We need to address senior poverty
In visiting with people door-to-door, one of the most common grievances I hear is the worry from seniors about increasing difficulty just to make ends meet. Often, seniors worry not only for themselves, but also about the burden they put on other family members. Just before I left for Cancun and a month of worries about climate change followed by Christmas, Joe Friesen reported in the Globe and Mail that senior poverty in Canada had jumped 25% during the economic crisis. The picture he paints is exactly in line with the experiences I hear about. We need to address senior poverty. Working towards the Green Party’s visions for valuing seniors and eliminating poverty would be a start.
UPDATE — While the number of seniors who slipped into poverty increased by 25%, it turns out CEOs were making more than ever – more in just a day’s worth of work than most Canadians make all year.
| — Adriana Mugnatto-Hamu on 2011 Jan 3 in News, Social justice & diversity |
Senior poverty? Since when has that issue ever concerned the greens? Up until a few months ago, the greens wanted a Cap&Trade carbon trading market designed to drive up the cost of carbon energy. In other words drive up the cost of everything, and in the process hurting seniors and low income people the most. Now suddenly senior poverty is important. How do you people sleep at night with all of this confusion? Environmentalists are truly environ-mental.
Hi Klem,
The Greens have always focused on a revenue-neutral carbon price rather than a cap-and-trade scheme to bring down carbon emissions — unlike every other party. The way that taxes would be restructured in order to ensure revenue neutrality ensures that seniors and low-income Canadians would actually benefit overall. That has always been the Green approach.
The global Green movement has always been based on four pillars: social justice, non-violence, environmental wisdom and participatory democracy. There’s absolutely nothing new about being concerned about seniors.
Hope this helps, Adriana
It’s a bit of a mind-twister, but most Canadians use less than the average amount of carbon — so if the revenues on environment-destroying greenhouse gases are returned fairly to everyone, it works out that jets-setters support those of more modest means.