AllTheShameThatFits
Lotusland
After all, if you are the newly-minted (not)Premier of a government that has given the province of British Columbia the worst child poverty rates in Canada for eight straight years why should you want to have a plan to put an end to a Campbellerian winning streak like that?
Paul Willcocks has the story:
…(W)hen it was reported that B.C. had the highest rate of child poverty in Canada for the eighth consecutive year, Premier Christy Clark rejected calls for a plan to address the problem, with targets, actions and a requirement for an annual report “progress or lack of progress,” to use Falcon’s words.
Why no plan? Clark and the other ministers never offered a coherent reason.
Because there isn’t one.
The facts are clear. The annual national look at child poverty, released by First Call, an advocacy group, found that 12 per cent to 16.4 per cent of B.C. children were living in poverty in 2009. That’s the highest proportion of poor kids of any province, a dismal ranking B.C. has retained for eight years. (You can debate poverty measures, but the fact remains this province is the worst.)…
{Snippety Doo-Dah}
…Clark said the government doesn’t need a plan. It’s doing things like raising the minimum wage and providing housing supports and launching job strategies. Those will help reduce child poverty.
Maybe, though it’s an odd claim since the government has insisted for most of the last decade that raising the minimum wage wouldn’t reduce poverty.
But a bunch of random actions aren’t a plan. There’s no objective, even a modest one like moving B.C. from the worst in Canada to the seventh worst. There’s no estimate of the effect of any actions on reducing poverty…”
Now.
One of the reasons, amongst many, that I enjoy reading Mr. Willcocks’ stuff is that he often offers up well thought-out potential solutions to real problems. Here is how he ended this particular piece:
“…A plan could make quick progress. About one-third of the children living in poverty have parents dependent on income assistance or disability benefits. (A single parent with two children who is deemed employable gets up to $660 a month for housing and another $623 a month for everything else.) Providing enough support to lift those children out of poverty, or allowing their parents to earn some money without losing benefits, would move B.C. into the top half of the rankings…”
So.
Just do it Ms. Clark.
And if you do, I would be happy if you raised my provincial income tax rate to help pay for it.
OK?
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And, perhaps even like Ms. Clark herself, I did it again last night…. No! …I’m not talking about anything like that…Instead, I’m talking about how I forgot to change the channel after listening to Mr. Russell and Brook ‘My Head Is Now Officially An Empty Suitcase’ Ward kibbutz about the Canucklehead’s game in front of the hometeam crowd in Glendale and thus woke up this morning to the former Premier’s brother ranting and raving about how everything is all the public sector unions’ fault….Ya, sure thing Mr. Campbell…After all, if only we had even more speculation and ponzi schemes and privatized profiteering built with tranche-laden gossmer-winged walls of crony-laced bamboozleified bullshit that sucks the real value out of entire economies everything would be just fine…Right?
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