Poverty epidemic? I’m not buying it

It's not about charity, it's about justice; As long as some suffer, we all are diminished (Opinion, Oct. 19)

I'm always amused reading columns by Deirdre Pike, an executive within the poverty industry, who claims "60,000" people in Hamilton are collecting social assistance. According to city hall statistics, 22,327 people were collecting Ontario Works benefits (OW) and another 26,221 people collecting ODSP (Ontario Disability Support Payments). By my mathematical calculation, that's 48,548 people receiving social assistance payments, not 60,000 as claimed by the writer.

Pitting people who work hard, and manage to gain wealth, against those that don't is an argument long used to try to leverage money from those they envy for their wealth. Every doctor and professional makes hundreds of thousands of dollars per year. This is called free enterprise, unleashed from the chains of poverty, self-made individuals of great value to society. "Poverty" is a relative term that has been distorted by all manner of groups who make up the industry that enabled poverty to become an epidemic, or so they say. I, for one, am not buying it.

Mark-Alan Whittle, Hamilton

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Welfare recipients could work for food

What would you do in their shoes? (Column, May 9)

After reading Andrew Dreschel’s column about giving food vouchers to single people collecting welfare, I have a suggestion.

Why not have a program like meals on wheels, where fresh fruit and vegetables could be distributed to those who need them, without exposing them to ridicule and scorn by labelling them as poor and destitute.

Better yet, why not have people on welfare do a little work, like graffiti removal, in order to get something in return, like free fruits and vegetables, donated by local farmers’ markets. This will get people moving and used to doing something constructive, while collecting social assistance cheques.

Hamilton spends about $2 million a year having municipal staff and community volunteers clean up graffiti; why not use some of that budget to get able-bodied social service recipients back on their feet by doing a little work to pay back society for giving them a hand up.

Mark-Alan Whittle, Hamilton