Clarity is Vital

In any discussion that addresses 'the poor', 'poverty', 'people in need', 'food banks', 'social assistance' and all the government and non-profit agencies normally associated with such notions, clarity is vital.

Especially when the term 'poverty industry' is brought up.

It worries me when I see phrases like 'making money off the suffering of others'. Because I don't believe that clarity resides where those opinions are uttered.

We have a poverty problem in Canada. In Ontario. In Hamilton in particular. How much this has been magnified by the provincial government changing the dynamic in terms of 'who pays for what' and 'where services are located' is part of the debate, as I noted here. We need to help people who require help. That's not the issue. The issue to me is two-fold: considering the possibility that 'poverty' is more an economic development issue than it is a social one and therefore demands a different tack than what has traditionally been taken, and what I recently offered up on The Hamiltonian:

 "A 'poverty industry' isn't indicated by the fact that there are engines set in motion to deal with 'people in need', but by the fact that there seems to be a self-perpetuating mandate. As proven when an agency comes into an area (such as on Wentworth Street North) and says 'We're committed to being here! We'll be here in twenty years!' 


It doesn't seem to be possible for agencies to say 'We are counting on NOT being here in twenty years. We want to help ERADICATE poverty, not cultivate it.' "

So nobody who provides humane means of sustenance should automatically be considered to be 'making money off the suffering of others'. However, if there are mechanisms in place to sustain this state, and if these efforts are being executed under the guise of religion as well as well as self-righteous obfuscation...especially when it's being funded to any degree by tax dollars...then I believe at that point, we just might have a problem, Houston. 

My view is this: If Hamilton hadn't had services plonked down in the way it did with Mike Harris's downloading, if people hadn't essentially been shipped in to make the most of these changes, if we hadn't seen numbers that probably don't correspond to our authentic population numbers, I doubt we'd see the vista we're currently witnessing. 

And we probably wouldn't see evidence of a 'poverty industry'. 

Make no mistake about it: we have people in need in Hamilton. Agencies such as Mission Services, Good Shepard, The Salvation Army and Goodwill provide substantive assistance, even if there are valid criticisms to be launched against them regarding how they do what they do. Nevertheless, this truth remains: they are sizeable concerns and as with any entity with a bottom-line, they look to the future, wishing to see continuity and success. I guess it comes down to how 'success' is defined. 

So keeping in mind that we should not throw the baby out with the bathwater, how about this:

Suppose we saw an economic development plan put into effect, a really sound one, and in five years, we'd 'whipped' poverty. Suppose the numbers went waaaaay down. What would these entities do? How would they reconfigure? Would they reconfigure what they do on a daily basis? Or would they shift operations to another locale? How would they rationalize their fund-raising efforts, especially those provided by public coffers? 

My point being: if there's a 'war' on poverty, don't we need to have an exit strategy? Isn't that part-and-parcel of a well thought-out campaign? Unless of course, we're not all on the same page where whole exercise is concerned, and we're actually working at cross-purposes. 

Ah yes; the need for clarity. 

M Adrian Brassington