Call For Crusade Against Poverty In Canada

Press, Volume CVIII, Issue 31803, 7 October 1968, Page 8

Call For Crusade Against Poverty In Canada

(From MELVIN SUFRIN, N.Z.P A special correspondent)

TORONTO, Oct. 6.

The Economic Council of Canada has called for a national crusade to wipe out poverty a state of “entrapment and hopelessness” in which it says millions of Canadians spend their lives.

One of i*; ideas is a sort of negative income tax under which persons with less than a certain minimum income after taxes would get a cash bonus from the Government. The council, a brain trust set up to advise the Federal Government in economic matters, challenges the Prime Minister, Mr Pierre Elliott Trudeau, and his Liberal administration to lead the crusade. “One of the wealthiest societies in world history, if it also aspires to be a just society, cannot avoid setting itself such a goal,” the council says in its fifth annual report. The reference to a “just society” is clearly aimed at the Prime Minister, who made that the catch-phrase of the successful Federal election campaign he waged last June. The council also aims to shatter the complacency of

Canadians so accustomed to hearing themselves described as an affluent society that they tend to forget the squalor In which so many live. In Cities It reminds them that between 6,000,000 and 8,000,000 of the country’s 20,000,000 people are “impoverished” by one standard or another. And it finds that poverty, far from being the traditional preserve of backward rural areas, is predominant in the cities. Sixty-two per cent of the poor are urban-dwellers. “Poverty in Canada is real,” the report says. “There is more, of it than our society can tolerate, more than our economy can afford, and far more than existing measures and efforts can cope with. “Its persistence, at a time when the bulk of Canadians enjoy one of the highest standards of living in the world, is a disgrace.” The council explains why so many Canadians are unaware of the extent of poverty, noting that it is “often so disguised (it does not, for example, invariably go about in rags) that it can pass largely unnoticed by those in happier circumstances.”

One reason for "poverty’s partial invisibility,” it adds, “is that the poor tend to be collectively inarticulate.” “Many of them lack the edu-

cation and the organisation to make themselves heard. For example, most of them are outside the ambit of the trade union movement. They have few -spokesmen and groups to represent them and give voice to their needs.”

The council gives two definitions of poverty: First, if a family spends 70 per cent of its income on basic human needs, a family of five earning $BO a week is poor, a family of four is poor on $7O and a family of three on $6O. At this level, the council says, 29 per cent of Canadians are living in poverty. By another definition, which says poverty means spending 60 per cent of income for necessities, the number of poor swells to 41 of every 100 Canadians.

Discussing ways of alleviating poverty, the council says the Government should take a new look at the 25-year-old family allowance plan under which $6 to $8 a month is paid for each child up to the age of 16. “It is difficult to discover an authoritative statement of the fundamental objectives of the family allowances programme in the circumstances of 1968.”

Taking note of Canada’s falling birth-rate, the council adds that if family allowances are intended to stimulate

population growth it Is a failure. It promises to continue investigating the problem of poverty but urges that a Government task force or perhaps a Senate committee also undertake an inquiry. While suggesting reconsideration of some existing programmes, the council is not recommending that all be discarded. For example, the Canada Assistance Plan, which pays half the cost of provincial projects to ease welfare dependants back into productive employment, is seen as a programme with considerable anti-poverty potential.

The council’s main deparr ture from traditional welfare practices is to propose consideration of a “negative income tax" as a means of providing all Canadians with a guaranteed annual income. Under this plan, the Government would establish a minimum income level. All family heads and single persons, regardless of how small their income, would file tax returns. Those with incomes above the line would pay their share of regular taxes. Those below the official minimum after taxes would have the difference made up by the Government Need For Incentives A major problem with the negative tax is that it might also need a system of incentives to induce recipients to seek work. But for those who feel that Canada cannot afford such an apparent luxury as guaranteed income, the council has an answer: “Poverty is costly. Its most grievous costs are those felt directly by the poor themselves, but it also imposes very large costs on the rest of society. They include the costs of low productivity and lost output, of controlling the social tensions and unrest associated with gross inequality, and of that part of total welfare expenditure which is essentially a palliative made necessary by the failure to find more fundamental solutions.”