War on Poverty
VINCE TALOTTA/TORONTO STAR
Laurie Monsebraaten
Poverty costs Ontario a staggering $38 billion a year – and we all pay the price, says a new report that offers the first-ever analysis of the problem's economic impact on everyone.
Copy Quebec daycare, PQ leader says
Laurie Monsebraaten
If Ontario wants to cut child poverty and improve student achievement, it should copy Quebec's $7-a-day child care system, says the architect of the popular program that began in 1998.
Laurie Monsebraaten
If Ontario wants to cut child poverty and improve student achievement, it should copy Quebec's $7-a-day child care system, says the architect of the popular program that began in 1998.
Income gap growing wider
Laurie Monsebraaten
Poverty and inequality rates in Canada have been on the rise since 1995 and are now higher than the average developed nation, according to a new study.
Laurie Monsebraaten
Poverty and inequality rates in Canada have been on the rise since 1995 and are now higher than the average developed nation, according to a new study.
UN says child mortality down 27 per cent since 1990
The United Nations Children's Fund says the number of children who die before the age of five has declined by 27 per cent over the last two decades.
The United Nations Children's Fund says the number of children who die before the age of five has declined by 27 per cent over the last two decades.
Ontario food banks seek 'guerrilla war' on hunger
Laurie Monsebraaten
Low-fee credit unions for the poor and a plan to help low-income households pay for heat and hydro are among a broad series of initiatives needed to fight poverty in Ontario, say the province's food banks ...
Laurie Monsebraaten
Low-fee credit unions for the poor and a plan to help low-income households pay for heat and hydro are among a broad series of initiatives needed to fight poverty in Ontario, say the province's food banks ...
Toronto: Poverty capital
Almost 30 per cent of families in Toronto are poor and the median income here is $10,000 lower than in the rest of the country, a new report finds..
Special Section: Diabetes
Once considered a disease of middle age, a diabetes 'epidemic'
is sweeping Ontario, afflicting people of all age groups
and costing the health-care system billions.
Videos: Jason's story
Three Star videos chronicle the stunning transformation of Jason Jones – a man who had been unable to afford the dental work he desperately needed.
Will $50 help poor families?
Laurie Monsebraaten
There will be something extra for Rose Carreiro's 16-year-old twins and almost 1.3 million other low-income children in Ontario when their national child benefit cheques arrive tomorrow.
Giving a voice to the vulnerable
Laurie Monsebraaten
Connie Harrison and Stacey Bowen were more than faces in the crowd when about 500 social justice activists packed a Queen's Park meeting room in April to tell the provincial government how to fight poverty. They were experts.
Homeless women in peril
Laurie Monsebraaten
Homeless women in Toronto are 10 times more likely to be sexually assaulted and twice as likely to have a mental illness as homeless men, according to a new report to be released today.
'Have the guts to help,' poor tell the province
Daniel Girard
Karen Mundy is urging Queen's Park to display one thing above all in its bid to cut poverty – courage.
The buzz about bee stings and the poor
Laurie Monsebraaten
If you have ever been swarmed by bees, faced a sink-load of dirty dishes or owned a car covered in dents and scratches, you can understand what it means to be poor.
'Green' fix urged for Ontario's job blues
Laurie Monsebraaten
Turning Ontario's vanishing blue-collar manufacturing jobs into stable, well-paying "green-collar" employment in the emerging green economy should be central to poverty-proofing the province, ...
Poverty `steals from your soul'
Joanna Smith
In a forum usually reserved for peering at poverty through the lens of bureaucratic terminology, Michael Creek showed up to talk about how being poor actually feels.
Defining Poverty
What does it mean to be poor in Ontario today? As the province grapples with that question, the Star asked dozens of local experts. Here are their answers.
Determining a deprivation index
Laurie Monsebraaten
Opal Sparks dreams of the day she doesn't have to walk in somebody else's shoes.
Trapped in the spiral of easy debt
Tanya Talaga
Several years ago, Mary and Don Oxley were living the good life. They earned $100,000 a year between them and bought a modest house in Brampton. Then, suddenly, their lifestyle collapsed.
Activists push poverty plan
Kerry Gillespie
Hundreds of activists will gather today to present the McGuinty government with a plan to cut poverty in Ontario by 25 per cent over five years.
Buddy can you spare a home?
Laurie Monsebraaten
At 5 a.m. on a cold morning recently, Julio Silva wakes to the beeping of his alarm clock in the bank foyer at Queen and Yonge Sts. where he slept beneath the green glow of the automatic tellers the night before.
Ottawa must commit on housing: Province
Laurie Monsebraaten
A Toronto plan to provide safe, affordable homes for more than 200,000 vulnerable families and individuals in the next 10 years may never get off the ground if Ottawa doesn't contribute, warns Ontario Housing ...
Poor get savings program
Laurie Monsebraaten
A new $10 million pilot program to help low-income Ontarians save for an education or start a business is key to helping the financially vulnerable build assets and escape poverty, social activists say.
Savings project targets low-income students, entrepreneurs
Laurie Monsebraaten
Ontario will invest up to $10 million over four years in a pilot program to help low-income residents save for an education or start a business, according to provincial budget documents released ...
Budget focuses on retraining
Rob Ferguson
Laid-off workers in the hard-hit manufacturing sector will get more cash to help keep their families afloat if they go back to school to learn new skills under a “second career” strategy in this year’s Ontario budget.
McGuinty to tackle health, housing
Kerry Gillespie
Premier Dalton McGuinty kick-started his government's poverty reduction plan yesterday with $267 million for nutritious snacks in schools, repairs to social housing and free dental care for more low-income Ontarians.
Path to healthy eating
Tanya Talaga
Toronto, enough talk. Here's a clarion call for action on nutrition.
Cities want plan to phase out homelessness
Petti Fong
Chronic homelessness in Canada could end in 10 years if the federal government made a long-term commitment to funding more affordable housing, says a report by the Federation of Canadian Municipalities.
Project aims to give youth a living wage
Laurie Monsebraaten
Felicia Gregory has had a lot of strikes against her.
No room for poor, renters in Peel
Michele Henry
Rapidly growing region opposes basement units but also lacks a plan for low-income tenants.
The treadmill of poverty
Laurie Monsebraaten
Escaping social assistance in Ontario is a vicious game of snakes and ladders where too often those struggling to get ahead end up further behind, says a new report on government social programs.
Supporters swoop in to save Parkdale food bank
Curtis Rush
The St. Philip's Pantry food bank in Parkdale has a little life in it yet. Facing closure due to lack of funding, politicians and supporters staged a spirited rally on Tuesday and came up with $3,000 in emergency money ...
Premier targets city poverty
Kerry Gillespie
It's time for targeted efforts to help Toronto's poor in the wake of a report showing the city is Canada's poverty capital, Premier Dalton McGuinty says.
Federal policies under fire
Bruce Campion-Smith
OTTAWA–One out of every eight children in Canada is living in poverty and the federal government's focus on tax cuts over social programs means there's little help coming, child advocates say.
Miller lashes out on harsh EI rules
John Spears
It's "outrageous" that Employment Insurance rules treat poor, unemployed people in Toronto more harshly than unemployed people elsewhere in the country, says Mayor David Miller.
Toronto families slip into poverty
Laurie Monsebraaten
Almost 30 per cent of families in Toronto are poor and the median income here is $10,000 lower than in the rest of the country, a new report finds..
Ontario leads in child poverty
Bruce Campion-Smith
One in eight children in Canada – 788,000 in all – are living in poverty, a new report says.
Proliferation of lending stores a signal people are poorer: Report
Jim Rankin
Lack of choice and the "desperation of poverty" are forcing some to turn to payday loans and other costly fringe financial products they can ill afford to use, according ...
Dental care action urged
Moira Welsh
The Liberal government needs to act swiftly on its promise to create a $45 million-a-year dental care program for the working poor, dental care activists say.
Why poverty threatens us all
David Olive
According to the latest statistics from the World Bank, the widening gap between rich and poor in Canada is now roughly on par with that of Indonesia. Indeed, in the matter of income equality, Canada trails not only the Scandinavian ...
Poor mothers have smaller babies
Mothers from poor neighbourhoods in Toronto are more likely to have smaller babies or give birth prematurely, although immigrant moms partly buck that trend, a new Statistics Canada survey suggests.
'Living wage' priority issue during debate
Robyn Doolittle
Immediately raising the minimum wage from $8 to $10 is the most important way to combat poverty in Ontario, an all-candidates debate on poverty and health heard last night.
Raise taxes to help poor: Activists
Theresa Boyle
A coalition of social groups is challenging provincial party leaders to cut poverty by 25 per cent in five years – even if it means hiking taxes.
'Colour of Poverty' project launched
Nicholas Keung
While the poverty rate among white Canadians has fallen over the last two decades, the number of racial minorities who live under the poverty line has almost quadrupled.
Compassion alone unlikely to help the homeless
Rosie Dimanno
Only the wilfully blind, or obtuse, would deny that the city's downtown core has gone ratty and rancid in the past decade.
Choices for children without dads
Haille Bailey Harris
When I brought my Mom's newspaper in on Sunday the headline – "Where are the men?" – made me stop dead. As a 13-year-old black boy being raised without a father, I have asked that same question almost ...
Where are the men?
Linda Diebel
"Dads Wake Up!!!" It's a message Jeff Renford underscores at his seminar on the importance of fathers in raising confident and successful children.
Bugged about bedbugs
DANIEL DALE
An Etobicoke woman has spent the last three nights sleeping in a tent in the parking lot behind her apartment building.
Coalition urges raising welfare
Kerry Gillespie
Josephine Grey usually makes it to the end of the month before her last penny is spent.
Laurie Monsebraaten
There will be something extra for Rose Carreiro's 16-year-old twins and almost 1.3 million other low-income children in Ontario when their national child benefit cheques arrive tomorrow.
Giving a voice to the vulnerable
Laurie Monsebraaten
Connie Harrison and Stacey Bowen were more than faces in the crowd when about 500 social justice activists packed a Queen's Park meeting room in April to tell the provincial government how to fight poverty. They were experts.
Homeless women in peril
Laurie Monsebraaten
Homeless women in Toronto are 10 times more likely to be sexually assaulted and twice as likely to have a mental illness as homeless men, according to a new report to be released today.
'Have the guts to help,' poor tell the province
Daniel Girard
Karen Mundy is urging Queen's Park to display one thing above all in its bid to cut poverty – courage.
The buzz about bee stings and the poor
Laurie Monsebraaten
If you have ever been swarmed by bees, faced a sink-load of dirty dishes or owned a car covered in dents and scratches, you can understand what it means to be poor.
'Green' fix urged for Ontario's job blues
Laurie Monsebraaten
Turning Ontario's vanishing blue-collar manufacturing jobs into stable, well-paying "green-collar" employment in the emerging green economy should be central to poverty-proofing the province, ...
Poverty `steals from your soul'
Joanna Smith
In a forum usually reserved for peering at poverty through the lens of bureaucratic terminology, Michael Creek showed up to talk about how being poor actually feels.
Defining Poverty
What does it mean to be poor in Ontario today? As the province grapples with that question, the Star asked dozens of local experts. Here are their answers.
Determining a deprivation index
Laurie Monsebraaten
Opal Sparks dreams of the day she doesn't have to walk in somebody else's shoes.
Trapped in the spiral of easy debt
Tanya Talaga
Several years ago, Mary and Don Oxley were living the good life. They earned $100,000 a year between them and bought a modest house in Brampton. Then, suddenly, their lifestyle collapsed.
Activists push poverty plan
Kerry Gillespie
Hundreds of activists will gather today to present the McGuinty government with a plan to cut poverty in Ontario by 25 per cent over five years.
Buddy can you spare a home?
Laurie Monsebraaten
At 5 a.m. on a cold morning recently, Julio Silva wakes to the beeping of his alarm clock in the bank foyer at Queen and Yonge Sts. where he slept beneath the green glow of the automatic tellers the night before.
Ottawa must commit on housing: Province
Laurie Monsebraaten
A Toronto plan to provide safe, affordable homes for more than 200,000 vulnerable families and individuals in the next 10 years may never get off the ground if Ottawa doesn't contribute, warns Ontario Housing ...
Poor get savings program
Laurie Monsebraaten
A new $10 million pilot program to help low-income Ontarians save for an education or start a business is key to helping the financially vulnerable build assets and escape poverty, social activists say.
Savings project targets low-income students, entrepreneurs
Laurie Monsebraaten
Ontario will invest up to $10 million over four years in a pilot program to help low-income residents save for an education or start a business, according to provincial budget documents released ...
Budget focuses on retraining
Rob Ferguson
Laid-off workers in the hard-hit manufacturing sector will get more cash to help keep their families afloat if they go back to school to learn new skills under a “second career” strategy in this year’s Ontario budget.
McGuinty to tackle health, housing
Kerry Gillespie
Premier Dalton McGuinty kick-started his government's poverty reduction plan yesterday with $267 million for nutritious snacks in schools, repairs to social housing and free dental care for more low-income Ontarians.
Path to healthy eating
Tanya Talaga
Toronto, enough talk. Here's a clarion call for action on nutrition.
Cities want plan to phase out homelessness
Petti Fong
Chronic homelessness in Canada could end in 10 years if the federal government made a long-term commitment to funding more affordable housing, says a report by the Federation of Canadian Municipalities.
Project aims to give youth a living wage
Laurie Monsebraaten
Felicia Gregory has had a lot of strikes against her.
No room for poor, renters in Peel
Michele Henry
Rapidly growing region opposes basement units but also lacks a plan for low-income tenants.
The treadmill of poverty
Laurie Monsebraaten
Escaping social assistance in Ontario is a vicious game of snakes and ladders where too often those struggling to get ahead end up further behind, says a new report on government social programs.
Supporters swoop in to save Parkdale food bank
Curtis Rush
The St. Philip's Pantry food bank in Parkdale has a little life in it yet. Facing closure due to lack of funding, politicians and supporters staged a spirited rally on Tuesday and came up with $3,000 in emergency money ...
Premier targets city poverty
Kerry Gillespie
It's time for targeted efforts to help Toronto's poor in the wake of a report showing the city is Canada's poverty capital, Premier Dalton McGuinty says.
Federal policies under fire
Bruce Campion-Smith
OTTAWA–One out of every eight children in Canada is living in poverty and the federal government's focus on tax cuts over social programs means there's little help coming, child advocates say.
Miller lashes out on harsh EI rules
John Spears
It's "outrageous" that Employment Insurance rules treat poor, unemployed people in Toronto more harshly than unemployed people elsewhere in the country, says Mayor David Miller.
Toronto families slip into poverty
Laurie Monsebraaten
Almost 30 per cent of families in Toronto are poor and the median income here is $10,000 lower than in the rest of the country, a new report finds..
Ontario leads in child poverty
Bruce Campion-Smith
One in eight children in Canada – 788,000 in all – are living in poverty, a new report says.
Proliferation of lending stores a signal people are poorer: Report
Jim Rankin
Lack of choice and the "desperation of poverty" are forcing some to turn to payday loans and other costly fringe financial products they can ill afford to use, according ...
Dental care action urged
Moira Welsh
The Liberal government needs to act swiftly on its promise to create a $45 million-a-year dental care program for the working poor, dental care activists say.
Why poverty threatens us all
David Olive
According to the latest statistics from the World Bank, the widening gap between rich and poor in Canada is now roughly on par with that of Indonesia. Indeed, in the matter of income equality, Canada trails not only the Scandinavian ...
Poor mothers have smaller babies
Mothers from poor neighbourhoods in Toronto are more likely to have smaller babies or give birth prematurely, although immigrant moms partly buck that trend, a new Statistics Canada survey suggests.
'Living wage' priority issue during debate
Robyn Doolittle
Immediately raising the minimum wage from $8 to $10 is the most important way to combat poverty in Ontario, an all-candidates debate on poverty and health heard last night.
Raise taxes to help poor: Activists
Theresa Boyle
A coalition of social groups is challenging provincial party leaders to cut poverty by 25 per cent in five years – even if it means hiking taxes.
'Colour of Poverty' project launched
Nicholas Keung
While the poverty rate among white Canadians has fallen over the last two decades, the number of racial minorities who live under the poverty line has almost quadrupled.
Compassion alone unlikely to help the homeless
Rosie Dimanno
Only the wilfully blind, or obtuse, would deny that the city's downtown core has gone ratty and rancid in the past decade.
Choices for children without dads
Haille Bailey Harris
When I brought my Mom's newspaper in on Sunday the headline – "Where are the men?" – made me stop dead. As a 13-year-old black boy being raised without a father, I have asked that same question almost ...
Where are the men?
Linda Diebel
"Dads Wake Up!!!" It's a message Jeff Renford underscores at his seminar on the importance of fathers in raising confident and successful children.
Bugged about bedbugs
DANIEL DALE
An Etobicoke woman has spent the last three nights sleeping in a tent in the parking lot behind her apartment building.
Coalition urges raising welfare
Kerry Gillespie
Josephine Grey usually makes it to the end of the month before her last penny is spent.
War on Poverty: Our view
- Editorial: Put poverty on the agenda
- Editorial: Remove bricks from welfare wall
- The Star's 106-year War on Poverty
by Bob Hepburn - Staggering poverty report has province listening
by Ian Urquhart - Editorial: Disturbing trend in poverty rates
- Editorial: Dion's ambitious poverty strategy
- Editorial: Action needed on poverty
- Editorial: Solid Liberal plan
- Editorial: Child poverty shames Ontario
- Editorial: Support for poor should be priority
More Editorials and Opinion
Editorial: A '25-and-5' goal to fight poverty
Editorial: Harper lagging on poverty agenda
Editorial: Prosperity gap weakens province
Champion needed to tackle poverty
Editorial: Protect poorest workers
Editorial: Begging ban no solution
Editorial: Poverty breeds urban anxiety
Editorial: Public housing neglected
Editorial: Tackling child poverty
Editorial: Regulate temp agencies
Poverty – from those who know
Unfocused budget ignores the poor
Too many tumble into income gap
EI cash rich, service poor
Let Ottawa lead on $10 basic wage
