Editor's Notes

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Kristin McCahon

Despite the fact that we live in one of the wealthier of the world’s countries, many of us have lived through lean times in our own lives. Perhaps we grew up in poorer households where there was no money left over for skating lessons or school field trips. Maybe we lived through a week or two each month of ichiban noodles and long walks to campus when we were attending post-secondary education. Some of us recall trying to juggle phone bills, dental bills, school supplies bills, food bills, and more bills as our young families were growing up. Whatever our memories, most of us know that being short of money is very unpleasant. We don’t want to live that way. And we don’t wish it upon others.

But for many of us, even when we were doing without something we needed, the pain and embarrassment of doing without was short-lived. For example, when we were attending post-secondary education and living on low-nutrition food, we knew that the sacrifices we were making at the time would result in better lives in the form of higher-paying jobs later.

During these periods of belt-tightening, we would probably not have thought of ourselves as among the "poor." We knew we didn’t have everything we wanted or needed, but we certainly weren’t poor. Poor, to most of us, means something quite different. Poor is a state of desperation. It is long-term. It has a never-ending, grinding hopelessness about it that we, for the most part, have not felt.

Perhaps this is why we really care about the poor. We may know what it is like to do without some things some of the time, and we don’t want to know what it is like to do without a lot of what we need most of the time. Neither do we want others to feel that desperation.

Just how many Canadians are in the latter camp? To hear the anti-poverty activists tell it, hundreds of thousands of the country’s children live in poverty. But is that a realistic tally? This issue of Fraser Forum examines poverty: what makes children poor? how can schools help? and how does the media portray poverty?

Poverty "will be always with us," so it is important that we look at it sensibly and pragmatically, as well as compassionately.

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