My Editor Hates Me

39 Replies to “My Editor Hates Me”

1. “… nearly 30 per cent of Toronto families with children – almost 93,000 families – now live in poverty…”
   I would add
   “are fat, have cell phones, satellite dishes, xboxes, etc and live in the type of luxury that my parents, who grew up in the poorest neighbourhoods of depression-era downtown Toronto and therfore know first-hand what REAL poverty is, could only dream of. So pardon my not giving a flying fig for phony numbers and phony poverty.”

2. Someone else noticed that every time they show the plight of some family in poverty, they are very overweight and usually have a big-screen t.v. in the background. Sorry, but I grew up with nothing, not even indoor plumbing.
   Wonder what is considered a necessity for a family in Canada in 2008.

3. According to a Star article last year, immigration is costing taxpayers close to $5 billion a year.
   If this is true, a rational question must be asked: Is the government importing poverty?
   And what do you know, voila! The old Liberal fraud loop is exposed:
   Let’s import poverty (and votes) so that we have a policy to run on (and get elected on) and once in power, raise taxes.
   Then start the loop all over again, ad infinitum, until there isn’t any wealth to redistribute anymore. Because the creators of wealth have either moved, or are flat broke.

4. The current definition of poverty is a household that makes 10 thousand dollars less then the area’s average. Guess what that definition gives you folks? A never ending, ever spreading class of poverty stricken families. Especially for a well to do area. THERE WILL ALWAYS PEOPLE MAKING 10G’S LESS THEN THE AVERAGE. The only way to do away with poverty given the current definition is for every freaking family to make exactly the same income. What is probably what the Lefties want anyway.

5. MY Gawd! the Star has devolved to a amateurish marxist class struggle screed monger. Seems the linguistic abilities of the Star’s new revolutionary guard are as fossilized as the orthodoxy they indoctrinating.
   sad…truly sad…who subscribes to this trash?
   Want to hazard a probable Star subscriber personality profile these days?
   Bet they subscribe here too:
   http://www.newsocialist.org/

6. “For single-parent families, the poverty rate in Toronto comes close to an astonishing 50 per cent.”
   There’s a lesson here somewhere. I think the solution is a word that begins with “m” and ends with “arriage” — a solution dismissed out of hand by our leaders.

7. I guess there is something good that comes out of the STAR and CBC. They tell everyone the Liberals election platform. Poverty, Harper is a meanie, taxing evil polluting oil companies in the west, government aid for beneficial non polluting manufacturing companies in the east.

8. If the Star wants to fight a war on poverty I suggest that they start with a war on Socialism.
   We all have seen the evidence of how impoverished socialist countries become once their programs have drained off the wealth while the population lined up for their share of free stuff.
   That is the war that must be fought… the war against laziness and ignorance and mediocrity.
   The Star and it’s commies want to take on business like they are the enemies of poverty … like they want all their customers to have no money to purchase their goods and services.
   Only in the idiotic Leftist mind does that make sense.
   There is no poverty in Canada. There is poverty in Africa, but we can’t do anything about that from here actually.

9. poor famblies,
   usually have a smoke in their chops , the counters covered with empties, a squalling kid parked over a big bowl of KDfive or so other sorry looking ones in the background with disheveled hair. an unshaven husband with a crumpled ballcap, and complaining they havent been on a vacation for a year.. I used to think that the reporters did it as joke , but now I realize they dont see it as ironic at all.

10. Cal2 – that’s mostly because reporters, especially the young ones, are all products of middle class liberal privilege these days, and have a hard time parsing out “poor” from “appalling” in their own minds. Thus the confusion …

11. Remember that Dion claims that he grew up in poverty; he claims this is the case because his family didn’t have a television or car until ‘his father’s books began to sell’.
    Heh. Many families don’t have TVs or cars out of choice. His father had a secure tenured job; that’s not poverty.
    Poverty is a situation where the basics of everyday life are not available even for those who are working. This is simply not the case in Canada. The basic poverty needs of food, shelter and clothing are, according to the Fraser Institute:
    http://www.fraserinstitute.org/Commerce.Web/product_files/PovertyinCanada2006.pdf
    about 10,000 net for one person, 16,000 for two, 20,000 for three, 22,000 for four, 26,000 for five.
    This basic needs rate excludes extras such as cable TV, restaurants, entertainment tickets etc.
    This basic needs is, frankly, possible for just about every Canadian. It’s low income. A robust industrial economy MUST have variants of income. Why? Because an industrial economy is a complex system; it produces different qualities of goods and services.
    Therefore, the amount of work and skill and risktaking that goes into these different goods and services is different. If you are going to pay an engineer, a doctor, a research scientist, a pilot, a nuclear physicist, the same as you pay a street sweeper, a grocery clerk, a mail sorter you will find that few will put in the years of schooling and training – and risk taking for that more skilled job.
    The utopian socialist fiction that all people must have the same income, provided by The Government, is actually economically disastrous. These Cloud Dwellers assume that the Government is some kind of magical bank, its coffers instantly refilled after every withdrawal; a bank that will fund everything and everyone without hardship. Of course, they all belong to unions with exactly this perspective – and they ignore that such a policy does indeed take from the rich to fund, not the lowest economic level. But them, the Cloud Dwellers.
    The result of ‘taking from the rich’ in Canada is that we have not developed an investor class, a group of people with the money to invest in Canadian industrial infrastructures. So, we have to rely on foreign investors to build our industries. We just work within the franchises they provide us.
    We have no investor class to set up research foundations to develop innovative science. So, we have to rely on the govt alone to fund research. The result of this, is that research allocation has become firmly controlled by the Utopian Cloud Dwellers who reject innovative or analytic ideas and fund instead repetitive irrelevant secondary areas.
    A robust modern economy must have both low income workers, to carry out the less skilled tasks, high income workers who have the capacity to invest in the country – and the largest class, the middle class, who carry out the more skilled industrial tasks and are the biggest consumers of industrial production. A modern economy must be complex. If it rejects this differentation of levels, it will become – as has Canada – dependent on other nations for its ‘other levels’. Canada is dependent on other nations to supply the results of a high income investor class – and – to purchase its industrial products.

12. A note from StatsCan, if you look in their 1999 LICO data:
    “Recently, there has been extensive and recurring media coverage of Statistics Canada’s Low Income Cut-offs (LICOs) and their relationship to the measurement of poverty. At the heart of the debate is the use of the LICOs as poverty lines. Statistics Canada has clearly and consistently emphasized, since their publication began
    over 25 years ago, that the LICOs are quite different from measures of poverty and that this agency does not endorse their use as such. They reflect a consistent and well defined methodology that identifies those who are substantially worse-off than the average. In the absence of
    an accepted definition of poverty, these statistics have been used by many analysts who wanted to study the characteristics of the relatively worse off families in Canada. These measures have enabled Statistics Canada to report important trends such as the changing composition of this group over time.” (emphasis mine)
    There’s a lot of fascinating stuff over at http://www.statcan.ca/english/freepub/13-551-XIB/13-551-XIB1998001.pdf, including how they calculate LICO. (There’s no official definition of poverty in Canada, so LICO is often used – incorrectly, I might add – as a poverty line.)

13. Mississauga Matt: You forgot to add that these families usually have two huge dogs and at least three cats running around in the house as well.

14. As a landlord, I used to deal with lower income people. As I was usually the last person they pay, I found myself chasing deadbeat tenants quite often. There are a few constants that I saw.
    1. all have cell phones
    2. all have high speed internet and cable tv
    3. most consumed booze, and stank up my units with reefer
    4. most were quick to complain to the gov’t if a stove burner malfunctioned(without calling me first, trying to score some free rent)
    5. most use the food bank, which frees up money for the booze and pot
    6. most use taxis instead of buses(especially on cheque day)
    Now, before any of u leftard welfare apologists comment, I grew up in housing projects in Toronto and Oshawa, and I know what being poor is all about. I have never accepted a nickel from the gov’t, and I never will. I have tried over and over again to give the less fortunate types a break, and they rent skipped on me almost every time. That is why I converted to student rentals.

15. Wonder what is considered a necessity for a family in Canada in 2008.
    1. access to affordable housing
    2. access to affordable childcare
    3. meaningful tax cuts to help the working poor.
    4. a clean environment
    5. access to good medical care and education
    6. cops that work with communities and not against them.
    7. bank branches instead of money marts.
    8. a federal govt that gives a shit.

16. Let’s examine Justine’s post.
    1. how many more housing projects must crack heads turn into ghettos before we abandon that theory?
    2. it is called friends and family
    3. a person earning under 17K pays hardly any taxes
    4. in Canada…..please
    5. blame your moronic dippers and libranos for screwing that one up
    6. quit being ignorant, hostile and downright nasty to the cops, and they might give you the respect you deserve
    7. it is not the duty of business to provide free banking for people who have no ID, address, etc
    8. the problem(if one exists)stems from the gov’t that has jurisdiction over these matters…..PROVINCIAL!
    idiot moonbat!

17. “a Federal govt that gives a shit”
    Most of those things you listed come under the Provincial Govt., as are most social programs.

18. As one who has lived on an income below the poverty line for the last 16 years owning nothing at the start of these 16 years, I am shocked on how deprived I am. I own a car, a truck, a motorcycle, a rec trailer and a utility trailer, and am almost mortgage free on a building valueded at close to 400 K.
    Perhaps is has something to do with, the fact that I do not drink or do drugs, smoke, gamble excessively, or spend money frivolously. I also pay my bills when due including never carrying a balance on my credit cards.
    I do not consider my self poor. I alway have enough and a little extra.

19. Well, St. John’s had real poverty even thirty years ago when I first came here. There is very little left. Slum housing has either been torn down or gentrified. The kids in “welfare housing” have clean clothing and no lack of it. It is very unusual to see bad teeth. The welfare people have problems with drink and with drugs, which are not exactly problems which plague the destitute.
    The “poor” in St. John’s today are in better shape (aside from drink and drugs) than the “middle class” kids I went to school with in Ottawa ca. 1952, again by the criteria of clothing, teeth etc. Hell, by modern standards the area I grew up in would probably be classified as a slum. And tar-paper shacks were so common in Ottawa at the time as to draw no comment.
    The “war on poverty” is mostly leftoid nonsense, partly because of improvements in the economy, partly because social programs have not been without good issue, even if they may have been taken too far.
    The only real poverty I have seen in Canada is in certain parts of the east end of Vancouver, where drugs may well be strongly implicated. And then there is the poverty reported on First Nations reserves, which is a fixable problem but not by leftoid methods.
    Old-fashioned leftists put a lot of emphasis on fighting “demon rum”, and right they were. Modern leftoids celebrate demon rum and every other form of intoxicant. Despicable.

20. IMO,alan has got it right.
    There is no way anyone in this country who wants to honestly avoid poverty can help but succeed with the endless programs and jobs available.
    The poverty industry continually includes junkies,mentally ill street people and others who have no interest whatsoever in participating in society in these unrealistic poverty stats.In other words,people you could give a $100 k cash and a free condo and they still could never leave poverty behind.
    Just like solving world hunger,these professional beggers for our money never seem to accomplish a f**king thing over the endless decades except to keep themselves in business.
    Of course,our MSM would never investigate something as politically correct as anti-poverty groups.
    If only we could let the Auditor General loose on these bloodsuckers.I bet their books would be as disgusting as MADD’s were demonstrated to be.

21. Great line by edwardmichaelgeorge: “Turns out it’s just the sort of sloppiness that’s bound to occur when you’re too busy fellating the federal and provincial Liberals.”
    Example: 93,000 families with children, or 30% of all families with children, are in poverty. wtf? Is redStar trying to tell us that there are only 300,000 families with children in all of Toronto? If so, then our demographics are worse than Mark Steyn ever imagined.

22. From the Star babble-on:
    For single-parent families, the poverty rate in Toronto comes close to an astonishing 50 per cent.
    In a parallel universe that factoid would be followed by the poverty rate for two-parent families. I wonder what that actually is — maybe 5 percent?

23. “…nearly 30 per cent of Toronto families with children – almost 93,000 families – now live in poverty…”
    I suppose they just paid their taxes.

24. felis corp has it right. Is the Star really telling us that there are only 300,000 odd families with children in Toronto??? That’s in a city with a population of 2.5 million and almost 5 million in the GTA?
    Statistics Canada 2006 tells a different story. There are almost 750,000 couples with children (married and common law) in Toronto. That means that the so-called poverty percentage is about 12%. Not 30%. Oh- what’s the definition of Poverty? We don’t have one.
    The United Way laments about Toronto family poverty, informing us that the ‘median after-tax income’ of families with children under 17 is $41,500. Is that supposed to be poverty?
    http://www.uwgt.org/media/mediaReleases/pr_26112007.php

25. Thanks, ET, for the Stats Can update. I thought those figures quoted in redStar looked a little strange. You would think that being Toronto’s largest circulation daily, they would have a better handle on some of the fundamental demographics of the City. Especially since they appear to be proclaiming a jihad against “the enemy of poverty”.
    Now, about the United Way pimping poverty. Who’d a thunk?
    On the other hand, with housing prices in Toronto being what they are, perhaps $41,500 is a mite difficult for a family in Toronto to get by on. Difficult, but not impossible.

26. Keep in mind that the United Way are poverty pimps, the more poverty they find, the more funding they can clamor for.
    You’d think the journo-moron, would have spent a little time on google vetting the stats on United Ways’ statement and just thinking about the absurdity of the whole poverty paradigm while composing this lame fluff piece.
    If stupidity got you handicapped parking, I assume that newspaper employee lots would be only that.
    Who’s poor outside of a small handful of the truly physically or mentally handicapped, those that have made very poor choices in life that they are too lazy to correct their situation.

27. Here’s the stats canada link. This refers only to coupled families, not single parent families. that would increase the number of families and lower the ratio of ‘poor families’ –
    http://www12.statcan.ca/english/census06/data/highlights/households/pages/Page.cfm?Lang=E&Geo=CMA&Code=01&Table=1&Data=Count&Age=1&StartRec=126&Sort=2&Display=Page&CSDFilter=5000
    Also, as well know, poverty is a big bureaucratic business in Canada. There are lots of activists who live off ‘the poor’; these are govt funded jobs, protected by unions, with pensions and benefits. These jobs require poor people to exist in ever-increasing numbers. Hypocrites, aren’t they?

28. Although this may be a poor use of statistics in the case of the Star. It looks to me like the first trial balloon for the next Liberal election platform. The rural vote is pretty much lost for them but the urban vote rich 905/416 areas of Toronto need to be retained. What better way than to say you can eradicate poverty. How much easier to do this if you first boost the numbers considerably then be able to show results after being elected without actually doing anything. If my memory is correct I believe Chretien said he would eradicate child poverty by 2008. I wonder what had been accomplished during his tenure?

29. An old Liberal game.
    Fake leaders creating fake solutions to fake problems.

30. @crazymamma:
    That’s enough to make me consider going out and buying a grey flannel suit. Cripes: did they get that definition from a 1955-era real estate agent?
    “No, that is the Wrong Address for you. The Right Address is one where your good friends and neighbours have the Right Income Bracket. After all, we don’t want to injure Interneighbourly Amity, now do we?”

31. @penny:
    I suggest that “feckless” is a better word than “lazy.” Many of the poor (standard definition) do busy themselves with something, so they say “I’m not lazy, so it can’t be that. Hence, [fill in the you-know-what.]”

32. Sheesh! Lots of grouchy, angry people here!
    Image that comes to mind is a bunch of middle-aged dried-up white people, squinting through their specks from around their drapes out the window, lookin’ disapprovingly out at all those poor folks getting out of their taxi on welfare cheque day with a 12-pack, preparing to do stuff that the dried-up ol grouches aren’t remotely familiar with…like have fun, and have sex, and stuff…

33. I enjoyed reading the latest definitions of “poor”. I am not getting out a crying towel for them or myself. I arrived in Toronto as an immigrant from England after six months in Nova Scotia. Unskilled/Semi skilled. The definition of “poverty” has radically changed. Here is the life of a single man in old Toronto. Not knocking it at all.

    Assembler of T/V at Rogers Majestic at Vanderhoof Ave. $1.23 cents per hour. Take home pay about $34 per week. Car fare- well, must have been $5. Room and Board on Classic Avenue was $14 per week. I think less than 20% of employees had a car. I saved $10 per week against the day when I would “hit the road”.

    We had a radio of course. A black and white T/V at Rogers was $168. Five weeks take home pay! People planned to get one. We never thought of ourselves as poor- just skint about Wednesday.

    Used to watch them at Scott’s Mission and count ourselves lucky. Poverty? Toronto Star does not know what it is- apparently.

34. I should mention the date. October 1955, that I arrived in Toronto. Hit the road in June 1956. 2000 miles hitch hiked in eight days. Bye bye old Toronto. It was something to put in my memoirs.

35. Hey molik, let me give yo a truer picture of cheque day in my town,
    Landlords staking out deadbeat tenants, cuz if you do not collect on the 1st, forget it.
    Lineups at the liquor store, with logjams of taxis in the parking lot.
    Bingo halls full to capacity.
    Local drug dealers settling outstanding balances.
    Biggest day of the month for contraband smoke cigarette dealers.
    Pubs crowded with plenty of young ones running around.
    So, please, until you have lived in that world, you have no f#$%ing idea.
    I will qualify this by saying I am referring to about half of the players of the system. The other half, consisting of single moms, handicapped and seniors are more than deserving of a helping hand.
    The rest, cut the f$%^ers off!

36. The question about immigration is a good one. When I looked into poverty stats (or low income cut-off info a couple of years ago), those in the poorest groups were immigrants and single female parents. What is important to recognize, however, is that most of these people were not staying poor forever and most eventually make their way out of the lowest income ranges. For women that is sometimes by remarrying, qualifying for better jobs — certainly gaining language skills and qualifying for jobs also brings immigrants out of poverty. (Lack of jobs and need for proper “credentials” is the biggest problem here.) So, increasing rates of poverty (if this is happening) could easily be attributed to any increase in immigration rates and/or single parent mothers via divorce or just getting pregnant without a husband.
    Dealing directly with the items listed by Justine does not solve the problem of poverty — in fact, if the result is higher taxes, there is a definite negative impact on the poor — businesses layoff workers, government involvement in the housing market (beyond housing subsidies for low-income people)frequently reduces available affordable properties in the private sector. Is “affordable child care” to be provided for all (middle and upper class included) at the expense of not-very-wealthy families who’s mothers stay at home?
    The biggest poverty issue as I see it is for those living chronically in poverty — mostly disabled — I am discounting those with drug problems, gambling probs. etc. who’s primary problem is not poverty per say. I believe that all provinces have programs for the disabled, although the amount of support could be improved in some provinces, and I am pleased that the Harper government is looking into a special savings plan kind of thing for disabled individuals and was also looking into processes for speeding up what’s needed for immigrants to qualify for jobs in certain fields. Attempting to address the fiscal imbalance is another positive step by the Harper goverment — and even the cut to the GST makes room for provinces to raise Provincial sales taxes if they are needed to increase social spending. And, I will bet that many of the working poor are very pleased with the Harper child care allowance. (I would have been when I was a single parent.)
    Actually, Justine, we ALL give a shit about REAL poverty, including the federal government.

37. Just a note re Justine’s suggestion that we need more affordable housing. This is certainly true in some pockets of the country, but a problem such as this is best addressed at the local level with community supports and provincial funding. Several years ago the Liberals announced a plan for the federal gov to get involved in the issue of homelessness, which was getting to be a big problem in our cities (probably worse today). I was appalled to discover that one year after their big announcement of blah, blah, blah dollars not a dime had been given to cities to deal with the issue. Instead, Ottawa was busy setting up offices and designing databases on how to track homeless people as they went from shelter to shelter. When the federal bureaucracy spends money it is all about making themselves look good. I know this sounds cynical, but working in Ottawa I have seen this happen time and again. (The infamous HRDC scandal is another example.) THAT IS WHY areas of provincial jurisdiction should be addressed provincially. Thank goodness we now have a government that understands this.

38. I’d like to see the Ont. Govt do something with slum landlords who expect their tenants who are forced to live in their uninsulated houses to be able to pay the same amount for hydro as they do for rent. Some pay up around $300.-$500. A huge bite out of the budget like that means something has to be cut. Can’t lay everything on the poor and those who are struggling, but they’re always the ones who are blamed. And I’m often as guilty as anyone. But in this cold weather, they have my sympathy. This is in a small eastern Ont. town with no industry, not a metro city.

39. In a country as wealthy as Canada which provides the sort of opportunities only found in the world’s richest countries, if you are still poor it’s because you’re a loser.
    Seriously.
    People who are poor are people who have made bad choices and acted irresponsibly.
    We have free education to the end of high school and ample student support for post-secondary. If at the end of that you still have no skills, you’re poor because you deserve to be. While it’s true that not everyone has the same capacity, even stupid people can be janitors or work on a line. There are also ample opportunities for trades (although you can’t be entirely stupid for those.)
    I still say we should give a hand-up to those who truly need it to get themselves back on their feet but that should have strings attached. Time limits for one. Rehab if necessary, etc.
    In psychology, they teach you the idea that you should not be the enabler. That you should not make it possible for a drug or alcohol abuser to continue there bad behaviour. The same group of campus lefties who teach you that you as an individual should not enable one abuser turn around and demand the government enable millions. Only a foolish, academic leftard could miss the lack of consistency in their own message.