Gimme shelter!

The Canadian province of New Brunswick has come up with a Poverty Reduction Strategy. It’s the result of a poverty reduction initiative undertaken this year over several months.

The government started by holding hearings and receiving comments and briefs regarding the causes of poverty and the possible solutions. It then formed a committee which included many of the people who appeared at the public hearings, as well as other stakeholders. The goal was to have a blend of government officials, business people, non‑profit organisations and, perhaps most importantly, people who either were living in poverty at the time or who had once lived in poverty and had managed to better their lives.

A first major document entitled A Choir of Voices was released over the summer. This was the result of the public meetings, a sort of synthesis of what was said at those meetings. There was bound to be internal contradictions in the report because people came from different walks of life and presented their own opinions of what cause poverty, and any two people could very much disagree with each other. The report reflected that. The challenge of the committee was to sift through the information, agree on what made sense, and complete the information where needed.

The committee then met with other stakeholders last November to hammer out the main elements of this strategy. This led to the final document called Overcoming Poverty Together. A copy can be found at http://www.gnb.ca/0017/promos/0001/pdf/Plan-e.pdf.

What do you think the solutions could be? Is education enough? Is there such a thing as a hand up rather than a handout? Teaching them to fish may be better than just giving them fish, but what happens when there is no more fish? Teaching them to grow potatoes is fine, but what if soil erosion or bad weather causes crops to fail?

To better one’s situation is a laudable goal, but how do we know that poor parents do indeed believe their children could do better in life than they did? If that hope isn’t passed on, will the children even try?

Also, for almost a generation, there have been more available workers than good jobs. This situation is about to change, but it won’t be a solution per se. Business will cry out for more workers, but those who could fill the jobs are often uneducated, disabled or otherwise excluded from the labour market. What do we do to meet the needs of both?