Editorial: Poverty shrinks So where’s the celebration?
Calgary Herald July 26, 2013
Canadians will likely recall how in 2011 the Occupy
Wall Street movement squatted in a private park in
New York City and took on the suits and suspenders
on Wall Street. Some of their claims were valid, many
were not. Soon “Occupiers” were everywhere: Occupy
Calgary, Occupy Vancouver, and dozens of other cities.
One main complaint was that inequality was
supposedly growing. The richest one per cent on the
planet were said to be raking in all the new money
while the rest of us were falling further behind.
As it turns out, the very year of the Occupy protest
turned out to be the very year when poverty in Canada
showed evidence of a continued decline. According to
a Statistics Canada release at the end of last month,
the percentage of Canadians in the “low income”
category decreased to 8.8 per cent of the population in
2011, down from nine per cent in 2010 and from one
quarter of the population in the 1960s.
The positive Statistics Canada report was brought to
our attention recently by national Postmedia columnist
Andrew Coyne, who wondered aloud why so many in
the media ignored what is great news. Coyne
theorized, likely correctly, that if the numbers had
been headed in the other direction — if the proportion
of low income earners formed an ever-greater share of
Canadians, it would be big news. Coyne rhetorically
asked, now that one million fewer Canadians are living
in poverty than did in 1992, why isn’t that worthy of
notice?
We will take Coyne up on the challenge and comment
further with additionally useful information. While
Coyne and others describe the low-income cut-off
(LICO) point measured by Statistics Canada as a
“poverty” line, it is actually no such thing. As Coyne
also himself acknowledges, and as Statistics Canada
takes pains to point out when discussing LICO, that
line is really an arbitrary measurement which
calculates what the “average” family spends on the
necessities of life — except the definition of necessity
has shifted. That is why what is considered low income
today, $30,945 for a family of four in a medium-size
town, was recently considered average in the not-too-
distant past.
With quibbling over LICO to the side, here is some
other positive data from the same Statistics Canada
release: The proportion of seniors under the low-
income cut-off line dropped to 5.2 per cent in 2011
from 6.7 per cent in 2001; the proportion of children
in two-parent families under the low-income threshold
has decline to 5.9 per cent from 8.3 per cent in that
decade; even children in female lone-parent families,
the cohort historically with the worst numbers here,
saw an improvement. In 2001, 37.4 per cent of such
children were under the low-income cut-off; that
improved to 23 per cent by 2011. That is still a high
proportion but the direction is encouraging and
significant.
We think this latest and mostly ignored report is
tremendously positive. It is also useful to give credit
where credit is due: to fiscal policy enacted by
Canadian governments over the last decade, especially
federally, where tax rates on the personal and business
side dropped, and which helped created opportunities
for jobs, improved incomes (as the Statistics Canada
report also showed). That led to fewer people in the
low-income category.
That proves fiscal policy matters and from Jean
Chretien’s and Paul Martin’s Liberals on to Stephen
Harper’s Conservatives, successive federal
governments lessened the tax burden on Canadians
and continued to emphasize economic growth over
mere redistribution through free trade agreements
among other measures. A rising tide really does lift all
boats.
P.S. And we still have the CBC... which the left wing
wingers will protect till the end of time!
Cheers! We live in the best country in the world!
God Bless Canada!!!
Calgary Herald July 26, 2013
Canadians will likely recall how in 2011 the Occupy
Wall Street movement squatted in a private park in
New York City and took on the suits and suspenders
on Wall Street. Some of their claims were valid, many
were not. Soon “Occupiers” were everywhere: Occupy
Calgary, Occupy Vancouver, and dozens of other cities.
One main complaint was that inequality was
supposedly growing. The richest one per cent on the
planet were said to be raking in all the new money
while the rest of us were falling further behind.
As it turns out, the very year of the Occupy protest
turned out to be the very year when poverty in Canada
showed evidence of a continued decline. According to
a Statistics Canada release at the end of last month,
the percentage of Canadians in the “low income”
category decreased to 8.8 per cent of the population in
2011, down from nine per cent in 2010 and from one
quarter of the population in the 1960s.
The positive Statistics Canada report was brought to
our attention recently by national Postmedia columnist
Andrew Coyne, who wondered aloud why so many in
the media ignored what is great news. Coyne
theorized, likely correctly, that if the numbers had
been headed in the other direction — if the proportion
of low income earners formed an ever-greater share of
Canadians, it would be big news. Coyne rhetorically
asked, now that one million fewer Canadians are living
in poverty than did in 1992, why isn’t that worthy of
notice?
We will take Coyne up on the challenge and comment
further with additionally useful information. While
Coyne and others describe the low-income cut-off
(LICO) point measured by Statistics Canada as a
“poverty” line, it is actually no such thing. As Coyne
also himself acknowledges, and as Statistics Canada
takes pains to point out when discussing LICO, that
line is really an arbitrary measurement which
calculates what the “average” family spends on the
necessities of life — except the definition of necessity
has shifted. That is why what is considered low income
today, $30,945 for a family of four in a medium-size
town, was recently considered average in the not-too-
distant past.
With quibbling over LICO to the side, here is some
other positive data from the same Statistics Canada
release: The proportion of seniors under the low-
income cut-off line dropped to 5.2 per cent in 2011
from 6.7 per cent in 2001; the proportion of children
in two-parent families under the low-income threshold
has decline to 5.9 per cent from 8.3 per cent in that
decade; even children in female lone-parent families,
the cohort historically with the worst numbers here,
saw an improvement. In 2001, 37.4 per cent of such
children were under the low-income cut-off; that
improved to 23 per cent by 2011. That is still a high
proportion but the direction is encouraging and
significant.
We think this latest and mostly ignored report is
tremendously positive. It is also useful to give credit
where credit is due: to fiscal policy enacted by
Canadian governments over the last decade, especially
federally, where tax rates on the personal and business
side dropped, and which helped created opportunities
for jobs, improved incomes (as the Statistics Canada
report also showed). That led to fewer people in the
low-income category.
That proves fiscal policy matters and from Jean
Chretien’s and Paul Martin’s Liberals on to Stephen
Harper’s Conservatives, successive federal
governments lessened the tax burden on Canadians
and continued to emphasize economic growth over
mere redistribution through free trade agreements
among other measures. A rising tide really does lift all
boats.
P.S. And we still have the CBC... which the left wing
wingers will protect till the end of time!
Cheers! We live in the best country in the world!
God Bless Canada!!!