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Voice of the People

August 11, 2010

Speak out against poverty

Halifax Chronicle Herald

Congratulations to Mike Savage on his Aug. 3 opinion piece on poverty.  Canada is a rich country.  We have the highest ranking of any banking system in the world.  We withstood the global meltdown of 2008 etter than the U.S. and Europe did.  However, Canada also has the 19th highest rate of poverty among the 29 developed economies and the gap between rich and poor has been increasing over the past two decades.

Last January, 5,000 jobs were lost in Nova Scotia.  It is easy for the people who lost these jobs to remain nameless, faceless statistics, but we shouldn't let that happen.  They are all mothers and fathers, wives, husbands, children.  We are our brother's keeper.  Gandhi once said, "All humanity is one indivisible family and I cannot detach myself from any soul.  And no culture can live if it attempts to be exclusive."

We urge everyone to speak out against poverty and encourage the development of a national anti-poverty strategy.

Sharon Murphy, Chair

Social Justice Committee,

N.S. Association of Social Workers