Jason Mann
Communist Party of Canada
Prince George Collective
Such an example of a misconception is displayed by Sarlo himself, quoted in the Edmonton Journal on December 2, 2002, “Regardless of how hard you work, if your IQ is 80, you are going to have a struggle in life," he says. "You can talk philosophically about that; life isn't fair”. The reality of the situation is that the head of the household in approximately 50% of poor families in Canada have a post secondary education (Poverty Profile 1998). Although there is a correlation between poverty and the level of education in Canada, demonising people in poverty, or referring to them all as unintelligent is simply wrong. Sarlo further stresses in the same article that, “some others in poverty, he says, create their own problems through substance abuse”. The misconception stated is that people can fall below the poverty line through unnecessary expenditures such as drugs or alcohol. It is a misconception because almost all measures of poverty lines in Canada, including Sarlo’s, measure poverty as a function of income not a function of expenditures. This means that it is truly impossible “to drink” your way below the poverty line. If a person were to make $60,000 a year and spend almost all of his money on drugs or alcohol, to a point where he only had $5000 to live off for the entire year, this person would not be statistically counted under any poverty line. Sarlo goes on further to criticize people in poverty, "in our culture we think it is valuable if people work hard and are prepared in our system to acknowledge that with rewards, monetary and otherwise," says Sarlo. The assertion that people in our country are poor because they do not work hard, and consequentially are not able to have monetary rewards is without base. A full year of work does not guarantee that a person will not fall under the poverty line. Only 31% of the families under the poverty line in Canada do not work (Poverty Profile 1998 45). Also according to the Poverty Profile of 1998, the majority of people who are living under poverty in Canada are women. Surly the Fraser Institute and conservative governments would not suggest that women were not as smart as men, nor would they suggest that women abuse substances more than men. It would not be reasonable for them to suggest that the reason why more women fall into poverty is that they do not work as hard as men. If these factors are not the reason that makes a person or a group more susceptible to poverty, then clearly these factors are not a major influence for the root cause of poverty in Canada.
In the end, it is not surprising to see the approach to poverty deemed necessary by the Fraser Institute regardless of the current situation in Canada. Their view of poverty lines and how to measure poverty is becoming more prevalent in major Canadian newspapers. Mr. Sarlo’s claim that Statistics Canada inflates statistics for their best interest is misplaced, and overwhelmingly it is clear that if there was a bias present in any of the ways of measuring poverty in Canada, it would lie in the lines developed by Sarlo, funded by the Fraser Institute and conservative political parties. To combat the presence of Statistics Canada, or Stats Can as it is commonly referred to, the Fraser Institute has started its own statistics agency known as Can Stats (http://www.canstats.org/about_canstats.asp). This organization has a mandate of helping to direct political policy in Canada, according to the institute. Statistics from Sarlo’s book Poverty in Canada, will be used as facts. Due to the fact that these statistics are not very factual and are based mostly on propaganda, it is unfortunate that Canadians will have to be subjected to them in mainstream media. Unfortunately, although Sarlo and the Fraser Institute take the stance that poverty in Canada as we know it has been eliminated, 8% of Canadians fell beneath the Sarlo’s basic needs line, in 2001 according to a June 23th news story by the CBC. People must question governments that use Fraser Institute or Sarlo reports on poverty to justify their political actions. The people of Canada must also realize that the misconceptions being pushed by conservative organizations are false, and no achievements in fighting poverty can be made until these misconceptions are broken.
Requests for notes on this research can be made to PGCPC@hotmail.com