I've been very vocal on Twitter about my intent to decline my ballot this year. A declination of ballots is a legal right that I (and every voting eligible citizen) holds. It is not staying at home on election day. Rather, it is taking the time to go to the polling station and tell them that absolutely none of the parties have adequately addressed the issues that are important to me this election.
You see, all three parties are talking about the middle class, and what they would do for the middle class. And I think supporting the middle class is great, if the middle class were still around. This isn't the 1950's when the middle class made up the large bulk of the population. This is 2015. The middle class has been ever shrinking and getting smaller. Even the landscape of the top earners has changed dramatically.
In 2013, if you made $190,000 dollars, then you were among Canada's top 1% earners. Adjusted for inflation, in the 50's and 60's that would have made you middle class. And even with the adjustments in value, that still would have let you be a lot more affluent back then than it does now. It's one of the reasons why I distanced myself from the Occupy movement - the bottom tier of the top 1% is not as affluent as we often imagine.
To help the middle class is great, but it only helps the middle class when people are in the middle class. And so for it to be worthwhile to pitch all those efforts, you need to move people into that class. And that means the middle class is going to have to grow on both sides - some of the affluent but not elite will have to move into the middle class. But more importantly to me - we need to move people from the lower class into the middle.
This is where there has been a clear lack of talk among all the major parties. There has been almost no discussion among the leaders about poverty and homelessness. The criminalization of poverty has gotten steadily worse in most of Canada - despite being unconstitutional - and 40% of adults living in poverty are employed full time. Programs to protect those in poverty or at risk are becoming significantly harder to get, and health benefits in most provinces are being scaled back at astronomical rates. Most poverty reduction efforts are handled and funded at the local level - which has the advantage of the locality more likely to know what's needed in it's area, but suffers from only local funding.
We need more than jobs. We need to ensure workers are actually earning enough to sustain their families. A simple increase in wages will not work, as an increased demand for goods combined with higher bottom lines from higher wages will drastically inflate prices and put us back in the same spot.
Tax credits are great, and I appreciate the fact that many people in poverty are not required to pay taxes when their earnings fall below a certain amount. But a lot of programs that could benefit people in poverty are rather distributed to the middle class - which again, is shrinking - because they are only provided through tax credits. A tax credit for purchasing public transportation monthly passes is great, but not to someone who earns less that $13,000 a year and still has to rely heavily on transit to get around. Many cities have affordable transportation for low income earners, but many do not, and this is a federal election.
What is needed is a comprehensive, poverty reduction strategy. And a guarantee that programs introduced in this strategy will be accessible by people living in poverty. And that's the problem, isn't it? I want to believe a Universal Childcare Program would help, but if Quebec is any indication, most of the childcare spots are still taken by the more affluent individuals while children from poorer households are stuck on waiting lists. We need more than token programs and charismatic talk. We need ideas that work for the poor.
Now for homelessness. A leader who will not fight for the homeless will never have my vote. We need less program housing and more affordable housing. We need less housing that punishes us for being in poverty or for being poor by telling us how we need to be to maintain our housing, and more housing that is affordable for those living in poverty where the only things that determine if you can sign a new lease is if an individual can pay the rent, not damage the place, and not use the place to commit crimes. We need less talk of building more housing, and more shovels in the ground actually building the housing.
We need removals of barriers to vote - we need more acceptable ID's and to make it easier to vouch for people who want to vote. We need an easier way for the most vulnerable people in society to challenge the criminalization of homelessness and poverty. It violates the charter to discriminate based on class or social standing, but a charter based challenge that may go to federal courts is extremely costly, thus ensuring that the criminalization of the poor and especially the homeless forever goes left unchallenged.
This is just the tip of the iceberg of issues that are important to me as an individual. And these are all things that are being left out of the public discourse during election time. If a party wants to earn my vote, start talking about these things. I think we're already clear by now about your stances on the middle class on the economy. Let's talk about something new: the vulnerable.
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