You can "get a job" and still be poor.

There are some who think being poor is a matter of lack of values, motivation
and determination. But in 2008, many of us will begin to know it to be something
different. You can work hard all of your life, have impeccable values and still
end up poor.

Poor people are seen by some as unworthy, lazy, potentially criminal and a
threat to social stability. They need to get a job.


But what if they had a job and lost it? Do we look at poor people differently based on how they got where they are?

Poor bashing has, for years, diverted attention away from the actual causes of
poverty and unemployment onto the victims of inequality—the poor and the unemployed.
Many families in our community are finding out that their grip on the good life
can be shaken loose in an instant. They had enough income and job security to
get by and afford the little extras. But a pink slip can reduce a family from
solidly middle class to newly poor in a few months.
Losing your job can be devastating.

Canadian Mental Health Association considers job loss to be a major life crisis
comparable to serious injury, divorce, death of a family member. Shock, anger,
frustration, grief, worry, shame, loss of identity, social ties, friendships and
income is happening in Campbell River.
In a matter of months, people in our community, working people, could move away
from a comfortable life with decent pay and health insurance to an $8.00-an-hour
job with no insurance, no benefits, and just enough resources for a while to
keep the wolf from the door.

One quarter of Canadians are in jobs that pay under $10/hour. Forty per cent
have precarious part-time, contract, temporary jobs, or are self-employed.
Some will experience the deep embarrassment of applying for welfare, and the
sudden realization that living on $610.00 a month is not as easy as had been assumed.

They will spend most of their income on housing. They will no longer buy
anything unless it's absolutely essential. They will never turn down a free
meal. The family pets will have to go. They will learn to graciously accept money, furniture, food, rides, and encouragement from worried friends. They will decide what prescriptions they absolutely have to get.
When they think about buying something, they will think about how many hours they have to work to pay for it.

Even if they are able to trim around the edges, there are fixed costs that eat up most of the income from low wages or welfare. Rent or mortgage, car payments, insurance, and childcare. Families must pay them each and every month, through good times and bad, there is no way to cut back from one month to
the next, as can be done with spending on clothing or food. Short of moving out
of the house, withdrawing their children from preschool, or cancelling the
insurance policy altogether, they are stuck.

They will no longer be proud.

Simply put, they will be in survival mode. You cannot be lazy to be in survival mode.

But they are not alone.

Canada's rich are getting richer while the poor get poorer and the middle class
stagnates, according to 2005 census data released May 1, 2008, by Statistics Canada.
Between 1980 and 2005, median earnings among Canada's top earners rose more than
16 per cent while those in the bottom fifth saw their wages dip by 20 per cent.

Economists blame the growing income gap on inadequate minimum wages, the loss of
well-paying manufacturing jobs, the decline in union workplaces, and the
increase in contract and temporary employment and low paying service sector
work. Good jobs with benefits are hard to come by here.

At 21 %, BC has the highest rate of poverty in Canada for the fourth year in a row.
Among low-income families with children, 66% live in unaffordable housing. Low-income
families rather than individuals are the fastest growing group of users of emergency housing or shelters.

Since 2001, the number of children served by food banks in our province has
doubled and family visits have increased by 145%. Many of the families visiting
food banks are employed.

BC had the highest rate of working poor in the country at 10.2%—double the
Canadian average.

We are about to learn that the poor are not as divorced from the rest of us as
we would like to think. They think like us, have the same virtues and vices,
they love their children, they feel embarrassment, humiliation, anger, guilt and
fear. They really would like to have a job that can provide for their needs.
Maybe they had a job and something went wrong. Maybe something went wrong and
they never got a job. They can become us (about 40 per cent make their way out
of poverty after just one year) and we can become them. The 1990s demonstrated
how easy it is to fall into poverty. All you have to do is lose your good
middle-class job during a recession.

There is just cause to care about poverty and those in it, not just to be
charitable, not because it is a nice thing to do and not because it is them and
not us. We should care about poverty because, in the end, this story isn't just
about the 22% officially designated as low-income. It is about individuals and
families with names and stories who may have been born into it, abused into it,
disabled into it, abandoned into it, or pushed into it after leaving their hard
hats at the gate.