One of my first interviews was with the principal of an inner-city school in Edmonton. It was an old three-storey brick building with creaky linoleum floors and small classrooms. We sat talking in her tiny second-floor office. Suddenly, she got up from her desk and moved to the window. She motioned for me to join her. Down below, I could just barely see a little girl hiding under the stairs. Just then the noon bell went off. The little girl leapt to her feet, ran along the side of the building, disappeared into a door, quickly reappeared and motioned across the schoolyard. Immediately, two small children, a boy and a girl, maybe five and four years of age, came running across the yard. All three vanished into the school.

The principal told me that the older girl, who was 7, was sneaking her younger brother and sister into the school*s hot-lunch program. She did this several times near the end of each month. One of the new teachers noticed what was happening and, in a no confrontational way, questioned the girl, who began to cry with shaking shoulders, deep sobs and tears rolling down her face. There was no father in the family. Their mother had been sick in bed for months. They always ran out of food before the end of the month. The utility bill had to be paid; if it wasn’t, child welfare would take the kids away from their mother. There was nothing in the house to eat.

When many poor children arrive at the schoolhouse door in kindergarten or Grade 1, they are often not ready to learn. It isn*t unusual that they don*t know letters or colors. Lacking the early development opportunities found in most Canadian homes, the minds of these children may lack the benefits of a broader range of human experience.

From a hundred different sources we know that investment in early childhood development is the a best possible investment we can make. We know it will lead to a better, happier, healthier, more productive society and country. We know that child poverty often produces a wide range of anti-social behaviour and results in adults who can*t compete in society or in the job market.

Where do we begin? Let*s start by reminding Prime Minister Jean Chrétien of two resolutions passed at the 1998 national Liberal party convention. The first resolution was sponsored by the national Liberal caucus. It began, "Whereas it is estimated that three million children in Canada arrive at school hungry" and ended with, "Be it resolved that the Liberal Party of Canada urges the federal government to take action to establish a national child nutrition program....

In Ontario, one of the wealthiest provinces in Canada, the 116-per-cent increase in the rate of child poverty since 1989 has been the highest in the country. Approximately one in 10 children in Ontario were poor in 1989. By 1996, it was one in five. The number of youths and families using hostels and shelters in the province doubled be- tween 1986 and 1996. Yet, while there are more homeless people and poor children in Ontario than ever before, the Harris government dumped more than 370,000 people from its welfare rolls.

Where can we find the $9 billion a year that will be needed to pay for policies to combat child poverty nationwide? To begin with, we need a federal government that*s committed to finally doing something about poverty, to spelling out clear, determined national objectives and timetables to alleviate, reduce and finally eliminate most poverty, a government that values charity, but understands that charity only brushes the surface of the deep wound in our society. And we need a government that understands that the very concept of food banks should be anathema in a civilized country.

Much of the money needed to help the poor should come without tax increases. But some important tax changes are in order and some of them are long overdue.

For example, the government should remove the present tax and expenditure concessions to the affluent. In recent times, these have achieved a measure of recognition under the cognomen of corporate welfare. Included here are diverse business subsidies and tax breaks.

Are corporations paying their fair share of taxes? In the 1990s, corporate taxation in Canada as a percentage of gross domestic product has been well below the average levels of the previous four decades. But from everything I have learned about the subject over the years, the answer is that many (but not all) Canadian corporations pay a reasonable corporate tax, while foreign corporations operating in Canada are escaping billions of dollars in taxes that should be paid in Canada every year.

Next, shouldn*t we make the income tax system much more progressive? Is it really fair that someone earning $62,000 a year pays the same basic tax rate as someone earning $6.2 million? Shouldn*t we re-examine the tax brackets to make them far more progressive and fairer?

What about inheritance taxes? Among major developed nations, only Canada, Australia and New Zealand don*t have them. Should we examine inheritance taxes on large estates? Why not allow reasonable basic exemptions so that average families are not penalized, but then apply a reasonable tax on the balance?

A tax commission could look not only at how to raise additional revenue, but also how it might cut taxes for Canadians, especially for low-income families and individuals. Why not index the child tax benefit to inflation so its value doesn*t erode? Why not raise the basic exemption for those with low incomes even farther and index it as well? Ottawa brags about removing hundreds of thousands of low-income Canadians from the tax rolls through 1989 and 1999 increased exemptions, but without indexation some 1.4 million Canadians were pushed back onto those rolls in the past 10 years.

Instead of comprehensive political, social and economic solutions to the decades of excessive poverty in our country, we have offered pious, self-righteous rhetoric and Band-Aid, patchwork, inconsequential and totally inadequate cosmetic improvisations.

In the past, over and over and over again, year after year, decade after decade, we*ve been told that the poor will have to wait until the government*s financial situation has improved. Now the federal government is expecting large surpluses. How much longer will the poor have to wait?

On May 10, 1999, I spoke to the students at three inner-city schools in Edmonton. There were kids of every size, colour and religion. I met a wonderful seven-year-old immigrant boy who was in an hour-long one-on-one remedial session with a teacher. The boy beamed as he showed me how he was learning to read. Later, the principal told me the funds for this program expire this year and will not be renewed. I met a pretty, sad-faced 14-year-old girl with dark circles under her eyes. She was being abused at home, the principal told me. The intervention-program funds had been cut back. She wasn’t getting the help she needed. A bright-eyed aboriginal girl came up to me after my talk and asked me how she could go to university when it looked like there wouldn*t be enough money in the family to allow her to continue on to high school. Everywhere I turned I saw kids you wanted to hug, to sit down and talk with. And I saw overloaded, heroic teachers just barely able to cope with the problems they faced every day: poor kids in trouble, poor kids who desperately needed help. All the teachers stressed the same thing: the government cutbacks were hurting poor children badly. "It*s a tragedy" they said.

Don*t accept the relentless right-wing selling job that so often appears in our daily press. There are much better, much fairer, much more egalitarian, practical, realistic ways of running a country. And there are benevolent and beneficial ways of reducing poverty to produce a more civil, more just society.

Our goal should be clear. Let*s ensure that we deal with the prevention of poverty in Canada, not simply engage in attempts to alleviate poverty after it is solidly entrenched in concrete in our society. To achieve this goal, many more men and women must become directly involved in politics. If even one-fifth of the poor in Canada became directly involved in the political life of our country, they could change the future. If even five per cent of adult Canadians were to become active in federal politics, they could completely dominate the political power structure of our country

Our first goal should be to see that every poor child in Canada is treated as we would treat our very own children. Nothing less will do.