Argumentative Essay: Poverty Is In Our Own Backyard

Poverty is not halfway around the world, only in third-world countries, it’s everywhere. Poverty is in our own backyard. Poverty is the children down the street who go to bed hungry because of their lack of access to adequate food. Poverty is the family who can’t afford to pay their bills. One in seven people in Canada lives in poverty; that’s 4.9 million people. In a resource-rich, compassionate country like Canada, this is simply unacceptable. The government must do more to help those suffering from poverty.

The Canadian government spends billions of dollars on poverty annually, but we must ask ourselves if we are doing enough. For the past decades, the government has only been focusing on short-term solutions. In the 1980s, for instance, food banks were established as a very temporary response to food poverty, but in March of 2014, 833,098 people in Canada turned to food banks. It’s been 30 years. How do we not have a long-term solution for those living in poverty? Every year, the government spends billions on a social welfare system that only addresses the symptoms of poverty but leaves the illness itself untreated.

Education, in any society, increases life prospects. Although in post-secondary education statistics, Canada performs relatively well overall, there are parts of the population that need attention. For instance, the dropout rate of Aboriginals in high schools is four times higher than the national average. Improving literacy rates, early childhood learning and skills development are all essential because they reflect the ever-changing job market. 

The current income security programs do not reflect labour market realities as they are premised on full-time employment under one employer with a 35-hour workweek, ignoring the dramatic increase in other forms of labour. Erratic and part-time hours disadvantage workers, leaving many with insufficient hours to qualify for employment insurance or reducing their weeks of entitlement if they do qualify. The barriers posed by the current employment insurance system are felt most keenly by those who are already vulnerable to poverty, particularly women, immigrants, and youth.

In Canada, racialized communities often face discrimination that contributes to inadequate housing and social exclusion, low-paying and precarious jobs, and criminalization. Racialized individuals and marginalized communities in Canada experience poverty at extremely high rates. Compared to the one in twenty non-racialized families in poverty, one in five racialized families live in poverty in Canada.

Personal traits are just one of the several elements that determine your wealth. Escaping poverty is not as simple as working hard. To improve the quality of life for Canadians and reduce poverty conditions, the government must take unbiased steps to remodel a good political system that addresses the basic needs to solve the increasing poverty in the country. By providing a quality education for everyone, creating new approaches to income security programs, and adapting to the needs of racialized communities, poverty can be eliminated. In this prosperous country that we are fortunate to live in, it is time to end poverty and reduce inequality. It is time to increase the equality of opportunities and share our prosperity further.