Ontario's Poverty Reduction Plan - COPC Comments
December 05, 2008
Toronto/December 5, 2008/ - The Colour of Poverty Campaign (COPC) held a press conference at Queen's Park today in response to the release of Ontario's poverty reduction plan yesterday.
While the plan is well-intentioned, the Campaign is deeply concerned that it can inadvertantly widen the income disparity between racialized (people of colour) and non-racialized (of European heritage) communities, if the plan's implementation ignores race as a key factor that contributes to poverty.
"Racialization of poverty is the big elephant in the room that remains unnoticed by the poverty reduction strategy. If racialization is not addressed, people of colour will still be poor after the conclusion of the government's five year plan, and there will in fact be a higher proprotion of those living in poverty from racialized communities," said Grace-Edward Galabuzi, Politics and Public Administration Professor at Ryerson University and Academic Partner of COPC.
The provincial plan focuses on child poverty, and names the following as key groups disproportionately affected by poverty: New Ontarians, People with Disabilities, Women, Aboriginal Peoples, Seniors and Homeless. Troublingly racialized communities are not named in the list.
"Children are poor because their parents are poor," said Avvy Go, Clinic Director of Metro Toronto Chinese & Southeast Asian Legal Clinic. "As echoed earlier this week in a report released by the CAS-Toronto even child poverty is racialized. The darker your skin colour, the poorer the child," added Go.
"Arab communities in Canada have been ostracized and marginalized after 9/11. One of the results of this being that these communities are experiencing the highest level of unemployment despite having the highest level of education," said Mohamed Boudjenane, Executive Director of Canadian Arab Federarion.
"Unless and until we address issues of equitable access to the labour market and to opportunities to fairly participate in society, there will be a hard core of racialized poor left behind even as we declare victory against poverty," said Galabuzi.
"We must begin by bringing back mandatory employment equity in Ontario to level the playing field for all racialized communities and other historically disadvantaged groups" said Atulya Sharman, Community Legal Worker at the South Asian Legal Clinic of Ontario.
COPC intends to pursue these concerns with the Ontario government, to specifically ask that the indicators to measure the progress of the strategy are broken down by race and ethnicity, gender, Aboriginal status, disability and other factors that determine marginalization. The Campaign also intends to pursue a dialogue on bringing mandatory employment equity legislation to Ontario.
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Contact:
Avvy Go, Metro Toronto Chinese and Southeast Asian Clinic – 416.971.9674 or
647-271-9357 (cell)
Atulya Sharman, South Asian Legal Clinic of Ontario – 416.487.6371 ext 10
Amy Casipullai, Ontario Council of Agencies Serving Immigrants – 416.322.4950 x 239 or 416.524.4950 (cell)
Click here for the Ontario Poverty Reduction Plan.