During the holidays many of us tend to think all’s right with the world. Less so this year perhaps after the funny-money games of the greedy masters of the universe have caused the greatest economic dislocation since the depression. But too many still believe the advertising, the gimmicks and the statistics. The reality is there is much wrong. There is much pain. And the fleeting moments in those weeks when we decide to become more generous and giving, not only with money but with our time, rarely carry over into the rest of the year.
In our land today there are too many of shrivelled spirit and hostile heart who fear the future, mistrust the present and invoke the security of a comfortable past, which, in fact, never existed. But this year, more than ever, there are many more people in our communities who represent a new faith. A faith in people and in their ability to be generous and noble and true. A faith that understands that the disadvantaged are no less human and that the underprivileged are no less worthy of compassion. A faith resolved to make co-operation as valued as competition and assure the triumph of character over contempt. A faith that dares to care. It is a new national stirring that pays it forward.
It enables and informs our capacity to see the world through the eyes of its victims. And those victims are not just the obvious ones. Today they cover many from the educated people working at menial jobs because they can find no other, to the small business owner whose taxes have soared out of all proportion to the services received, to the elderly eking out lives on social security, to the newly poor who have lost a lifetime of savings in a catastrophe, to the working poor fed up with working longer for the same pay, to women and the visible minorities tired of being the last hired and first fired, to the newly enfranchised young voters fed up with the calcified hypocrisy around them, to all those facing the groaning neglect of government bureaucracies that no longer work. This is the new Canadian mosaic. These are the faces of the congregation served by this faith.
We must remember that the just society which people of goodwill still seek to build is predicated on a recognition of a claim of equal opportunity on the stock of welfare of the land by all, and that this recognition has not yet found full expression in the social contract between the government and the people. We are still grappling with the perplexing paradox of a rich land that, even before the current economic crisis, produced only a thin veneer of affluence.
Thankfully there are many individuals who sacrifice time, talent and treasure to try and make things right. They should inspire us all to resolve that when we see suffering we will try and heal it; when we see injustice we will try to cure it and when we see want we will try and meet it.
I can start with the numbers. They are important, but nobody lives on the averages as Mark Twain said. Behind the numbers are people. Real people with real hurt.
Less than 10 percent of this country has a net worth of $5,000 or more. One-third of our urban households live below the federal poverty line of $34,000 for four down to $19,000 for one. One quarter of our working population is classified as working poor. Our seniors are our fastest growing part of our society, yet government pension plans cover less than one-third of minimum needs. Forty years ago they covered 50 percent. Over 6 million Canadians get help from food banks with basic food staples every month.
We are exporting Canadian jobs to slave markets like China in record numbers. Just three years ago Montreal lost 40,000 textile jobs in the space of several months when certain tariffs fell. To add insult to injury half the exported jobs are supported by our taxpayer dollars through federal Export Development Corporation guarantees.
These are some of the reasons why many among us can’t afford proper housing, or nourishing food or have trouble finding any job. Governments occupy themselves with nanny-state laws and programs that are now sucking up to one-quarter of our budgets. They impose suffocating tax burdens to fund what no one demanded. And they abdicate responsibility for dealing with the tough stuff. The core responsibilities of governance.
Well, while governments dawdle, individuals across the country are tackling some of our saddest and severest problems. Social activists are bursting out in record numbers. That fact should inspire us all to get involved. Civil society, not government, is the source of solutions to our current malaise.
