Deputy Mayor Maureen Cassidy speaks at the Advisory Panel on Poverty's report unveiling, March 31, 2016. Photo by Miranda Chant, Blackburn News.Deputy Mayor Maureen Cassidy speaks at the Advisory Panel on Poverty's report unveiling, March 31, 2016. Photo by Miranda Chant, Blackburn News.
London

Panel Delivers Poverty Report

It's an ambitious plan to end poverty in London within a generation.

The Mayor's Advisory Panel on Poverty delivered its 50-page report at City Hall Thursday. The report includes 112 recommendations broken down into eight categories, including income and employment, health, housing, transportation, and food security.

Over the next 12 months the panel hopes 27 of those recommendations will be implemented. Those recommendations include establishing a living wage figure for London, increasing the number of licensed childcare spaces, and reducing transit rates.

Panel co-chair and Deputy Mayor Maureen Cassidy says implementing the first year recommendations within that timeline is vital.

"We see city staff that are working on these initiatives already, as being sort of a transitional team to putting those first recommendations in place and moving towards an implementation body of some sort," says Cassidy. "We would have champions from the community, especially including people with lived experience to see to the long term recommendations and also to judge how well we are doing, whether we are hitting our targets."

Dr. Chris Mackie, Medical Officer of Health for the Middlesex London Health Unit, also co-chaired the panel. He says the implementation of these recommendations is now in the hands of the city and community.

"Community support is absolutely crucial here and that's why this process has been so consultative. I mentioned the 100 or so meetings, the thousands of people who have been involved in these conversations," says Mackie. "It's going to be up to city council. It's going to be up to major funders, the Community Foundation, the United Way, these sorts of organizations to say 'this is what we can do within this, this is how we can address it, and this is how we can allocate our resources to have the most possible impact'."

The eight member panel was announced by Mayor Matt Brown in September. It was tasked with developoing the recommendations within a six-month deadline.

Already creating a bit of controversy is the recommendation to lobby the province to make London a Basic Income Guarantee pilot site. Councillor Phil Squire says it is a red flag for him.

"The net costs of basic income, even if you just just transfer $1,200 to people, it's $300-billion. That is more than the total revenue of the entire country of Canada," says Squire. "No other country after studying it has implemented a basic income. It's not doable."

Squire does believe there are other recommendations within the report that will be positive for the city.

"Offering free rides to people under 12 years of age is doable. It would cost somewhere between $100,000 to $200,000," says Squire. "It's a great idea for this reason. It will get kids in poverty riding buses but it will get a larger population of youth riding buses, which is good."

The report notes that 17% of London households were below the poverty line in 2012 and 24% of the city's children lived in low income households in 2014. London also has 10,000 more residents on social assistance than it did ten years ago.

The report will be presented to the Strategic Priorities and Policy Committee on April 18th. The full report can be read here. 

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