1. Becoming Champions for Change
A Poverty Reduction Plan for BC
Becoming Champions for Change
“We don’t have to engage in grand, heroic acts to participate in the process of change. Small acts, when multiplied by millions of people, can quietly become a power no government can suppress, a power that can transform the world.”
Howard Zinn, 2010
bcpovertyreduction.ca

2. One of Highest Poverty Rates in
Canada
451,000
British Columbians
10.7% for BC, 8.8% for Canada

3. BC has largest gap between rich and poor in Canada
Inequality
BC has largest gap between rich and poor in Canada
Unequal societies have more health and social problems
Tax and transfer system not reducing inequality as much as previously
Canada ranks 26th out of 34 developed countries (Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development)
Based on data from 2008, average income of top 10% of Cdns 10 times higher than bottom 10%
Average income of top 20% in BC 10 times higher than of bottom 20%
inequality diminishes economic growth (International Monetary Fund, Conference Board of Canada)
Income tax rates still mildly progressive so as income rises so does tax rate
but other taxes - sales, carbon, property and MSP premiums - not, cost middle and lower income people more as a share of income
BC collects more from MSP premiums (only province) than corporate tax
Tax cuts benefit higher income people more because lower-income people pay less taxes - between 2000 and 2010, top 1% got tax cut of $41,000
Tax revenues for the province fallen by $3.4 billion per year
and lower income people rely more on benefits and services provided by tax revenue
Cdn tax-benefit system used to offset more than 70% of rise in income inequality in mid-1990s but this has fallen to 40% (main factor in reduction in redistribution is declining benefit rates (EI and IA), 22nd out of 29 in redistribution programs in their effectiveness in reducing income inequality
Average income of top 20%=$136,500, bottom 20%=$13,300
Share of Total Wealth in BC, 2012
Share of After-Tax Income in BC, 2011

4. Systems Thinking
A way of seeing that helps us understand and act on the root causes and hidden structures of things that need changing.

5. Systems Insight #1
A system is perfectly designed and structured to get precisely the outcomes it is currently getting.

6. Systems Insight #2 When something happens once, it is an event.
When something happens twice, it may simply be a coincidence.
When it happens three times, suspect a pattern and look for underlying structural causes.

8. Systems Insight #3 Systems seek stasis or stability.
Systems tend to resist or absorb efforts to change them.
Interventions that change only one element of a system are often counteracted by adjustments in other (mostly invisible) elements of the system.

9. Event React Pattern Predict and prepare Structures Create alternatives
On the site you will find:
Join the Call and the Premier
campaigns to keep this call front and centre
news
other resources - costs and other plans in Canada
Structures
Create alternatives

10. A Poverty Reduction Plan for BC
HIGHER
WAGES
WELFARE
HOUSING
CHILD CARE
HEALTH
EDUCATION
FOCUS ON MARGINALIZED PEOPLE
Expand essential health services and enhance community health care for seniors and people with disabilities (PWDs).
Focus on structural barriers faced
by aboriginal people, immigrants, refugees, PWDs, single mothers, single senior women and queer and
trans folks.
Significantly increase welfare and disability rates, and index them
to inflation.
Adequately fund schools and make post-secondary education and training accessible.
Increase minimum wage to
$15/hour
and index it to inflation.
Re-commit
to building thousands of new social housing units
per year.
Adopt the $10/day Child Care Plan.

11. Promoting democracy
Advocacy

13. Clear mission
Internal democracy
Internal capacity
BCPRC Regional Coordina-tor
CRA: Not "political activity"
Openness to engaging gov.
Openness to building alliances
Poverty Reduction Summit
Factors within civil society organizations that increase the capacity to do advocacy

14. Factors in the political environment
Municipal or Band Council
National poverty reduction plan
Local resolutions
Federal
External context
Provincial
children seniors indigenous
Factors in the political environment
Advocacy is inherently political and an understanding of political dynamics is at the heart of effective advocacy

15. BC is now the very last province
without a poverty reduction plan

16. We
CAN
afford this
COST OF
POVERTY
POVERTY
REDUCTION
$8-9 B
$3-4 B

18. We Want a Poverty Reduction Plan
Collective Action
Raise welfare rates
Increase minimum wage
Engage vulnerable groups
Build more social housing
Universal child care
Better access to education
Community health care
We Want a Poverty Reduction Plan

19. There's this idea that political engagement is some form of horrible, dutiful thing you do, like cleaning the toilet or taking out the garbage. But it can be the most fantastic thing you do. It can bring you into contact with hope, with joy, with a sense of deep connection, with what Martin Luther King called the "beloved community."
"Rebecca Stolnit explains things to us," In These Times

20. Connect Join the call at BCPovertyReduction.ca
FaceBook: BCPovertyReductionCoalition
Follow us on
Tweet with #bcpoverty
Tweet the and Opposition
me at
On the site you will find:
Join the Call and the Premier
campaigns to keep this call front and centre
news
other resources - costs and other plans in Canada