Social Policy in Ontario

Anti-poverty tax credit would lead to health savings, Opinion online, June 14

This idea is not new, but big kudos to Hugh Segal for putting it back into the public discourse from the power seat.

Every other country that uses a form of this idea has better standing in the world comparators on health, life quality, education, addictions, and other related issues. It is very simple science and economics.

The reasons that Canadians and the United States in particular lag behind the rest of the developed world in these matters is specifically based on our relative dependence on the notion that poverty is related to a moral problem. To put this more simply — poor people deserve less because they don’t do the right things to be morally correct.

This pervasive attitude is not solely religious, though history would show that it arrived on the shores of North America with the Europeans who left Europe on largely religiously based reasons and has made itself one of the strongest threads of our New World culture.

Let’s dig our collective Canada out of debt, into better health and logically, into more productivity by supporting our whole family. And if you think that sounds like socialism, I say to you that is a mask you put on it out of fear of change.

Karla Forgaard-Pullen, Little Britain

< http://www.thestar.com/opinion/letters_to_the_editors/2013/06/17/poverty_tax_credit_a_worthy_idea.html >