Inequality today like the Dirty ’30s
Re Are Canadians better off than ever? Letters June 28 What a strange spin on the facts from Candice Bergen, Minister of State (Social Development). Today’s income inequality is the highest since the Dirty 30s, which explains the lineups at food banks (more food banks in Canada now than McDonald’s restaurants), with one in five children living in poverty.
Then there are Statistics Canada’s numbers. In 1975 the minimum wage, expressed in today’s dollars, was $10.13. In 2013 it was $10.14 an hour — an increase of one cent per hour in 40 years. And the number of workers working for minimum wage more than doubled between 2003 and 2011, due to free trade agreements killing manufacturing jobs (close to a million since the mid-’80s), forcing workers into part-time, low-paying, so-called precarious jobs.
As a result, more people are living in poverty today than any time since the end of the Second World War. Surely it’s time for this government minister to check StatsCan’s own figures. Bert Deveaux, Toronto A federal minister has spoken: “Every Canadian is better off today than they were under the Liberals.” Government ads back up this claim. So what is wrong with this growing group of young, underemployed Canadians, seniors who are burdened with access to health-care issues, seniors who can’t access their TFSAs, First Nations people who look up at the poverty line? Why are they failing to make this every Canadian better off list? Are they lazy? Can they not understand the largesse of our majority government which has laboured for 10 years to reach this “every Canadian is better off” plateau?
Or is it perhaps the government whose arrogance has reached a level where every Canadian who is not better off deserves to be excluded?
Please remember to vote this fall because we’ve clearly allowed this warped state of affairs to occur. The question remains, for how much longer? Don Graves, Burlington, Ont. Are Canadians better off than ever? Not if the Members of Parliament, who have every opportunity to bombard the Canadian public with their own advertising, are also allowed to use the Star’s letters to the editor page as another way of shouting out their extremely biased positions.
I think the Star should think twice before publishing any more. Diana Shields, Toronto Candice Bergen says that the facts are distorted when it comes to Canada’s middle class. No way. It is the shameful Conservative government who are the real culprits when it comes to distortion.
The gap between the “haves” and the “have nots” is wider than ever. Youth unemployment is at its highest ever.
That is also why I wholeheartedly agree with the commonsense letter on the same day by Stephen L. Bloom, who concludes, “Again, one must ask who these tax breaks benefit. Certainly not seniors on a fixed income or the family earning minimum wage.”
And that is also why I will fervently pray and wish — come the October elections — voters will turn out en masse bearing in mind the unforgiveable lies and deceit of the Harper Conservative government, and return to Ottawa a Liberal majority that Canada needs. Monty Mazin, Toronto The Harper government has: gutted the long-form census, instead collecting desired answers from questionable sources; gutted government services and benefits to finance tax credits for well-to-do supporters; demonstrated total disdain for transparency and accountability by withholding information, limiting debate and hiding self-serving details in omnibus bills; delayed desperately needed infrastructure upgrades and resulting jobs in order to balance the budget and finance election gifts worth billions (again for the well-to-do); toyed with elections, debased our democracy, undermined our economy and threatened our environmental future with slavish devotion to tarsands oil; and become possibly be the most corrupt government in our nation’s history with zero credibility.
Now Candice Bergen warns us the NDP and Liberals threaten what it has done. I say, “Bring it on!” Randy Gostlin, Oshawa, Ont. Candice Bergen says Yes to the question posed by the headline. Hogwash, I’d say. Aquil Ali, Toronto