In this episode, we confront the monumental challenges and the complications that need to be wrestled to the ground, if we're really going to put a serious dent in poverty rates in this country. To provide some perspective and context, we are joined today by Talia Bronstein, VP of Research and Advocacy at Daily Bread Food Bank; Garima Talwar Kapoor Director of Policy and Research with Maytree; and Jasmine Ramze, Rezaee, Director of Advocacy and Communications at YWCA Toronto. Now there is a national strategy in place and, in fact, it's being implemented right now. Garima Talwar Kapoor says it's based on some goals that are necessarily lofty and ambitious. [00:01:20] Garima: When the liberal government came in in 2015, they set out an ambitious path to develop Canada's first poverty reduction strategy. And as part of that, they aligned three different pillars. Dignity, opportunity and inclusion and resilience and security. And I think what the government wanted to do is sort of talk about, the issues that people living in deep poverty experience, to ensure that people can move from low income into the middle incomes and help protect people from falling from middle incomes into low income. If we were to add to a new element that is going to enhance the plan, what should that priority be? [00:19:05] Jasmine: I would say improvement. Labor standards and ensuring that all workers, regardless of immigration status or employment industry have access to minimum working conditions…. to live decently or at least pay for housing to some degree and live with some dignity. [00:20:50] Talia: Well, I'll just start by saying the dignity piece is absolutely both. You can't have dignity on below poverty incomes and you can't have dignity when you're being forced to jump through all sorts of hoops, to just have a basic standard of living where you can afford a roof over head and food on your plate. So, I think dignity really has both sides of that coin. So, the policy issues are fairly clear. The pillars of the plan are reasonably well defined. But what happens when we lift the policy off the page and look at how it plays out in the lives of those who try to navigate the system. Can they do so with dignity? Can they do so with any hope of rising above the physical and psychological constraints of poverty? We’ll get a glimpse of that lived experience coming up in the next episode of the 2030 Project.
