Hamilton has no laurels to rest on

RE: City’s income growth is tops for Ontario cities (Sept. 24)

This headline suggested good news. Not so. Reporter Steve Buist painted a different picture after examining the 2015 census and interviewing Sara Mayo from the Social Planning Council.

By listing Hamilton with Burlington and Grimsby for CMA purposes, the census gave us false optimism. Hamilton’s income increase of under $4,000 during the 10-year census period hardly inspires confidence. Then there is Hamilton’s poverty. Its rate dropped by just 1.8 per cent during the census period. Approximately 88,000 people, the equivalent of the population of Niagara Falls, remained in poverty‘s clutches.

Young and working-age people could not afford to live here and moved away. Their exodus, combined with other factors, has shifted poverty to the elderly. Child poverty may have lessened but is still too high. This is a huge red flag that signals a spike in the cost of public policies in health care, education, social services and public protection. Poverty has many faces, none of them pretty.

Your story is a call to action to all of us and I thank you for it.

Code Red was an earlier call and, perhaps, could be revisited along with an application of everyone’s goodwill. We certainly have no laurels to rest on in Hamilton. Keith Glaze, Mount Hope