Anglos and Allos top poverty poll

The new year is off and running and already we anglophones, allophones, sousaphones and saxophones are making the press big time. For once we’re top of the heap, numero uno, ahead of the pack. Unfortunately, it’s in the census bracket that deals with poverty.

That’s right. According to a study by something called the Association for Canadian Studies, based on the recently released 2016 Census, we non-francophones are more likely to be living in poverty than our French-speaking neighbours. Yes indeed. We’re number one! We’re number one! All we need is one of those big Styrofoam fingers shaped like a giant one and the parade can begin.

Not a moment too soon either. After all, Premier Couillard just announced the allocation of a $3-billion program designed to bring about 100,000 Quebecers to something above subsistence living. So if the census figures are correct it looks like it will be a windfall for allthe-phones from Rouyn-noranda to Gould.

The Eastern Townships is no exception. According to Statscan, in the Sherbrooke area 7.5 per cent of francophones live below what the government calls the low-income cut-off. On the other hand, 24 per cent of allophones and 11 per cent of Anglophones find themselves tossing the coin each month on whether to pay the rent or buy their medication.

Part of the problem in sorting all this out is the way Statscan divvies up Quebec’s population linguistically. First, Quebec has 601,155 people whose mother tongue, the one yelled at you in the cradle, is English. However, there are 782,185 people that actually speak English in the home no matter what they started speaking as a child. And, as if that isn’t enough there are 964,120 if you include the FOLS. No, not FOOLS, FOLS, those whose “first official language spoken,” whether fluently or not is English.

Analysts point out that a second side to the problem is that the English-speaking community, unlike its French-speaking counterpart, includes a high percentage of “newcomers” who have been here for a relatively short period of time including Hispanics, Koreans, and Haitians who arrived during the last few decades, and the Scots, English and Irish who didn’t get here until the late 1700s.

As you can imagine, the high poverty rate amongst non-francophones is reflected in an equally high unemployment rate. In most regions of the province the rate of unemployment for anglophones and allophones is nearly double that of francophones. If you exclude the infamous “white Rhodesians” of Westmount, many of whom now live in Toronto anyway, the figures are even more startling.

Jack Jedwab, ACS President, and the man behind the study, says the obvious solution is to increase the employment rate for poor anglophones and allophones by offering more and affordable language training, technical training and increased opportunities within municipal and provincial work forces. A decent wage wouldn’t hurt either. But don’t hold your breath

On the same day that the ACS survey was released and only three weeks after the Premier found the spare $3 billion to fight poverty, the Canadian Federation of Independent Business, probably the largest grouping of businesses in the country, came out against Ontario’s new minimum wage law.

Ontario has upped the minimum wage to $14 an hour and will hike it again next year to a princely $15. CFIB vice-president, Martine Hébert, says she’s glad that Quebec is not rushing to imitate this madness and that our $11.25 is good enough. After all it too will rise another whole $1.20 per hour in just two years.