Moonlight Graham

Like I said, malnourishment in Canada is largely the result of bad choices by individuals rather than a systematic problem with society.

Poverty, and bad choices by those who are poor, are quite often linked to systematic problems within society, and is a systemic problem in itself.  How many aboriginals are malnourished?  Or elderly who have little/no income and are unemployable?  These are systemic problems.  Thus, Canadians, the government, NGO's etc. can do things to help these problems via many means, whether economic, social, political/legislative etc.

 Kids in toxic home environments may need to be removed from the home.

In drastic cases yes, but taking a kid away from their family is an extremely traumatic experience for the child and family, and foster homes and (especially) group homes can be really crappy places to live.  This causes major damage to the child for the rest of their lives, so it has to be a last resort.  The government and social services should try to support and help improve "toxic home environments" in every way possible before the child is removed.

I am curious how many of the people who get food at the foodbank use the cash freed up by that to buy booze and smokes.

That's seriously the first thing that comes to mind when you think of food banks?  Probably the first thing you think about welfare also.  That's a bit of an ignorant statement.  Obviously there's going to be people (of any economic status given free food) who do such things.  But people also use that freed up money to pay the rent, cloth their kids etc.

 

I am not against food banks - they are necessary - but we can never control how people spend the money given to them and there are irresponsible people and irresponsible people tend to be poor.

We have to understand that poor people as an economic group have very high levels of stress, the highest rates of mental illness, high rates of disability, the highest rates of childhood and current/lifelong levels of sexual/physical/psychological abuse etc.  To deal with the fact that many of these people's brains chemically do not naturally produce healthy amounts of "happy" chemicals like endorphins/serotonin, dopamine etc., some people meet these chemical needs by self-medicating using drugs (alcohol, marijuana, meth, nicotine etc.) so not to feel like crap.

I don't condone drug use of any kind, but I understand why people use them.  We should have more awareness programs, at food banks and for the general public (ie: alcohol & cigarettes are used by all economic classes) teaching how to deal with stress, depression/anxiety etc. in more healthy ways.

As for me, I think they get lucky once in awhile.

Lucky, but also very smart and skilled con artists.

Remember that John Edwards guy who had his own tv show?  What a phoney.

No surprise that someone would come back with that.  Can't have the Tories doing something good ya know  !! 

Maybe the Harper gov and CIDA have done good work in terms of funding for malnutrition, which the OP article claims, but overall the Harper gov hasn't been very good in terms of overall international development.  They just eliminated CIDA (now merged with DFAIT), and they have cut a lot of funding to CIDA (when it existed) and overall foreign development.  Also, Bev Oda, who oversaw CIDA for years, was an enormous idiot.

The article and the think-tank give credit to the Canadian government for high funding in the area of malnutrition, I'll give the Harper gov some credit in this particular area of development funding, but in other areas they fall short, notably maternal health.  The OP blog author needs to have a bit of perspective when she wants Canada to give itself a pat on the back.

I think it more to do that wright is stinking rich, which the left hates, unless it is them with the big bank account.

That's ridiculous.

This shouldn't be a partisan or ideological issue.