Posted on 03/04/2006 4:58:59 PM PST by Heartofsong83
Toronto's new lost generation Mar. 3, 2006. 01:00 AM CAROL GOAR
Peer into Toronto's baby carriages if you want a glimpse of the city's future.
The face looking back at you isn't likely to be white. Six out of every 10 children born in Toronto belong to a visible minority. And the proportion is rising. Two-thirds of infants have mothers from outside Canada.
There's a 30 per cent chance the child's life will have begun in poverty. That compares to an 18 per cent probability in the rest of Canada.
There is a 25 per cent chance the infant's parents will split before his or her sixth birthday. Family disruption is a fact of life, even for toddlers.
There is a 15.6 per cent chance the child will not get proper nutrition during his or her formative years. A well-balanced diet is beyond the reach of many families.
There is a 5.2 per cent chance you'll be looking at a low-birth-weight baby, who is prone to infection and development problems. That is above the provincial average of 4 per cent.
Most strikingly, you'll see all of Toronto's income disparities magnified. In the city's richest neighbourhoods, the babies will be healthier, better fed, better dressed and better prepared to learn than their counterparts anywhere in Canada. In its poorest neighbourhoods, the newborns will be smaller, poorer, sicker and more precariously housed than infants in most of the country. Not coincidentally, these low-income districts — which include a large swath of Scarborough, the downtown east side and the entire northwest quadrant (stretching from Dufferin St. to Highway 427 above Highway 401) — are where most new immigrants live.
This statistical profile was assembled by Toronto's medical officer of health to get politicians and community activists thinking about how to prevent today's warning signals from becoming tomorrow's crisis.
Dr. David McKeown presented his findings to the city's Board of Health this week. He focused on Toronto's youngest citizens because their life paths can still be changed.
But that will require money, which the city does not have. Toronto has to cut its spending, not make new investments, to close its $7.7 billion budgetary gap.
It will require early learning programs in the city's poor neighbourhoods, which Toronto just lost the opportunity to provide. The newly elected Conservative government in Ottawa is dismantling Canada's embryonic child-care system, which would have included 6,000 new openings in Toronto, most of them for low-income children.
It will require pay levels that allow workers to raise healthy children, which the provincial government doesn't demand. Ontario's minimum wage ($7.75 per hour) falls 20 per cent below the poverty line for a single person — let alone a family — set by the National Council of Welfare.
It will require welfare rates that enable single mothers to feed, clothe and house their children adequately, which Ontario doesn't have. Under current rules, a lone parent with two dependants is expected to run a household on $1,119 a month. That is 57 per cent below the poverty line.
It will require adequate English training for newcomers, which most school boards can't offer. The province's rigid education funding formula has forced them to skimp on everything that lies outside the standard curriculum.
And it will require a national government that understands the link between childhood deprivation and poor health, which Canada appears to lack. Prime Minister Stephen Harper eliminated the ministry of public health in last month's cabinet overhaul.
Faced with all these obstructions, members of the board of health lapsed into a mixture of anxiety, frustration, pettiness and academic detachment.
One member suggested that city officials rethink their language, given that "visible minorities" in their report now constitute Toronto's majority.
Another pointed out that she had 20 years' worth of reports, similar to the one produced by McKeown, and precious little to show for all the paperwork.
A third quibbled over the term child poverty, insisting it was the plight of low-income women that ought to be addressed.
Several pressed McKeown for advice, recommendations and solutions. But the doctor had no handy prescription in his black bag.
It was a sobering afternoon.
Toronto sees where it is headed, but can't change course. It knows what needs to be done, but can't do it. It envisages a better future, but can't get there.
A generation from now, those babies in the prams will look back and wonder how a smart city got it so wrong.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Carol Goar's column appears Monday, Wednesday and Friday.
Yep, coming from the liberal heartland of North America. The more I read the demands, the more I wish it would become an unreachable island in Lake Ontario...
Long term ionvestment locte n TO?
Not likely.
Welcome to Canada's new " Calcutta."
Give every Citizen in Toronto the right of concealed carry.
The Florida remedy is quite in order.
This curious point of view is the direct result of a couple of generations of Liberal party in-breeding. If you want this to happen in the US, keep electing Democrats.
If Toronto was in the US, it would be 80-85% Democratic, and less than 15% Republican (the balance being leftist third parties).
That was my thought exactly, look what happens to the system when liberals run things for years.
Stories like this make the Hildebeast go all "autoerotic"
This curious point of view is the direct result of a couple of generations of in-breeding due to Liberal party dominance. If you want this to happen in the US, keep electing Democrats.
Been working in Toronto for a couple of months. You have no idea how bad things are. There is this great glee about multiculturalism, which means there is no longer a Canadian culture. In Ontario, 1/3 of the high school students opts for a 5th year of HS to have more time to "adjust". All signs are printed in English and French, even in Ontario, but the language you hear all around, even in the workplace, is most likely going to be middle Eastern or Asian. Really scary place.
Communism has failed miserably everywhere it's been tried.
WHO ARE the simpletons who write editorials for this "Toronto Star"?
Until 2003, most students had a 5th year of high school in Ontario, as the credit requirements for 4-year colleges and universities had such.
Any chance of you moving out of Toronto?
Exactly. Canada needs to stop sudsidizing the stupid the lazy and the ignorant if it wants any kind of future worth living.
What is doubly disturbing about this piece is the obscene suggestion that Canada will need MORE handouts simply because of an increasing minority population. Classic example of the racist underpinnings of modern 'liberal' policies.
If life in Canada is that bad, these "newcomers" can always return to their countries of origin.
...take a page from Hugo Chavez - let the poor rob the middle class. That'll fix the problem...
For all the Liberal handouts of the past we have this to be thankful for. Throwing money at them will not solve the problem. If any word is mentioned about the racial "poor," who are in fact not poor by African standards -- they have free housing, social assistance, free medical, enough money for drugs, TVs, VCRs and the like -- they will cry racial discrimination, as if it is Canada's fault that they are in these horrible circumstances. They will take no personal responsibility and the liberal system will want to categorize them as "victims" -- which means a huge investment in the vested interest of professional social workers to correct the problem. Meanwhile, drugs, crime, delinquency, illiteracy are rampant and will increase regardless of the amounts of money given. Again, money is not the solution and only contributes to the pernicious attitude of entitlement and abuse of the system.
I read between the lines myself and came to the same conclusion.
As an aside, I've recently become friends with a single parent co-worker who unfortunately is getting food stamps for his kids. He's a pretty smart guy, but my theory is that since he gets all his food 'free' he doesn't worry about certain things.
He feeds the kids total CRAP food like hot pockets, those cheap-ass frozen pizzas and other frozen crap. If that's not bad enough, the kids waste 80 percent (no kidding) of what's put on the plate in front of them. They whine when it gets cold so he cooks some more 'crap', they nibble on it, watch TV and whine again when it gets cold.
This is not your typical 'welfare home', just a 'little' assistance, if you will.
Makes me wonder what the 'welfare queens' are doing with our tax money.
(Denny Crane: "I Don't Want To Socialize With A Pinko Liberal Democrat Commie. Say What You Like About Republicans. We Stick To Our Convictions. Even When We Know We're Dead Wrong.")
They sound like racists to me.
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