The kids aren't alright

Jean Chretien's new rhetoric about helping the poor and weak must be measured against his utter failure to deal with child poverty

By: June Callwood

  Last weekend, when he outlined how humane the Liberal Party of Canada is, Prime Minister Jean Chretien positioned himself as the only benevolent politician on the planet by promising that the next federal budget will be all about kindness to the poor, sick and downtrodden. The Ottawa backroom explains this singular position as the Prime Minister's sly way of distinguishing his leadership from the central-rightist policies of Paul Martin, his devious rival. Chretien can't feint to the right of Martin because that space is filled by political parties who have enthusiastically staked out the territory of Vlad the Impaler, so he necessarily has moved left. A born-again humanist, Chretien declared last weekend that he leads a party devoted to "the weak and those who need help."
  Prime Ministers often sorrow over needy people when elections are imminent, so this is not particularly heartening for the poor, sick and downtrodden. It is difficult for them to forget that only weeks ago the Prime Minister's party produced a budget in which the poor, sick and downtrodden were somehow overlooked.
  As is becoming increasingly, embarrassingly clear, this oversight is not a good thing. Chambers of Commerce are becoming alarmed because cities don't look their best when draped in street beggars and ragged people sleeping on the sidewalks. In fact, homelessness is a growth industry in this country, teenage despair is running off the scale, and cities like Toronto - the new child poverty capital of Canada - have become monuments to how badly this country is treating its young.
 

June Callwood - Photo: 1991, Doane Gregory

  The figures on child poverty are disturbing enough - 1.3 million children in Canada living below the poverty line - but the reality of many children's lives should rightly be seen as a national crisis. Doctors are finding increasing numbers of children with diseases exacerbated by malnutrition; teachers buy school lunches with their own money; almost half the people using food banks are children; families keep moving around in a fruitless search for affordable housing, uprooting their children four or five times in a year; stressed-out, overwhelmed single moms can't summon the energy for the exhausting work of responding to demanding toddlers. In Toronto alone, 15,000 pre-school children are on waiting lists for subsidized day care.
  Social workers and public health nurses and teachers know that, right before their eyes, a generation of children (at least, those on the bottom half of the economic spectrum) is being wrecked.
  All of this is happening at the same time as such sophisticated devices as MRIs are establishing that brain development in early childhood is influenced strongly by how safe and stimulated and treasured a child feels. Youngsters given a good start in life have brains hard-wired for success in school, and school is where society divides the haves from the never-will-have.
  It is lovely that the Prime Minister is deeply committed to providing low-income housing, parenting programs, job-entry opportunities, and early childhood education to relieve some of this country's misery. It would be even lovelier if it were possible to believe that he means it.

June Callwood is a journalist who lives in Toronto.

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