Poverty and income inequality have been on the rise in Canada since the mid-1990s, according to the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development. We choose this time, because it is a time, of all others, when Want is keenly felt, and Abundance rejoices. “Under the impression that they scarcely furnish Christian cheer of mind or body to the multitude,” returned the gentleman, “a few of us are endeavouring to raise a fund to buy the Poor some meat and drink and means of warmth. “Oh! I was afraid, from what you said at first, that something had occurred to stop them in their useful course,” said Scrooge. York University Prof Stephen Gaetz estimates that police have spent more than $1 million issuing the tickets. Toronto police issued 15,324 panhandling tickets under the Safe Streets Act to homeless people in 2010 – an increase of more than 2000% since the year 2000. “The Treadmill and the Poor Law are in full vigour, then?” said Scrooge. Toronto’s homeless shelter system is projected to have1,416,766 bednights (one woman, man or child in one bed for one night) during 2012 – an increase of 61,490 bednights from 2011 (that’s a 4.5% increase in one year). Still,” returned the gentleman, “I wish I could say they were not.” “And the Union workhouses?” demanded Scrooge. The prison population is growing, even though Canada’s crime rate has been dropping since the early 1990s. There are about 38,000 adults in Canada’s prisons in 2010/11, the latest year for which numbers are available from Statistics Canada. “Plenty of prisons,” said the gentleman, laying down the pen again. Those households include a total of 161,886 women, men and children.
In fact, the wait list has set a new record every month since the recession of 2008. Toronto Housing Connections reports that there are 87,638 households on the city’s affordable housing wait list as of November 2012. The Ontario Association of Food Banks reports 412,998 individuals lined up at food banks in March of 2012, with Food Banks Canada reporting 882,188 people used food banks across the country in that same month.
Toronto’s Daily Bread Food Bank reports a total of 1,123,500 visits to food charities in the Greater Toronto area in 2012 – up 18% from the recession of 2008. Many thousands are in want of common necessaries hundreds of thousands are in want of common comforts, sir.
Scrooge,” said the gentleman, taking up a pen, “it is more than usually desirable that we should make some slight provision for the Poor and Destitute, who suffer greatly at the present time. The words of Dickens follow, with notes from Toronto, Ontario and Canada in 2012 in italics. Charles Dickens, in his famous novel Christmas Carol, writes of a visit by two charity-minded men to the office of Ebenezer Scrooge.
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