You think you know poverty? Let me tell you about poverty;
“We were the last in our neighbourhood to get a TV, the last to get a
car. My parents had headaches about how to pay for the house.
There only two choices for a young threadbare Stéphane – the coal mines or four years in Paris.
Funny.
Not to mention the ignominy of p’tit Stephane being forced to read Proust and Sartre in trade paperback: quelle horreur!
When will this big girl’s blouse be put out of misery?!
“What is not clear is how he will pay for his plan, how he will reconcile it with his commitments to cut taxes and greenhouse gas emissions, and how much he really knows about living in poverty.”
In other words, what is not clear is anything that happens to fall out of this leaders mouth.
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Calgary Grit is a very tolerant and wise blogger.
He seemed quite conservative like, from time to time. In fact I wondered if he may switch over because of Dion and the general shambles of the Liberal Party.
Something is up.. this is the first paragraph of the most recent post . .
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* * For those who missed it last night, The National’s report on how political parties use personal data should be mandatory watching for anyone in the Liberal Party’s head office.
Despite some talk of renewal during the leadership race last year, it’s abundantly clear that the party is still eons behind the Tories structurally and it puts us at a huge disadvantage going into the next election.
So far this year, the CPC have raised over 12 million dollars, versus 2.6 million for the Liberals…and the NDP. When you can’t even beat the NDP, something is terribly wrong.* *
============= CalgaryGrit.blogspot.com
A little late, but seems like an *Awakening*. = TG
When you rob Peter to pay Paul, you can always count on the support of Paul. Don’t count this guy out yet. There are enough Pauls out there that he may have some electoral success.
test
What is with both Dion and Mulroney pleading poverty? Mulroney whines that he had to take the $300,000. from KHA because his family wanted the lifestyle he had before politics and now Dion stating they were poor because they didn’t have a TV? Is poverty to become a badge of honour? I thought TV watching was bad for kids according to the Liberals.
Poor little Stefi. Don’t you just hate it when deeply privileged, entitled eedjits feel the need to squawk about their “everyman” credentials, when in fact, their positions quite belie their lying words.
Maybe little Stefane FELT poor–paperback texts, horror of horrors–but when your dad is the head of a university department and your mom is a real estate agent, you’re hardly poor.
Liberals love to assuage their guilt over living high off the hog on the taxpayers’ expense by pleading “we’re just like you.” They’re not, they should just shut up, and get on with their privileges and perks for the rest of us to see and reject when the next election comes up.
I wonder, shudder, just how many useful idiots will be swayed by Dion’s latest limp, whiney tactic to get attention and sympathy?
“You don’t know what it was like for a family with five kids living under Maurice Duplessis (Quebec’s 16th premier),” the Liberal leader said.
Here’s an idea stevey boy: if you can’t afford to raise 5 kids, DON’T HAVE THEM!!
Poor Steffi, poor, poor Steffi. Sounds like he experienced CHILD POVERTY!
Spare us the histrionics.
“Living under Maurice Duplessis” was little Stephane MAURICE Dion with his family in a modest bungalow in Sillery, QC.
From Wikipedia:
“Commanding the bluffs just west of the ancient city of Québec, Sillery was known, in the modern age, principally for its quiet tree-lined streets, its historic churches, its breathtaking views of the river and several very old schools run by a variety of religious orders.”
“The name Sillery is still used to refer to the affluent neighbourhood.”
That idiot would not know poverty if it bit him in the a$$.
Has he ever had to throw junkies out of his car, because they needed a place to shoot up?
Has he ever had to fist fight his way to school, because he was the new kid in the welfare housing project?
Has he ever had to hope that the Salvation Army makes it with the food hamper b4 Xmas?
Has he ever had to sleep on a floor, and huddle around the stove for heat, because there was no money for heating oil?
I could go on, but I think I have made my point.
These pseudo socialists in their $2000 suits do not give a damn about any poor person. And it offends me greatly when spoon fed children of trough feeders claim otherwise. Just goes to show how low certain libranos will go to try to garner votes.
F#$%ing librano morons!
BTW, my previous post is a description of just one of my winters as a child in a very poor immigrant family in Ontario in the early 70’s.
He was so poor…parents had to hire a really bad English tutor, some muttering guy from Shawinigan with a speech impediment.
Further on poverty, the Liberals are also bankrupt of ideas. Dion presented the Clarity Act as their own when in fact they stole the idea from a collaboration by Manning and Harper to present a clear question in any vote on separation.
They haven’t an original thought, too busy trying to trick people into voting Liberal.
I read the article and found another beauty, “I have more experience as minister of intergovernmental affairs (a post he held from 1996 to 2003) than any prime minister since Confederation.”
Well no Prime Minister ever held that position! Rona could make the same statement! It was a post created by Trudeau in 1977. Mulroney stuck Joe Clark in there for a couple of years. In fact it is such an important title that is has been left vacant for large periods of time. In recent times Chretien was effectively in that role under Trudeau without the title and he was later Prime Minister. It seems hardly worth tooting your horn over. What a blowhard
http://www.pco-bcp.gc.ca/aia/index.asp?lang=eng&page=about&sub=ministers&doc=formerministers_e.htm
Doesn’t he mean: “It wasn’t until my parents were recipients of the government dole that we could afford a comfortable life.” ?
Funny how simple logic defies the mind of an academic.
Why is it that I just can’t buy the line that his father’s books were a real money maker for the family.
Did they make the best sellers list?
Get the feeling his recollection of his childhood is a bit blurred to say the least.
Being the last to have a car or TV doesn’t necessarily mean that you can’t afford those things.
Steph’s dad was a professor, a profession which stereotypically features people who don’t own TVs or cars.
In fact, if I’m not mistaken Steph doesn’t have a driver’s license himself.
Free Man In Paris
by Joni Mitchell
The way I see it he said
You just can’t win it
Everybody’s in it for their own gain
You can’t please ’em all
There’s always somebody calling you down
I do my best
And I do good business
There’s a lot of people asking for my time
They’re trying to get ahead
They’re trying to be a good friend of mine
I was a free man in Paris
I felt unfettered and alive
There was nobody calling me up for favors
And no one’s future to decide
You know I’d go back there tomorrow
But for the work I’ve taken on
Stoking the star maker machinery
Behind the popular song
I deal in dreamers
And telephone screamers
Lately I wonder what I do it for
If l had my way
I’d just walk through those doors
And wander
Down the Champs Elysées
Going cafe to cabaret
Thinking how I’ll feel when I find
That very good friend of mine
I was a free man in Paris
I felt unfettered and alive
Nobody was calling me up for favors
No one’s future to decide
You know I’d go back there tomorrow
But for the work I’ve taken on
Stoking the star maker machinery
Behind the popular song
cool blue – exactly right.
Not having a TV isn’t always a sign of poverty but of ideological commitment to literacy and the ‘intellectual life’. Quite a few people with this mindset refuse to have a TV in their house.
Equally, not having a car isn’t a sign of poverty but may be due to not needing one. If you can walk to your university office, and don’t travel anywhere – you don’t need a car. Again, there are a lot of university types who don’t have cars. And have very high salaries.
Equally, it is nonsense to consider that his father’s income changed when his books were published. Academic books aren’t geared to make money.
Stephane Dion wasn’t poor. Ever. His father wasn’t unemployed. Ever. But instead, lived a comfortable government funded life as a tenured academic. No fear of loss of income. The family never relied on food banks, Goodwill clothing or donations. That’s not poverty. That’s middle class North America.
True poverty is when you can’t afford the basics:
– Food for substenance
– Shelter with heat and running water
– Functional clothing
– Medicine
If you live in Canada with it’s meriad of social assistance programs you are all but guaranteed all of the above…And more so if you have CHILDREN
When you don’t have enough of the basics BECAUSE you chose to prioritize fast food/prepared foods instead of cooking from scratch, cigarettes, beer, lottery tickets, drugs (the street kind),a cellphone and Gap clothing THAT’S ANOTHER PROBLEM.
Dion is barking up the wrong tree: SENIORS poverty will be a much more serious problem in the near future.
Liberals have no policies, except trying to nail anti-poverty Jell-O to the wall. Liberals are rudderless and therefore continue to hijack Parliament to try and cover up their own ineptitudes. Dion lives in a fantasy, we first saw it with Kyoto, now Schreiber/Mulroney = Harper = Adscam. Liberals need to stop the fantasy and offer constructive policy alternatives.
A graduating Medical Doctor with heavy school debt probably lives in poverty (as defined by Dion) but has a very bright future (unlike Dion). The issue is hope not poverty. We need to ensure that Canada has the strongest middle class in the world that has considerable opportunity and hope to improve their lot in life. That doesn’t mean they should all get a high definition TV right now to watch the CBC. It might mean we close the CBC and cut taxes by the billions saved .. that would offer real hope.
Interesting…Dion was raised in a middle-class household and calls it “poor.” ET is right about the status angle. An example of it from the U.S. was a majority of intellectual types forsaking colour TV for black and white, as a trend, ’round 1966 or so. The underlying impulse is not unrelated to snobbery, but it tends to be motivated by ‘bookishness’ in the good sense. The value judgement’s up to you.
What I would like to point out, though, is a typical habit of the intellectual: assuming that his/her rightful place is in the semi-upper class. That’s the lifestyle that he/she considers to be his/her just deserts (except for the brassy ones who think that they have a right to full upper-class status.)
An object lesson in how to create and nurse a feeling of economic resentment…
There are still people in Manitoba living with mud floors,
MSM’s say they should pay higher taxes in order to ensure natives have decent housing.
I disagree,
I feel sorry for Poor Stephane, to be deprived of those marvelous shows such as “Romper Room” Freindly Giant(and his is a rocker for Stephane) and of course “Chez Helene”.
Oh wait a minute we did not have television until 1962, So i was deprived & Poor, I must have been at our neighbours now iam depressed that i was a deprived child living in poverty.
Ok sarc off, Poverty to a family,child is no laughing matter I remember kids in our classroom being the brunt of jokes because they did not have TV, clothes that were old looking, just an apple for lunch or many things we took for granted let alone inside plumbing. Both my parents worked so that they could purchase a TV in the sixties was a feat that is unimaginable in todays standards, listening to my mom today talking about their wages back then.
Steffi, go read Jeannette Walls book “The Glass Castle” then you will understand what poverty is.
Awwww…. so they had a hard time paying the mortgage. I’ll play this game with Stephanie
Did his father ever lose a house?
Was his father’s car a junker older than 10 years old being thrown out by someone else in the family when they got it?
Did his mother make cushions & pillows out of saved up dryer lint?
Was his family’s first tv fished out of someone else’s garbage?
Was his first bike a girls bike fished out of someone else’s garbage?
Were most of his clothes hand-me-downs from an older sister and older girl cousins?
When he did get new clothes were they only bought during $1.49 Days at Woodwards?
And I never considered my family poor. So I think Stephanie should shut the eff up! It’s an insult to people ACTUALLY living in poverty for him to pretend he knows what it’s like to be in their situation.
Dion is such a whiner!
I spent a portion of my early childhood in Galway living with my Grand-Parents and my Uncles family (my uncle had 9 kids at the time). We lived in a small farmhouse with NO RUNNING WATER (except what fell off the roof), NO INDOOR PLUMBING, NO RADIO OR TV, NO ELECTRICITY. My Grand-mother cooked over a large fireplace fueled by turf. We didn’t consider ourselve poor. We had three square meals a day, but no frills.
I can’t understand how poor Steffie can bitch. He wouldn’t no hardship if it hit him.
Mike
“…Mulroney whines that he had to take the $300,000. from KHA because his family wanted the lifestyle he had before politics…”
There’s a saying about wanting to p*$$ with the big dogs, but not being able to lift your leg high enough. That’s Mulroney, alright. Of course, if he really needed the $300K all he had to do was auction off Mila’s shoe collection.
I do agree that Dion grew up poor, however. He seems to suffer from a poverty of thought. *snicker*
I’ll bet Mere and Pere’s mortgage headaches (BTW, who doesn’t have headaches about paying off a mortgage?) pale in comparison to the headaches people had in the 80s, thanks to the same Liberal party that Dion now leads.
Dion can go pound sand.
Stephane’s non-plan to reduce child poverty by 50% in five years, is the same hollow, hypocritical b.s. as his non-plan for the environment.
It was about 18 years ago that NDP leader, Ed Broadbent’s motion to eliminate child poverty by 2000, was unanimously endorsed by Parliament.
Didn’t matter. Under the Liberals, child poverty increased, despite surpluses. Just like pollution increased under the Liberals and Stephane Dion in particular.
Dion says he can end poverty for 30% of those living in poverty in Canada?
What about the other 70%?
Is he that heartless that he would choose to dole out a higher standard of living to some and not others.
This is selective welfarism. It is discrimination at it’s height. Who is he to decide who will get a new wide screen for free and who won’t.
He must never become prime minister. He is too evil and dorky.
Dion is a pathetic joke.
Mulroney can be credited with our nation’s turnaround from the idiocy of Trudeaunomic disaster but he has the arrogance and entitlement complex of the worst of the liberals. So policy wise he was ok (CF-18 contracts notwithstanding.) But he is the quintessential Quebec chauvinist.
From Wiki:
… I wanted to challenge my dad… the way to become an adult sometimes is to say the contrary to your father.
And in one concise sentence Stephane Dion summarizes the essence of the Canadian Leftist Establishment.
Someone should let Dion know that this is a belligerant rejectionist step one goes through on the way to adulthood, not the definition of adulthood
I cant figure who was poorer, Dion without a TV. or Brian Mulroney needing a quick 300 K to get him over the hump of leaving public life?
all those Quebec policitions are entitled to their entitlements and more it seems.
can Dion borrow Pettigrews chauffeur, he would know his way around paris even if he didnt drive.the 10k it cost us last time should have bought a map and a metro pass.
we were so poor, at Christmas our parents wanted to give us something to wear and something to play with , so they gave us a pair of pants and cut the pockets out of them.
The Libs just love socialist university professors. The Dioncrites want to prop up Stevie D. as long as possible–Conservatives shouldn’t knock him.
Cal2: That’s a good one!!!! You gotta have rural Sask roots!!
Having been raised in rural Saskatchewan myself, , I’ve heard my share of 1930’s “hard luck” and CCF “somebody done me wrong stories.”
If Dion wants sympathy from Western Canadians, he came to the wrong place. How many farms in Saskatchewan still don’t have a reliable municipal water supply? Poverty comes in many shapes and forms. As for Mr. Dion, thanks but no thanx.
PS: I’ve been to Montmartre!! Only very “well to do” university students converged in that district. Want a good example? Try Pierre Trudeau for starters!! Now you know where Dion picked up his wild ideas.
Thank you for my laugh of the day. Although I never liked mulrooney that much, but the hatchet job the Lieberals did on him was nothing but pure vengeance that the taxpayers of Canada had to foot the bill for. Helicopters, GTA Airport, and the present kerfuffle are all examples of crap that Cretien & the old boy’s club pulled. And don’t even get me going on pulling the army out of Calgary and making the largest runway in the commonwealth into a parking lot for tanks.
Little Stephie trying to out poor muloonie is truly pathetic. Probably had to eat hot dogs with his hands back then. Sacre bleu!!
Hey Stephane:
Did you have to use an outhouse until you moved out of home at 18 years of age?
Did you have meat on the table more than three times a week because your dad was boozing away most of the money he made at his seasonal job?
Where’s the freakin’ violins?
In stats released last week, 97% of the ‘poor’ in the US had colour TV’s.
Did I mention our first TV was a used black and white, 12-inch model.
Sheesh. Get some perspective.
When DeYawn claims that he can end poverty for 30% of the poor in Canada, he is probably referring to the poor in his home province.
He will accomplish that, by giving them all governmint flunky jobs, (with governmint flunky CREDIT CARDS).
“We were the last in our neighbourhood to get a TV, the last to get a
car. My parents had headaches about how to pay for the house.”
You were loocky, Stef. We ‘ad to lick the walls of our igloo for noorishment in winter.
“We were the last in our neighbourhood to get a TV, the last to get a
car. My parents had headaches about how to pay for the house.”
You were loocky, Stef. We ‘ad to lick the walls of our igloo for noorishment in winter.
Apologies for double post – resent after apparent rejection msg
IN the 1958 to 1960 we were really good friends with our neighbour who was an engineer [ Saint Lawrence Seaway construction – Beauharnois Quebec ].
We were not all that poor and did not miss any Ed Sullivan because we always watched it in our friend*s living room.
TV was not nearly as much fun when we got our own. = TG
Well this explains a lot of things. Having grown up living the hard scrabble life of a son of a academic, I can see where his derision for those rigpig wimps making the izzy money comes from.
Syncro
I don’t have any problem giving people a helping hand out of poverty, glad to do it, but who exactly does Dion think is going to pay for it – certainly not the Quebecers who only have their hands out.
Well at least Dion’s parents were able to afford a home; all the monies paid to them for giving birth to five kids must have come in handy to afford that down payment for their mortgage. I won’t even tell you how poor I was when growing up. My father had two university degrees, except he wasn’t French, although he could speak it. He trained French Canadians for positions he was not ‘allowed’ to hold because he wasn’t French – yah, I feel sorry for Dion…..not bloody likely.
What Dion is demonstrating is that he has no idea what poverty is. I grew up in a close family of 8 kids and, while issues like school fees were tough, we always had foot to eat, and clothes on our back, along with loving and nuturing parents.
We weren’t poor though, we just weren’t affluent. Absence of affluence is not necessarily poverty. Certainly LICOs aren’t.
Dion and his fellow lefty travellers live in some seminar like world where good intentions and grand plans are good enough to end poverty. They aren’t . What are the “root causes” of poverty? Here are a few, IMO (call them risk factors if you like, because many rise above them, while others don’t):
– not enough family guidance (for many reasons)
– poor education (even HS diploma great mitigator against poverty)
– laziness, lack of ambition (or happy just the way they are, not looking to have more)
– victimology (and endless advocates willing to work on their behalf, for government funding of course)
– disability/sickness
– pervading view that profit and corporations are “bad” and government solutions are good.
– and many other factors.
We are a wealthy society easily able to provide a “hand up” to those who need and want it. Trying to provide a handout to everyone who wants it will bankrupt any society, not matter how affluent