Persistent Poverty

Voices from the Margins

Edited by Brian Balmer, Mira Dineen, Jamie Swift

“It’s a very short trip from the limousine seat to the curb.” Jim Mann never missed a payroll for the dozen men who worked for his flourishing landscaping business he built from the ground up. Now he lives hand-to-mouth. His pockets are empty long before his next social assistance cheque arrives.

In early 2010 over two hundred civic and faith leaders fanned out into thirty Ontario communities. Their goal? To explore how the least fortunate people in one of the world’s richest places are faring.

The Interfaith Social Assistance Reform Coalition’s latest social audit exposed a tattered social assistance system run by volunteers desperately struggling to fill the gaps. There can be no papering over the savage inequalities and suffering exposed in this compelling look at life from the margins.
 

Contents

Introduction: The Work of Hundreds
1. “As Sharp as You Could Cut Them”
2. Back to the Future? The Choice Is Ours
Armine Yalnizyan, with Jamie Swift
3. Working Harder Is Hardly Working
4. Precarious Work: How Lax Employment Standards Perpetuate Poverty
Mary Gellatly
5. Ontario Works: How Did This Happen to Me?
6. The Disorienting Disability Support Maze
7. The Affordable Housing Deficit: Out of the Cold
8. Housing Strategy on the Brink: The Time Has Come
Michael Shapcott
9. The Cost of Hunger: Food Security and Health Issues
10. Food Insecurity: A Source of Suffering and Ill Health
Elaine Power
11. Poverty and Health: “I’m One Stumble from the Street”
12. Poverty Makes Us Sick
Dennis Raphael
13. Families Matter: The Catch-22 of Poverty
14. Ontario’s Push to Early Childhood Education and Care for All
Laurel Rothman
15. “It’s Not My Country Yet …”
16. Rural Poverty: Hidden in the Country?
17. Theological Reflections on Poverty
Bhante Saranapala, Sister Doryne Kirby, Rabbi Lawrence A. Englander, and Imam Shafiq Hudda
18. A Pebble in the Shoe
Acknowledgements
Notes
Contributors
 

About the Authors

Brice Balmer is an adjunct professor in the Graduate Theological Studies program of Conrad Grebel University College and the University of Waterloo. He works in a variety of ecumenical and multi-faith organizations, and his research interests include spirituality, addiction, social justice and poverty.

Mira Dineen is entering her final year of study at Queen’s University in Kingston, Ontario, where she is completing her Honours B.A. in Global Development Studies.
 

Kingston writer Jamie Swift is the author of numerous books. He works on social justice issues for the Sisters of Providence of St. Vincent de Paul.