You are on a business trip or perhaps headed for a well-deserved vacation. After your flight lands forty-five minutes late, you run for what seems like miles to make your connecting flight. Arriving five minutes past the scheduled departure time, you discover the plane has taken off..
Heading over the to the airline counter, the customer service representative informs you that the next and last flight to your destination has been cancelled. You will have to wait until tomorrow. How would you react in this situation? Would you become ostensibly angry or inwardly frustrated?
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Even if you could not get another flight on another airline that day, one thing is for sure - you would not have to sleep on the street. Yet, that is exactly how tens of millions of people sleep each and every night worldwide - including in nations of the ex-British Empire. Although Australia and Canada may be smaller in population than the United States and the United Kingdom, the amount of poverty is largely equal in terms of the percentage of people that neither have a place to live nor enough food to eat.
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Australia: Down and Out 'Down Under'
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Compared to the United States, the total number of inhabitants on the island-continent of Australia is less than one tenth of the American population (22 million/310 million). Nevertheless, 2.2 million Australians live in poverty, and more than 100,000 Australians are homeless. Beyond the sizable numbers of the poor, it is the makeup or who comprises the underclass that is truly disturbing.
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Almost 15% of the poor are children. While child poverty in Australia is not as high as in the United States (20%), it is far worse than Norway (3%). Even more troubling is the overall trend. The numbers of the indigent have only increased over the past two decades. While the percentage of destitute citizens was 7.6% in 1994, that figure rose to 9.9% ten years later and stands at 11.1% today. As in the US and the UK, non-Caucasians (people of color) are far more likely to be underprivileged due to socio-economic exclusion - as the legacy of structural racism still casts a shadow over the Western world.
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Although the unemployment rate is a relatively low 5.1%, that figure has increased recently. If the ranks of the underemployed are factored into the equation, the actual percentage is significantly higher.
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Rather than continuing to remain focused on the Prime Minister Gillard's carbon tax plan, it is time for middle and upper class Australians to raise the issues of poverty and unemployment/underemployment onto the national stage.
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Oh Canada: Time to 'Stand on Guard' For The Poor
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From Vancouver, British Columbia on the Pacific to Montreal, Quebec on the Atlantic, homelessness and poverty continue to plague a significant percentage of Canada's 35 million people. Similar to Australia, just over 10% (3.5 million) of the Canadian population is poor, and as many as 900,000 have no shelter. Canada also posts one of the highest rates of child poverty among developed countries with more than 600,000 children who suffer from want.
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Despite several years of economic growth in the 2000s, the Canadian middle class is losing ground, and more lives now teeter on the brink of poverty. While the unemployment rate has climbed to 7.3%, the annual inflation rate (2.7%) exceeds GDP growth (0.2% monthly/2.4% annually). In 2009, Canada set an alarming new domestic record. More Canadians lined up to receive handouts from food banks than at any time previously - almost 900,000 people.
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How great is the gulf between the rich and the poor in Canada? In a study completed by researchers at McMaster University on wealth and poverty in Hamilton, Ontario last year - the place where the university stands, they found that the wealthiest members of the city live twenty-one years longer than the poorest ones on average. If you are shocked that such a phenomenon could exist in a developed country, you are not alone. However, similar life-expectancy disparities exist between the rich and the poor in parts of all nations of the ex-British Empire.
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Wanted: A New Generation of Jack Laytons
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Unless you live in Canada, you have probably never heard of Jack Layton (1950-2011). Although he never became prime minister, Layton devoted his entire life to eradicating poverty by making it an issue in the classroom as a professor, in Toronto as a Toronto City Councilman and in the nation as a Member of Parliament and the leader of the New Democratic Party.
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Before passing away three weeks ago at age sixty-one from cancer, Layton wrote one last letter with the following exhortation, "There will be those who will try to persuade you to give up our cause. But that cause is much bigger than any one leader. Answer them by recommitting with energy and determination to do our work. Remember our proud history of social justice, universal health care, public pensions and making sure that no one is left behind."
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If poverty continues to be ignored as an issue in our communities and in our nations, it will continue to destroy the lives of more men, women and children. Are you ready to take a public stand against poverty?
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Whether you know it or not, people in the present and the future are counting on your leadership and compassion. Please do not let them down.
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Key Sources
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1) To read an article on poverty in Canada in The Economist (2010), please click onto the following link: http://www.economist.com/node/17581844
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2) For information on Canadian 'Food Insecurity' in Social Determinants of Health: The Canadian Facts, please click onto the following link: http://www.thecanadianfacts.org/The_Canadian_Facts.pdf
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3) To read a recent article on poverty (28 January 2011) in The Sydney Morning Herald, please click onto the following link: http://www.smh.com.au/opinion/society-and-culture/no-lies-no-inventions--poverty-in-australia-is-awfully-real-20110127-1a6yy.html
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4) To review an impressive collection of poverty statistics on poverty in Australia at thebigissue.org, please click onto the following link: http://www.thebigissue.org.au/Facts_Figures_Poverty_Homelessness_Australia.pdf
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(Photo: A homeless man asleep on a snowy street in Montreal, Canada)
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This article is dedicated to the memory of Jack Layton and the families of the victims of 9/11/2001.
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J Roquen