N.B. makes no headway on poverty by treating symptoms, says economist
Poverty could be eliminated for $1B annually, says Herb Emery
Herb Emery's comments come amid calls for a more effective solution than the ever-larger reliance on food banks and homeless shelters to help those who can't afford necessities such as food and housing.
"It's appalling just how much we're getting efficient at treating the symptoms of poverty rather than taking any of the most basic steps to addressing the causes," he said.
Emery is one of the people working to create a guaranteed basic income pilot scheme, similar to what Canadian seniors have through the Guaranteed Income Supplement program, which provides a top-up to a minimum income of around $20,000 a year.
"Using this approach, we dropped elderly poverty from one of the highest in the developed world to one of the lowest," he said, and in a sample group, food insecurity was cut in half.
Emery would like to see something similar done for families in younger demographics.
$1B could lower poverty rate to 1.5 per cent
"If you gave people a transfer 85 per cent of the market-basket measure threshold for poverty, it would cost about $1 billion extra spending in New Brunswick, and you could take the poverty rate down to about 1.5 per cent from its current 12 per cent," he said.
"To me, that seems like it's not a moonshot, and it's a real puzzle why it's so hard to get Canadians to want to address poverty."
One reason for the lack of progress, said UNB political scientist Donald Wright, is that people living in poverty don't have the time or resources to organize a protest movement.
That's generally how big political changes are accomplished, he said.
Donald
Wright, a professor of political science at the University of New
Brunswick, said real wages went further in the 1970s than they do today
which he called 'madness.' (Donald Wright)
Poverty is an issue as old as time, said Wright. Governments introduced social programs in the 20th century, he said, but in the last 40 years, the welfare state has "withered" and "contracted."
He said it's "madness" that real wages went further in the 1970s than they do today.
"We have a real problem," Wright said. "People are struggling to meet the necessities of life.
"It is grotesque the levels of poverty we tolerate in our society — a society as rich as ours."
There is a lot of wealth in Canada, said Wright, but it's poorly distributed and the gap between rich and poor has stretched.
Food banks may impede solution
Food banks, ironically, may also be impeding a long-term solution, said Valerie Tarasuk, a professor in the Department of Nutritional Sciences in the Temerty Faculty of Medicine at the University of Toronto. She's also the lead investigator in a research program on food insecurity called Proof.
Food banks began operating in Canada in the early 1980s, during a recession, and were supposed to be a temporary measure, she said.
Instead, they've become a permanent fixture and serve to subsidize social assistance programs, allowing them to become "woefully inadequate."
"How many will we be able to feed for how long?" posed Tarasuk.
The intentions may be good, she said, but it's time to try something else. She, too, supports the idea of a guaranteed basic income, whether or not a person is in the workforce.
Valerie
Tarasuk, a professor of nutritional sciences at the University of
Toronto's faculty of medicine, said food banks were supposed to be a
temporary help when they began 40 years ago. (Submitted by University of Toronto)
It's a policy that has paid off for seniors in food security, physical health and mental health because people have less stress in their lives, said Tarasuk.
One of the most popular arguments against a guaranteed income program is that it would discourage people from working.
But Emery said modelling suggests that would not happen to any great extent.
Most of the "working poor" are under 30, he said, and many live with their parents, so they wouldn't be entitled to payments if the program is family based.
Emery said his "cynical opinion" is that voters just don't care enough about helping those in dire straits. He said the middle class agenda in Canada has become "repugnant."
It would probably require the elimination of some tax credits to middle income groups to finance a basic income program, he said, and eliminating poverty isn't seen as worthwhile if it costs the middle class anything at all.
Some cities are starting to reach a breaking point, said Emery.
"When you don't address these problems upstream, you get all the symptoms downstream, which start to hit the homeowners, which start to hit businesses and they start to demand a solution," he said.
"These problems of poverty are addressable and solvable, but it may not be with solutions that we've been using for 400 years that haven't worked."
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
COMMENTARY: UNB’s commitment to nuclear contradicts alleged support for Truth and Reconciliation
By researching nuclear technologies, accepting funding from private industry and the state, and publicly advocating in favour of nuclear expansion, the University of New Brunswick (UNB) actively supports the exploitation of traditional Indigenous lands in so-called Canada.
UNB has received funding from a variety of private nuclear groups and government agencies over the years.
In 2019, UNB received half a million dollars from ARC Canada, a private corporation planning to deploy small modular reactors at the Point Lepreau generating station in Saint John.
One year later, Ontario Power Generation provided $1 million to Moltex Energy, UNB, and Canadian Nuclear Laboratories.
In 2021, the federal government allocated $561,750 to UNB’s Centre for Nuclear Energy Research.
Later, Canadian Nuclear Laboratories and UNB “entered into a partnership to pursue commercial opportunities for the nuclear power industry.”
UNB’s relationship with ARC Canada, Moltex, and the federal government represents an explicit alliance between public education, private capital, and the state. These institutions—deeply colonial as they are—share identifiable goals and joint commitments.
First, they share a naïve belief in the emancipatory potential of technological advancement. Second, they advocate in favour of unrelenting capital accumulation, market deregulation, and neoliberal policy. Finally, following these previous commitments, actors in both private industry and the public sector revel in the exploitation of traditional Indigenous lands as a means of extracting wealth and energy.
The province’s news media, government, and private industry are complicit in promoting these commitments and spreading disinformation on small modular reactors. Further, expanding the nuclear industry distracts policy makers from pursuing cheap renewable options.
Between 2018 and 2020, in a series of opinion pieces published in the Telegraph-Journal, Daily Gleaner, and Times & Transcript, UNB’s Herb Emery advocated in favour of nuclear expansion, rampant economic growth, and “shock therapy.”
In an article titled “Does an aging population prevent entrepreneurship?,” Emery lambasted New Brunswickers for rejecting a “future based on natural resource industries or expanding areas of strength like nuclear energy with small modular reactors.” Further, he stated that the province’s financial markets should be made “business friendly.”
Again, in a commentary published in July 2020, Emery claimed that industries including Irving Oil “aren’t doing anything to harm” New Brunswickers.
“If anything,” he wrote, “New Brunswickers have chosen to harm those industries.”
Finally, while writing in the Telegraph-Journal, Emery argued that the city of Saint John should enact “shock therapy” to decrease their debt.
“If this experiment in Saint John does not produce economic growth, then we could think about ‘shock therapy’ at the provincial level,” Emery explained.
Shock therapy is a form of neoliberal economic policy that advocates in favour of privatization and deregulation. In Russia, during the 1990s, neoliberal shock therapy paved the way for the rise of oligarchs like Vladimir Putin to seize power and centralize vast amounts of formerly public wealth.
Activist and author Naomi Klein popularized the term “shock therapy” in her 2007 book The Shock Doctrine. “In moments of crisis,” Klein wrote, “people are willing to hand over a great deal of power to anyone who claims to have a magic cure.”
In New Brunswick, climate change, ecological collapse, and corporate domination constitute our moments of crisis, while nuclear energy and small modular reactors represent the government’s magic cures.
Indigenous communities across the province reject these “magic cures” as hollow attempts to profit from traditional land, exploit natural resources, and ruin local habitats and ecologies.
In 2021, the Wolastoq Grand Council released a resolution stating that the development of nuclear energy and the storage of nuclear waste on traditional Wolastoq territory broke the terms of the United Nation Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP).
Further, on May 10, 2022, the Passamaquoddy Recognition Group intervened in a public hearing hosted by the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission, demanding that “the Government of Canada and the Government of New Brunswick immediately halt any further funding for nuclear reactors at Point Lepreau.”
“Chief Akagi has on several occasions let his concerns be known about the storage of nuclear wastes on his peoples’ territory,” the Passamaquoddy Recognition Group told the Commission. “Yet neither New Brunswick Power nor this Commission, nor the Government of Canada has undertaken to seek consent from Indigenous peoples to store hazardous wastes on this land, nor to negotiate agreement concerning the storage of hazardous wastes on this land.”
“The Peskotomuhkati did not surrender the lands or rights by way of the Peace and Friendship
Treaties, nor by any other means since, and nor have their rights been extinguished by the Canadian Government,” they added.
During the event, Chief Hugh Akagi of the Peskotomuhkati Nation directly addressed the Commission. “The nuclear story is no different from numerous other stories told throughout our territory since Europeans first arrived on our shores,” Chief Akagi explained.
“The temptation to use what was never theirs, creating their own rules, laws and regulations to
justify that use were all designed to dispossess the original peoples of
their home, their livelihood, and what others consider their
resources,” he added.
By presenting purely technological solutions to climate change, denying the sovereignty of the territory’s Indigenous nations, and exploiting the land’s natural resources, the state, private industry, and UNB are complicit in maintaining the country’s colonial legacies.
UNB’s financial and ideological commitments to nuclear expansion and neoliberal economic policy directly contradict their alleged commitment to Truth and Reconciliation.
Harrison Dressler is a master’s student in history at Queen’s University. He writes about Canadian history, labour, politics, and environmental activism (Author bio corrected, October 31, 2022).
No comments:
Post a Comment