WATERLOO —
A new coalition launched in Waterloo Wednesday
wants to know where candidates in the local byelection stand on the
growing gap between the wealthy and the poor. The
K-W Common Front is a coalition of social groups, poverty groups
and labour unions. It was formed to make “the growing economic
inequality” in Kitchener-Waterloo riding a byelection issue.
“There’s a wider range of people feeling economic uncertainty,” Trudy
Beaulne of the Social Planning Council of Kitchener and Waterloo said
Wednesday. This includes not just people on welfare, but senior citizens,
disabled people and middle-income earners who lost their jobs and can’t
find new work paying a decent wage, she said. Beaulne helped organize a panel presentation at First United Church
in Waterloo Wednesday to address issues the coalition wants raised in
the byelection.
Beaulne doesn’t think government austerity measures and cutbacks are the way to go, despite the ballooning provincial deficit. Instead, she believes economic recovery will occur when government
invests in programs and services that help displaced workers, people
with disabilities, immigrants, aboriginal people and people of
retirement age. As those groups are helped to become more productive, they will cost less and contribute to the tax base, she said. The coalition says the government must increase welfare rates,
disability pensions and the minimum wage. The government can pay for
this by making corporations pay their full share of taxes, rather than
granting them tax cuts, it says.
Antoni Shelton, director of the Ontario Federation of Labour, told
the small gathering that the province has not rebounded since the
recession of 2008 when the manufacturing sector was hit hard. Many union
workers in Waterloo Region who had good jobs, lost them, he said.
“No group is untouched by the growing gap between the haves and the
have-nots,’’ he said. “The gap is threatening our way of life in
Canada.”
Beaulne said average incomes in the Kitchener-Waterloo riding are
high because of the technology sector. Yet there are still more than
13,000 households living in poverty, she said. Marty Suter, of the Alliance Against Poverty, said many people don’t
realize how quickly they could face poverty if they became sick or
disabled. Suter ran as a federal election candidate in Kitchener Centre
in 2011 for the Communist party. Catherine Stewart-Savage, who co-ordinates the Out of the Cold
program at First United Church, said many “good people have been reduced
to sleeping on church floors.’’ Church membership is declining, she said. “We won’t be able to continue doing this forever. The government must take responsibility.” Charles Nichols, of the Waterloo Region Housing and Homelessness
umbrella group, said political change might happen if more people raised
their voices.
“What would happen if (there was an) uprising — not a violent
uprising, but a movement of everyday people telling those who hold
public office, ‘Enough is enough. It’s time to end poverty?’ ” he asked.
Beaulne said the Common Front is non-partisan and does not support
any candidate. Its members need to encourage all parties to “recognize
the growing inequities,” she said. Some individual members of the Common Front “speak for a certain
party, but the Common Front wants every representative to be rooting for
us,” she said.
The coalition is holding an all-candidates meeting at First United Church on Tuesday, Aug. 28, from 7 to 9:30 p.m.
dwood@therecord.com
