Big money coming to end/Welfare hike promised

[Urbane]

^^ Ironic. Many of us who voted Liberal have disagreed with Clark on the question of corporate and union donations. We've also been in favour of more money for those in need. Some of us voiced our concerns with the politics being played over the school closure issue in the South Okanagan as well. Those are just a few examples.

Meanwhile, the majority of NDP'ers never offer up any criticism of anything that the NDP does. Horgan and Weaver come up with a misguided plan for a stable government but don't bother to sort out the most basic issues such as the speakership. We're not seeing any criticism on here from NDP'ers except to blame Christy Clark for not supplying the speaker for the new government. So the Groupthink post reminds us that irony is alive and well on here!

[LordEd]

*removed*

[GordonH]

Christy Clark work together with any other party?
Really?

Ah ha ha ha.

Best laugh in years.

Loser..75% want her gone. GONE..period.

George any of MLA's of your party of choice willing to try to live on whats given to those with disabilities, for the next few months (not days or weeks but actual months).

Still waiting on your response George+.

Of course not 1 MLA would even try to live on what BC gives to those with a disability, the politicians are shameful & impo a disgrace.
Why the hell should I vote for any of you

Added later: top amount for a single person is $12,401.04 per/year.... full-time minimum wage earner is $22,568 per/year

[mr.bandaid]

I am not opposed to the top up for disability payments but with the added step of providing a clean urine sample. Not all disabilities are evident. For anyone who has worked on the front line on welfare Wednesday will attest, it is a *bleep* show out there thanks to tax payers shelling out money for free with no strings attached.

[GordonH]

I am not opposed to the top up for disability payments but with the added step of providing a clean urine sample. Not all disabilities are evident. For anyone who has worked on the front line on welfare Wednesday will attest, it is a *bleep* show out there thanks to tax payers shelling out money for free with no strings attached.

This is why those on disability should be moved out of Ministry in charge of Welfare.
Welfare & Disability are 2 totally different things, disability is a medical issues be it physical or mental illness.

[mr.bandaid]

I am not opposed to the top up for disability payments but with the added step of providing a clean urine sample. Not all disabilities are evident. For anyone who has worked on the front line on welfare Wednesday will attest, it is a *bleep* show out there thanks to tax payers shelling out money for free with no strings attached.

This is why those on disability should be moved out of Ministry in charge of Welfare.
Welfare & Disability are 2 totally different things, disability is a medical issues be it physical or mental illness.

Totally agree.

[BeingHuman]

This BC Liberal government likes to pick on the disabled and kids, they have kept the disabled and our children in poverty. BC has the highest child poverty and disabled poverty rates in the country. I am proud NOT to support a government that, for 16 years, has trampled on these innocents.

[Merry]

I am not opposed to the top up for disability payments but with the added step of providing a clean urine sample. Not all disabilities are evident. For anyone who has worked on the front line on welfare Wednesday will attest, it is a *bleep* show out there thanks to tax payers shelling out money for free with no strings attached.

If someone is unfortunate enough to suffer a disability, they should not be treated as though they're some sort of potential drug addict.

What if you suffer a stroke and wind up having a permanent disability? Should you then be treated like some sort of a bum when you apply for the benefits that you've contributed to for the past 30 years? I think not.

[mr.bandaid]

I am not opposed to the top up for disability payments but with the added step of providing a clean urine sample. Not all disabilities are evident. For anyone who has worked on the front line on welfare Wednesday will attest, it is a *bleep* show out there thanks to tax payers shelling out money for free with no strings attached.

If someone is unfortunate enough to suffer a disability, they should not be treated as though they're some sort of potential drug addict.

What if you suffer a stroke and wind up having a permanent disability? Should you then be treated like some sort of a bum when you apply for the benefits that you've contributed to for the past 30 years? I think not.

I was really addressing this from the street/first responder point of view. Pretty sure that the guy who suffered the stroke (although not always) won't be hustling for drugs at the street level. Go the Hastings in Vancouver on welfare Wednesday, those are the guys/gals that need to be more closely monitored. I know for a fact that most are welfare recipients and some have disability pensions but any way you look at it, these people need a lot more help than just money once a month.

[seewood]

I know for a fact that most are welfare recipients and some have disability pensions but any way you look at it, these people need a lot more help than just money once a month.

I agree but the problem of wanting help exists. Many seem quite content to gamble with death when sticking a needle in their arm.
Those that truly want help I believe should be offered it. Don't know if there are enough detox beds and rehab facilities about though.

[mr.bandaid]

I know for a fact that most are welfare recipients and some have disability pensions but any way you look at it, these people need a lot more help than just money once a month.

I agree but the problem of wanting help exists. Many seem quite content to gamble with death when sticking a needle in their arm.
Those that truly want help I believe should be offered it. Don't know if there are enough detox beds and rehab facilities about though.

There isn't.

[hobbyguy]

Although I agree that the BC Liberals have not done enough in terms of poverty reduction, the record is that using LICO scores from 2005 poverty in BC dropped from 13.2% to 10.4%.

There are many other elements to the entire story when it comes to poverty. Not the least of which is where you were born in the province and in Canada. https://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/national/a-tale-of-two-canadas-where-you-grow-up-affects-your-adult-income/article35444594/

"The most dramatic finding by Dr. Corak, a University of Ottawa economist and former economist with Statistics Canada, is that the place you come from is very likely to affect your odds of future success, perhaps as much or more than your family, your culture or anything else in your life. Those results are likely to surprise many Canadians and provoke serious debates about the policies and interventions that can help more people escape intergenerational poverty.

If you are born in Canada to parents in the bottom fifth of the income scale (that is, your parents typically earned less than $23,000 a year in today’s dollars) you are twice as likely to grow up to earn at least a middle-class income than if you were born to the same parents in the United States or Britain.

But we can now see that the Canadian Dream is not evenly distributed. Far from it: While income mobility looks impressive as a national average, Dr. Corak’s data reveal that some parts of Canada – such as central Alberta and southern Saskatchewan, southwestern Ontario, the largest urban metropolitan areas such as Vancouver, Calgary and Toronto (and especially their suburbs) – stand out as “mobility springboards,” where people’s adult incomes easily exceed those of their parents.

Other places – most of Manitoba outside of Winnipeg, much of coastal British Columbia – are “mobility traps,” where people rarely move up the income ladder.

What makes some places into income-mobility springboards and some into traps? One often-cited factor is that the “green” locations tend to offer easy opportunities to move to higher-income locations or situations – either physically, by offering easy access to nearby high-growth big cities and having few barriers to moving, or indirectly through postsecondary education institutions located in the region.

Mobility traps tend to be places where such opportunities are scarce. In other cases, there is only a single industry or income source, and its earnings have not grown.

Canada also contains areas that are not very wealthy, and not getting any better off, but which have very high rates of mobility: They are poor but they produce prosperity for the next generation.

Indeed, when Dr. Corak analyzed the low-mobility areas of Canada, he found that provincial borders (and therefore provincial governments and policies) aren’t a cause – the low-mobility patch in Manitoba extends well into northern Ontario and parts of Saskatchewan; likewise, high-mobility and low-mobility areas in other provinces don’t seem to be caused by the provinces themselves.

Many of Canada’s low-income-mobility regions have comparatively large Indigenous populations – First Nations and Métis communities in Manitoba, coastal First Nations in British Columbia, Inuit in the north. While Indigenous incomes are not likely to be measured fully accurately (status-card-holding members of First Nations who live and work on reserves are not required to pay income tax), this map probably does reflect genuine low intergenerational economic-mobility rates among these communities.

One unanswered question is to what extent low mobility rates are a measure of lack of opportunity and hope on some reserves (and in urban Indigenous communities) – or a measure of traditional ways of life and a greater value placed on continuity rather than change in Indigenous societies. For example, Ontario’s Manitoulin Island, home to a large Anishinaabe population, has one of the lowest rates of income mobility. It is also home to half a dozen First Nations communities who place great value on traditional livelihoods and living close to the land. The fact that Manitoulin residents don’t make more money than their parents, would, for many there, be seen not as an indicator of trouble but a matter of pride. “Income mobility should not always be seen as a positive or desirable thing – there are many people who don’t seek it, and it’s not necessarily a good measure of their well-being,” says Dr. Corak."

Those are snips from a long article. But they do mirror some life experiences. When I lived on Haida Gwaii I loved it there. Why did I leave? Because I could not see a long term future there - which panned out as the operation I worked for has been downsized to a shadow of its former self. The folks that I knew that stayed there, didn't care too much about future economic opportunities, and/or were part of the deeply rooted Haida culture. They were about place and tradition. What is viewed as poverty or wealth in Canada as a whole was not their measure.

Of political interest is that the two regions outside of the Island/Lower Mainland complexity that both voted NDP are regions where parents earned more than their children (mill closures etc.) and are "mobility trap" class areas.

[Jflem1983]

Although I agree that the BC Liberals have not done enough in terms of poverty reduction, the record is that using LICO scores from 2005 poverty in BC dropped from 13.2% to 10.4%.

There are many other elements to the entire story when it comes to poverty. Not the least of which is where you were born in the province and in Canada. https://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/national/a-tale-of-two-canadas-where-you-grow-up-affects-your-adult-income/article35444594/

"The most dramatic finding by Dr. Corak, a University of Ottawa economist and former economist with Statistics Canada, is that the place you come from is very likely to affect your odds of future success, perhaps as much or more than your family, your culture or anything else in your life. Those results are likely to surprise many Canadians and provoke serious debates about the policies and interventions that can help more people escape intergenerational poverty.

If you are born in Canada to parents in the bottom fifth of the income scale (that is, your parents typically earned less than $23,000 a year in today’s dollars) you are twice as likely to grow up to earn at least a middle-class income than if you were born to the same parents in the United States or Britain.

But we can now see that the Canadian Dream is not evenly distributed. Far from it: While income mobility looks impressive as a national average, Dr. Corak’s data reveal that some parts of Canada – such as central Alberta and southern Saskatchewan, southwestern Ontario, the largest urban metropolitan areas such as Vancouver, Calgary and Toronto (and especially their suburbs) – stand out as “mobility springboards,” where people’s adult incomes easily exceed those of their parents.

Other places – most of Manitoba outside of Winnipeg, much of coastal British Columbia – are “mobility traps,” where people rarely move up the income ladder.

What makes some places into income-mobility springboards and some into traps? One often-cited factor is that the “green” locations tend to offer easy opportunities to move to higher-income locations or situations – either physically, by offering easy access to nearby high-growth big cities and having few barriers to moving, or indirectly through postsecondary education institutions located in the region.

Mobility traps tend to be places where such opportunities are scarce. In other cases, there is only a single industry or income source, and its earnings have not grown.

Canada also contains areas that are not very wealthy, and not getting any better off, but which have very high rates of mobility: They are poor but they produce prosperity for the next generation.

Indeed, when Dr. Corak analyzed the low-mobility areas of Canada, he found that provincial borders (and therefore provincial governments and policies) aren’t a cause – the low-mobility patch in Manitoba extends well into northern Ontario and parts of Saskatchewan; likewise, high-mobility and low-mobility areas in other provinces don’t seem to be caused by the provinces themselves.

Many of Canada’s low-income-mobility regions have comparatively large Indigenous populations – First Nations and Métis communities in Manitoba, coastal First Nations in British Columbia, Inuit in the north. While Indigenous incomes are not likely to be measured fully accurately (status-card-holding members of First Nations who live and work on reserves are not required to pay income tax), this map probably does reflect genuine low intergenerational economic-mobility rates among these communities.

One unanswered question is to what extent low mobility rates are a measure of lack of opportunity and hope on some reserves (and in urban Indigenous communities) – or a measure of traditional ways of life and a greater value placed on continuity rather than change in Indigenous societies. For example, Ontario’s Manitoulin Island, home to a large Anishinaabe population, has one of the lowest rates of income mobility. It is also home to half a dozen First Nations communities who place great value on traditional livelihoods and living close to the land. The fact that Manitoulin residents don’t make more money than their parents, would, for many there, be seen not as an indicator of trouble but a matter of pride. “Income mobility should not always be seen as a positive or desirable thing – there are many people who don’t seek it, and it’s not necessarily a good measure of their well-being,” says Dr. Corak."

Those are snips from a long article. But they do mirror some life experiences. When I lived on Haida Gwaii I loved it there. Why did I leave? Because I could not see a long term future there - which panned out as the operation I worked for has been downsized to a shadow of its former self. The folks that I knew that stayed there, didn't care too much about future economic opportunities, and/or were part of the deeply rooted Haida culture. They were about place and tradition. What is viewed as poverty or wealth in Canada as a whole was not their measure.

Of political interest is that the two regions outside of the Island/Lower Mainland complexity that both voted NDP are regions where parents earned more than their children (mill closures etc.) and are "mobility trap" class areas.

No longer matters all 3 party's are the same now

[flamingfingers]

hg wrote:

Of political interest is that the two regions outside of the Island/Lower Mainland complexity that both voted NDP are regions where parents earned more than their children (mill closures etc.) and are "mobility trap" class areas.

Well, not sure about Kootenay West held by Kathleen Conroy NDP being a 'mobility trap' class area but to classify Nelson-Creston held by Michelle Mungall NDP is certainly NOT a 'mobility trap' class area. People move in, people move out - for the past couple of years, people have 'moved in' - in great numbers and are starting businesses, also enrolling in classes in Selkirk College in Nelson, Trail and Castlegar.. retail business is flourishing and I haven't seen any 'Closing Down' signs in either Nelson, Castlgar or Trail.

It's rather a conundrum then that the people in 'high mobility' class areas such as Vancouver and the Island - whom you seem to suggest are rather more highly educated and sophisticated - have strongly voted for the NDP. One would think these highly educated, sophisticated and intelligent people would be voting overwhelmingly for the ChristyLiberals!!!

Maybe they use their critical thinking skills or place values on integrity, honesty and accountability.

[Urban Cowboy]

It's rather a conundrum then that the people in 'high mobility' class areas such as Vancouver and the Island - whom you seem to suggest are rather more highly educated and sophisticated - have strongly voted for the NDP. One would think these highly educated, sophisticated and intelligent people would be voting overwhelmingly for the ChristyLiberals!!!

Maybe they use their critical thinking skills or place values on integrity, honesty and accountability.

Or maybe they just don't want bridge tolls and believed Horgan the spin doctor.