Canada is a great place to live; we have an abundance of resources, high paying jobs, in comparison to most of the world, a relatively peaceful way of life with little of the inherent and incipient violence people in many countries of the world live with daily. A strong economy, a talented and highly skilled workforce that is the envy of many countries, a social system that provides for the welfare of those in our society without the financial or emotional resources to deal with life’s problems and a reputation for being the world’s humanitarian, often providing financial help to many needy organizations and people around the world.

We truly are a people who want to be seen in a certain light by the world around us, to help our fellow man deal with seemingly insurmountable problems, and show empathy for the plight of those less fortunate then us in the world. Feeding the hungry, warming the cold, and providing resources to help get struggling people and communities back on their feet and eventually become self sufficient again has been Canada’s shining star for decades, and certainly since 1989.

Yet, since the Canadian House of Commons unanimously passing a resolution in 1989 to eliminate poverty in Canada by the year 2000, poverty among Canadian children has stayed the same and even increased, with 19.3 percent of pre-schoolers and 17 percent of school-aged children in Canada today, living in the poorest homes in the country. Statistics for 2007 indicate around 900,000 Canadian children are living a lifestyle more in tune with being a third class citizen in a two class country, living below what is considered the poverty level in Canada, they make do without things many Canadians consider normal and absolute and that a least a third of these hungry children are being cared for by single mothers.

Ask yourself, if you’re Canadian, how you would feel if your children were looked at by society as being less perfect than others because they had less, if you couldn’t afford to buy new pants for your daughters school functions, and knew you had no chance of achieving money in the bank, let alone things that are considered normal by most Canadians, like RRSPs, savings, or even change for laundry.

The inability of the government to achieve their 1989 announcement probably doesn’t surprise anyone, surely at the time of the announcement we all realised it was lip service meant to provide temporary relieve from the stress the government was under due to the plight of hunger in Canadian children. That the problem of poverty and hunger in Canadian children was secondary to being seen as a world humanitarian to those in control of the reigns of power, that the rich politician doesn’t ever worry about his children going hungry or cold and that if left to the politicians the kids in Canada would continue to go hungry.
Mission accomplished!