History of Poverty in Canada
See also: Economic history of Canada and The Great Depression in CanadaCanada's history is marked by identified periods of growth and recession, and an evolving response of government intervention to assist low-income Canadians.
Reflecting the practice in the British Isles, organized assistance to the poor was largely the realm of churches. In the early 20th century, the Catholic Encyclopedia reported that there were eighty-seven hospitals in Canada under the control and direction of various Catholic religious communities.
After the Great Depression, Bennett and Mackenzie King spurred the first stages of Canada's welfare state, and the size and role of the government began to grow immensely over the next decades. Many social programs developed during this time designed to increase the Canadian citizen's quality of life.
At the end of the Sixties, Statistics Canada estimated that the number of Canadians living in poverty (using measurements drawn up by Jenny Podoluk) had fallen from about 25% of the population in 1961 to about 18% in 1969. A Senate inquiry in 1969, however, estimated that as many as 1 in 4 Canadians were living in poverty that year. From 1969 to 1982, the proportion of families with incomes below the poverty line fell from 20.8% to 13.9%.
In recent years, newly arrived immigrants have higher than average low-income rates, although each immigrant arrival cohort year experiences a declining low-income rate over time.
Read more about this topic: Poverty In Canada
Famous quotes containing the words history of, history, poverty and/or canada:
“The history of reform is always identical; it is the comparison of the idea with the fact. Our modes of living are not agreeable to our imagination. We suspect they are unworthy. We arraign our daily employments.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“I believe that in the history of art and of thought there has always been at every living moment of culture a “will to renewal.” This is not the prerogative of the last decade only. All history is nothing but a succession of “crises”Mof rupture, repudiation and resistance.... When there is no “crisis,” there is stagnation, petrification and death. All thought, all art is aggressive.”
—Eugène Ionesco (b. 1912)
“It was not important that they survive.
What mattered was that they should bear
Some lineament or character,
Some affluence, if only half-perceived,
In the poverty of their words,
Of the planet of which they were part.”
—Wallace Stevens (1879–1955)
“What makes the United States government, on the whole, more tolerable—I mean for us lucky white men—is the fact that there is so much less of government with us.... But in Canada you are reminded of the government every day. It parades itself before you. It is not content to be the servant, but will be the master; and every day it goes out to the Plains of Abraham or to the Champs de Mars and exhibits itself and toots.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)