[LINK] "Let Them Eat Kraft Dinner"

[rfmcdonald]

Roxanne Bielskis at Torontoist ruminates about the effect that the current economic recession is going to have on Ontario's poor, particularly from the dietary perspective.

Anyone who’s read a newspaper or magazine in the last few months can verify: recession chic is the new black. The only thing more irritating than regularly seeing a decline in the figures on your RRSP statement, though, is the spate of sanctimonious and insulting articles on frugal living being churned out in economy-sized quantities in almost every Canadian publication. Every journalist around seems eager to strike the pose of the poverty-stricken: Eye’s Kate Carraway bravely survived on $60 for a whole week. Macleans’ Chris Johns and his girlfriend cut their food budget from $300 a week (!) to a meagre $50 (with recipes courtesy of "some of the country’s best chefs" that spawned a collection of $5 recipes designed to feed families of four, flying directly in the face of Agriculture and Agrifood Canada’s "nutritious food basket" which costs at least $137 a week for a family of four).

Yep, the economy sucks, and yep, many regular people in Canada and all over the world need to find ways to get by on much less. But that group certainly doesn’t include employed journalists with ample disposable income. Ontario has seen a sharp increase in both unemployment numbers and welfare applications since the last few months of 2008. Most people in our province who are truly in need don’t have the luxury of connected social circles from whence to sponge freebies until their exile to No Frills is finally up—a single mother with one child living on welfare in Ontario receives about $14,451 annually, which is almost $10,000 below the Low Income Cut-Off line (LICO) for Toronto. A single person fares the worst of all, with benefits of only $571 a month—much less than $10,000 a year. While a magazine or newspaper article written from a detached and superior position is annoying, policies made from said position are deplorable, not to mention dangerous to those upon whom the policies are imposed. Policies affecting actual poor people in Ontario are in dire need of reform.

Go, read.