EXCERPTS:
Social advocate and researcher Trish Hennessy began a keynote address at a forum on poverty and income inequality with a stark anecdote from her family's past that tempered her concern for the plight of the poor.
Hennessy, director of the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives-Ontario, told a gathering of about 100 academics, politicians, social activists and local residents in the Odeon Building on Thursday that she comes from Saskatchewan, where her mother's family was dirt poor.
"It was a real treat for them to get a box of mandarin oranges" at Christmas, she said.
More than that, it was a treat that those oranges came in green tissue wrappings, which could replace the Sears catalogue in the outhouse for a while.
Listening to her mother tell that story and others, Hennessy said, made her passionate to learn more about inequality and poverty.
In her work with the CCPA-Ontario, Hennessy focuses on three spectrums of income levels through which perceptions of poverty and inequality are filtered.
"Poverty is getting worse and income inequality is on a one-way trajectory in Canada," she said.
She presented a series of graphics illustrating trends in income inequality. One on income differences from 1980 to 2009 across Canada shows the worst two provinces are Alberta (No. 1) and Ontario (No. 2).
They are paradoxically the two richest provinces in the country.
Another graphic shows the richest 1% between 1982 and 2010 grew exponentially, while the middle group grew by 5%, and the bottom half grew by just 3%.
"What we're seeing is slower income gains in the lower half," she said.
Hennessy contended Canada is in the midst of a drive of individual materialism, income and affluence. That trend, she argued, ignores the virtues of community advancement through "interconnectivity" and hampers any ability to tackle poverty through community building.
More and more, she said, we're seeing the confluence of what she calls "the Cult of the CEO" and the devaluation of most workers.
Her research shows the share of income for the richest 1% since 1920 generally lowered all the way to 1980, as it moved from 18% to 8% for average wage earners.
During that time and particularly after the Second World War, she said, the social bargain included a rising middle class and more middle-level incomes.
Between 1980 and 2010, however, the share of the richest 1% began to rise again back toward 18%.
Canadian society is facing a "bleak" future, Hennessy said, in which the political conversation about income really doesn't address how to grow the middle income level and bring in those currently in the ranks of the poor.
Public services are the "great equalizer," she said, giving more benefit the lower a family's income is. But even they are under attack.
She talked about 1965 as a high-point of government intervention to redistribute income and benefits.
The Liberal government of Lester Pearson was re-elected on promises to bring in better pensions, reform employment insurance, public health care and get more people into post-secondary education.
The slogan was "Good things happen when governments care about people," she recalled.
She invited participants to compare that slogan with the policies and promises in elections lately.
Hennessy's presentation was followed by a panel that included Rev. Barry Pridham of Sydenham Street United Church, Sherry Lewis of Brant Native Housing, Janet McLaughlin, assistant professor of health studies at Laurier Brantford, Bob Basso, associate dean BSW at Laurier, and Marc Laferriere, a social worker, Laurier instructor, and New Democrat candidate.
"For those of you who are under 30, you have never seen a universal program created in your lifetime," said Laferriere.
"You have not seen the power of it, or what can happen."
Basso said he fears "we are going to miss the opportunity to make change.
"Awareness is the key to moving forward," he said.
"Families should be talking about it."
Pridham deplored a change in spiritual preaching to embrace prosperity as a personal goal.
"The prosperity gospel is everywhere," where evangelists talk about better living leading to material affluence.
"It is anathema to everything I have believed and spoken about as a pastor," he said.
-reprinted from the Brantford Expositor