A strong start begins with a living wage.

Since it cost us each five cents to hear our Premier speak in his October 27th television appearance, there is just cause for all of us to put our two cents worth into the dialogue.
Gordon Campbell used his time to defend the HST and to sweeten the mix with a tax cut that at most will amount to about seven dollars a week for regular folk and nothing for the 40% who are low income taxpayers or the very poor. To make any real difference, he should have announced a rise in the minimum wage level and income assistance rates to at least the poverty line.
Welfare income in this province keeps families income about $21,000.00 below the poverty line (which is $39,000 for a family of four). In addition, over 245,000 BC workers earn less than ten dollars an hour. It takes a wage of $16.74 an hour for two working parents and two children to live at the poverty line.
Ministry of Housing and Social Development statistics reflect a rise in the number of people on welfare from 145,700 in March 2008 to 179,394 in March of 2010, an increase of 33,674 people. Many of these include children. In 2009, over 80 percent of food banks in BC saw an increase in people needing food, and one third of BC food bank users are children. Unemployment rates have also increased from 4.3% in April 2008 to 7.3% in April 2010, representing an additional 75,600 British Columbians, many with children. All these children are paying the price.
Remedying this situation would likely address his concern that one in five grade four students are not at grade level for reading, writing and arithmetic. There is a very interesting parallel here. One in five children in this province live in poverty, the highest rate in Canada. Could it be that the kids who are not getting adequate nutrition, shelter, health and dental care, who are stressed, who see their parents stressed, who are cold, sleepless, hurting, humiliated and who often sleep in mould infested quarters are the ones who aren’t really equipped or motivated to read a book, write a journal, or do long division? It is known that children who experienced poverty during the first four to five years of life experienced a full nine-point decline in intelligence test scores compared to children who experienced no poverty.
Campbell thinks the answer is to create more StrongStart Centres across the Province. Under the direction of licensed early childhood educators, parents and children participate in early learning activities, such as story time, music, singing, art, and puzzles, during daytime hours, usually in local schools. We have several programs here taking place at local schools. What happens to the working poor family who cannot take time off for the mandatory accompaniment, or to the single parent who does not have enough money for transit to get to these centres? What about the parent with an addiction, a mental illness, depression, or who has to sleep during the day because the only job they can find is a night shift stocking shelves job? What about the homeless family? This is the reality for many families who, despite what Campbell thinks, do not struggle from paycheque to paycheque, but who start struggling the day after their paycheque arrives and is swallowed up by rent and hydro costs, not to mention the additional cost of the HST.
A “strong start” does not begin in the gymnasiums and community centres of the province because by then the damage has been done to pre- school children living in poverty. Poor mothers have not received adequate prenatal care or nutrition, infants have not benefited from breast feeding because the mother is malnourished, or from formula that is not watered down because it is too expensive. Babies have spent their days couch surfing with homeless mothers, lacking attachment to stressed parents, fail to thrive in living desperate living situations, toddlers have become chronically sick with upper respiratory infections, skin problems, allergies, asthma, kidney disease, mental disability, all statistically linked to being poor.
A strong start for children begins with the parents, offering those who are marginalized the dignity of a living wage or supports that provide for the basic necessities of life, unconditionally.