In the lead up to the 2019 federal election, the Dignity for All campaign sat down with experts across Canada to explore the policy changes that are needed to end poverty in Canada.
Over a 6-session webinar series, we tackled a comprehensive set of issues, including early childhood education care, health, income and food security, jobs and employment, and housing and homelessness.
LISTEN TO OUR conversations with industry experts about policies needed to end poverty in Canada:
Listen to Episode 1: feat. Diana Sarosi from Oxfam Canada and Morna Ballentine from ChildCare Now
Listen to Episode 2: feat. Melanie Benard from the Canadian Health Coalition
Listen to Episode 3: feat. Katherine Scott from the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives
Listen to Episode 4: feat. Sasha McNicoll of Canadian Food Centres Canada and Rachel Cheng of Food Secure Canada
Listen to Episode 5: feat. Stefania Seccia of the Canadian Alliance to End Homelessness and Emily Paradis from the University of Toronto
Listen to Episode 6: Elizabeth Kwan from the Canadian Labour Congress
My one surviving belief is that we need to help people in poverty.
I’ve begun to wonder whether I have any beliefs left. Certainly, many ideas I had in my younger years are long gone. Perhaps because these beliefs were forced upon me.
Most people of my generation were raised in the belief that everyone could succeed in finding a good life if they just tried hard enough. Even when I was young I had my doubts about this. I had only to look around me and see good people struggling to survive and eventually giving up. I wondered at the misery I saw in the eyes of men standing at the curbside, metal lunch-cans in hand, waiting for their drives to work, beaten into submission by a system they had once believed in.
I tried to believe the lies that society pushed at me. Because I questioned these beliefs I was branded at a young age as a potential dissident. By the time I reached adult-hood the perils of my doubting nature were finally confirmed when a Government of Canada career professional told me that I would probably never find a job.
I believe that society (that means every one of us) needs to do more to help people out of poverty.
Ahhh “But,” some will say, “they don’t try to help themselves”
“Well now,” says I, “Maybe, for want of decent food, they’ve not the strength to try. Maybe, for want of hope, they’ve not the will to try. Maybe for want of support they’ve been grey-listed. Grey-list? That’s the list of people who are tested, marginalized if they don’t goose-step and eventually made invisible because they dare to question what society tells them they must believe.
Hello, Your webinars look interesting however I do not have appropriate internet access — really poor service and have to pay anyway — to allow me to participate. Any suggestions.