What if you couldn't afford a hot dog on hot dog day?

NEWS RELEASE

TONY MARTIN, MP

************************* North Bay children tell MPs how poverty really hurts

National poverty plan hearings begin

OTTAWA – Members of Parliament beginning historic hearings into a national poverty plan heard a poem from North Bay schoolchildren Thursday on how being poor excludes them from what so many of their friends enjoy.

“Not going to McDonald’s, getting Santa Fund baskets, missing birthday parties, no camping, no hot dog on hot dog day, no hockey, pretending you forgot your lunch,” were some of the ways the kids defined poverty in their poem, Being Poor.

It was submitted Tuesday as a written brief by income security expert Richard Shillington and then read at televised hearings Thursday by NDP MP Martin as MPs grappled with coming up with an official poverty measurement Canada might adopt.

“I'm going to talk now about programs, but before that I've given the committee a poem, Poverty Is from children in North Bay,” Shillington said. “These are not economists. They will not talk about before-tax, after-tax; they will talk about what it's like to be a child living in poverty. What I want you to notice is they're not talking about malnutrition, they're not talking about housing, they're talking about social exclusion. That's what they see. If this committee chooses to think about poverty, they will think about social exclusion.”

Martin, whose motion led to the national hearings, said: “Shillington has it right. Kids figure poverty out by kindergarten. We may need a combination of factors to measure poverty but above all we need a plan with targets that leaves no one behind - not the kids, not their parents or their families. We need a poverty plan that ends this exclusion of so many Canadians and newcomers which means they lead less than productive lives.”

The poem is a collection of ideas from children from North Bay who were asked for responses by their teacher to the question of what is poverty.

The Interfaith Social Assistance Reform Coalition (ISARC) featured them in a book: Our Neighbours Voices: Will We Listen?

You can hear the poem on this You Tube posted video: