Poverty in Canada: How Can the church respond? was a presentation and discussion sponsored by Citizens for Public Justice (CPJ) at Cadboro United Church on March 7, at noon-hour to help working people attend.
    The event was designed as a workshop for faith leaders who are interested in learning about CPJ’s Dignity for All campaign for a poverty free Canada and introduced its new resource a hundred page booklet titled Living Justice: A Gospel Response to Poverty. It is an ecumenical worship and action guide on poverty and justice in Canada.
    Citizens for Public Justice is a national, non-partisan, ecumenical Christian organization that promotes public justice in Canada by shaping key policy debates through research and analysis, publishing and public dialogue.

Poverty in Canada: How Can the church respond? was a presentation and discussion sponsored by Citizens for Public Justice (CPJ) at Cadboro United Church on March 7, at noon-hour to help working people attend.
    The event was designed as a workshop for faith leaders who are interested in learning about CPJ’s Dignity for All campaign for a poverty free Canada and introduced its new resource a hundred page booklet titled Living Justice: A Gospel Response to Poverty. It is an ecumenical worship and action guide on poverty and justice in Canada.
    Citizens for Public Justice is a national, non-partisan, ecumenical Christian organization that promotes public justice in Canada by shaping key policy debates through research and analysis, publishing and public dialogue.
    The current executive director of CPJ is someone very familiar to Catholic social justice animators and advocates, Joe Gunn who served for many years as the director of social affairs for the Canadian Conference of Catholic Bishops in Ottawa.
    Joe, though still very youthful looking, has been doing this sort of work in and around the Catholic Church since the 1970s when I met him in Toronto while studying theology. Later he worked in Saskatchewan as the Development and Peace animator when I was editing the Prairie Messenger for the Benedictines out of Muenster at Saint Peter’s Abbey.
    Joe has done an interview with an alumni of Saint Peter’s College, Dennis Gruending, a former Saskatchewan Member of Parliament and CBC Radio host for the province. Dennis also served with the CCCB in Ottawa in the communications field. He has published a new book Pulpit and Politics, Competing Religious Ideologies in Canadian Public Life.
    My sense from the workshop on March 7, is that the so-called ‘Harper Majority Government’ is taking its toll on the spirit of the Christian left. The event was sparsely attended compared to what it should have been, given the work to be done. I recognized many of the attendees as already stretched social Christian animators.
    And there was a sense that the idea of discussing poverty as a failure of the system that somehow could be redressed was altogether passé given the tone of so-called conservative politics on the federal scene today. From what I can see, poverty is a necessary element to the Harper plan. In his view it serves as an admonition for the masses to emulate the power elite in their ‘successes’.
    But more significantly, it is just as much a product and achievement of the policies of the government. At a recent public forum, Joe Gunn reported that the only advice the Tory member of the panel had was to create more jobs, as though the system works just fine thank you. This is in the face of the collapsing world economy.
    Poverty for the blessed elite is a tool and an asset for better controlling the masses. The robocall controversy and its implications for undermining electoral democracy fits right into this scenario. The more cynical the electorate become, the more this favours the strength of the 24 per cent of the population who vote Tory as a religious obligation.
    No wonder the churches are less and less effective at addressing poverty. They are dealing with the symptoms only of a very sick system which needs much more radical redress and replacement.
    CPJ is a very valuable resource for those trying to grapple with the problem of poverty but I sense that the shifting geopolitics and reactionary federal administration in Canada has placed us in a whole new context. A new paradigm of social action is called for, one that requires a radical rethinking and analysis if we are to even begin to address and redress the situation.