Democracy Gone Astray

Democracy, being a human construct, needs to be thought of as directionality rather than an object. As such, to understand it requires not so much a description of existing structures and/or other related phenomena but a declaration of intentionality.
This blog aims at creating labeled lists of published infringements of such intentionality, of points in time where democracy strays from its intended directionality. In addition to outright infringements, this blog also collects important contemporary information and/or discussions that impact our socio-political landscape.

All the posts here were published in the electronic media – main-stream as well as fringe, and maintain links to the original texts.

[NOTE: Due to changes I haven't caught on time in the blogging software, all of the 'Original Article' links were nullified between September 11, 2012 and December 11, 2012. My apologies.]

Wednesday, November 05, 2014

Food Banks Canada Sides With NDP On Child Care Debate

OTTAWA - Canadian food banks are wading into the hot political debate over how best the federal government can help families with kids: give them tax breaks, as the Conservatives are doing, or invest in regulated child care, as the NDP proposes.

In its annual HungerCount report, Food Banks Canada comes down squarely on the side of the NDP.

It says the use of food banks remains 25 per cent higher than it was before the devastating global recession in 2008 and that 37 per cent of those helped are children.

According to the report, almost half of the households helped are families with kids and nearly half of those are two-parent families.

Among other recommendations, the report says the federal government should replace "the current alphabet soup" of child tax benefits with a new child well-being benefit that targets the most vulnerable families.

And it calls on federal and provincial governments to invest in predictable, stable funding for affordable, regulated child care, enabling parents to enter or remain in the workforce.

The report comes just days after Prime Minister Stephen Harper announced new measures aimed at families, which include enhanced child benefits and income splitting — a measure economists say will benefit primarily wealthy couples with kids.

The Conservatives have said their plan will allow parents to choose what's best for their kids and have disparaged the NDP's proposal to invest $5 billion a year to create one million, $15-per-day child care spaces.

According to the HungerCount 2014 report, 841,191 people received food from a food bank in Canada last March, a month that is considered average for food bank use. That's up one per cent over the same period last year and remains 25 per cent higher than in 2008.

While households with children are the biggest users of food banks, the report says food bank use among single, childless individuals has skyrocketed — to 43 per cent this year from 39 per cent in 2001.

It attributes that to the demise of well-paying, blue-collar jobs in the manufacturing sector, which used to provide good incomes for under-educated men in particular. Those jobs have been replaced by low-wage service sector jobs and inadequate social assistance, which has been bolstered for single parents while forcing single, childless Canadians into extreme poverty.

The report says "existing welfare bureaucracies" should be dismantled and replaced with a guaranteed basic income system.

And it recommends expanding eligibility for education and training programs offered through the Employment Insurance program.

It also calls on the federal government to invest in affordable housing.

Original Article
Source: huffingtonpost.ca/
Author: CP | By The Canadian Press

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