eisler would have us believe. Stats Can uses the Low Income Cut-Off (LICO) standard which describes those who spend 54.7% or more of their pre-tax income on food, clothing and shelter as being in financial difficulty... and about 1.3 million Canadian children live in families thus described. Since when does living in financial difficulty equate in every case to having one's children go to bed hungry as Eisler clearly implies?

According to LICO, a husband and wife with three children living in a hotel penthouse suite paying, say $2500 per month in rent ($30,000 per year), who eat at a fine restaurant nightly paying, say $40 per person per night ($73,000 per year) and who buy an entire new wardrobe weekly at say $500 ($26,000 per year) would be spending $129,000 per year on food, clothing and shelter. Therefore, unless their pre-tax family income exceeds about $236,000 they would be living in poverty.

Readers should examine their own situations in light of Eisler's claims. Estimate your own expenditures on food, clothing and shelter and calculate whether they exceed 54.7% of your pre-tax income. No doubt many of you will be surprised to learn that he's claiming your children are the ones going to bed hungry! Try it. It could turn out to be rather humorous... all this time you thought they were talking about someone else's children.

Extrapolating from Eisler's dramatic scenario using Stats Can's LICO's we learn that a total of over 4 million or around 15% of all Canadians live in poverty. How do these figures measure up to the fact that around 99% of all Canadian households own radios, refrigerators and telephones and almost 98% own colour TV's.

These figures suggest that 80 to 90 per cent of that 1.3 million children are going to bed hungry while their parents watch colour TV. Instead of hearing the nightly, "no TV kids, it's time for supper," do a million or so children hear, "no supper kids, it's time for TV?" Do these figures jibe with Mr. Broadbent's "'horror, shame and disgrace' of child poverty in a nation of great riches[?]" Do we blame the nation for the plight of those children who are hungry because their parent's would rather watch [J]eraldo?

Having scared everyone out of their pants with these "shocking" statistics Dale Eisler, quoting Finance Minister Paul Martin's recent statement re: Quebec, "We've got to set ourselves major challenges and then call the nation to arms to meet them," says that "it was difficult not to think of Mr. Broadbent's call for all Canadians to tackle the disgrace of child poverty." and suggests that embarking on some massive campaign against child poverty will unite the nation.... though he avoids making any specific policy recommendations. One can only wonder what those recommendations might consist of... a sin tax on home electronics perhaps?

A few weeks after the butchered version of this letter appeared in The Spectator they published another piece in the Forum section relating to LICO standard. It cried out for a response so I wrote a followup letter . It never saw the light of day.  

Further Reading:

last modified:Wednesday,March 19, 2008 at 04:40