07) HOW MUCH IS ONE KILLER AIRPLANE WORTH? - Part 2
In our previous issue, we reprinted the first half of a commentary by Katie Hyslop, who reports on youth and education issues for The Tyee Solutions Society. Hyslop asks: what alternatives could be found for the $475 million to be spent on each of the sixty-five F35 fighter jets which the Harper Tory government proposes to purchase. Here is the second part of Hyslop's article, which appears in full online at http://thetyee.ca/News/2012/08/13/F35‑Worth/.
Buoying the poorest
Economist Iglika Ivanova spoke for almost everyone we recruited for this article when she pointed out the mismatch between the price of the world's most advanced production warplane, and the cost of helping people through social programs. In short, flying war machines are a lot cheaper than programs designed to help people.
Said Ivanova: "If you're going to actually look into reducing poverty, [$475 million] is a small amount for the country as a whole." But again, it's a number that could make a big difference to a province, says Ivanova, who works for the B.C. office of the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives. It could, for example, increase welfare rates in this province for a year, by $200 for individuals, $300 for couples without children, and $400 for couples and single people with children. Equivalent to a monthly raise of between 32 and 42 per cent, the extra generosity would cost $383 million per year.
It won't bring individuals or families above the poverty line, but Ivanova says it's a start. "What that money would do for the families, is increase the embarrassingly low rates we have now," she told The Tyee Solutions Society.
The leftover funds could return some money to single parents on social assistance whose child support payments are now being clawed back through deductions in their monthly cheques. In B.C., the amount of child support a non‑custodial parent owes depends on their annual income (although a judge ultimately determines the payment). For example, a father who makes an annual gross income of $36,000 would likely have to pay $327 per month in support for one child. But if the mother is on welfare, that $327 is deducted from her monthly cheque as unearned income, leaving her no further ahead.
Before welfare reforms in 2002, parents could keep up to $100 of their monthly child support payments. Ivanova would like to see that returned for the 13,760 single parent families on welfare as of June 2012: "If every single‑parent family has $100 a month exempt [from clawback] that would be $16 million (per year)."
With $475 million, minus the $383 million to buoy up monthly welfare payments, we could support that payment for five years.
The lifetime costs of one jet could also ensure food security for over 13,000 people on disability assistance. While higher than B.C.'s welfare rates, disability assistance still falls below the low‑income cut‑off line in most areas of the province after tax. A single person on disability receives just $10,872 annually, not including GST/HST or carbon tax rebates, or any other benefits like Canada Pension Plan Disability Benefits. Someone on disability in B.C. who is able to work may earn up to an additional $800 per month, enough to put a single person just over the poverty line in a city the size of Vancouver. But if you can't work or find a job, you have to make do on $906 a month for housing, clothing, and food.
One foregone F‑35 would cover $100 extra per month for 13,194 people on disability assistance for 30 years. It wouldn't be enough to pull them out of poverty, but it might allow for such small quality‑of‑life improvements as better food. And that's just one jet.
"If all 65 jets were not purchased and those monies were instead spent on food security for the most vulnerable, some 857,639 people ‑ almost equal to the number of people using food banks every month ‑ could be supported over 30 years," Rob Rainer, executive director of Canada Without Poverty told The Tyee Solutions Society via email. "Bombs or bread, indeed."
Support for Aboriginal people
The 2012 federal budget promised new support for Aboriginal Canadians, including a $275 million investment in Aboriginal education. But Aboriginal leaders have dismissed the number as insufficient to meet the underfunded needs of Canada's Aboriginal youth.
An additional $475 million would almost triple resources for Aboriginal education. But the Assembly of First Nations (AFN) points out that the price of one jet could also cover the one‑time cost of 38 of the 40 new schools needed on Aboriginal reserves (at an average of $12.5 million each). Or it could pay the $126 million annual cost of funding First Nations language education for three and a half years ‑ bringing First Nations language instruction up to the same level as public school language programs. Or how about funding primary healthcare (visits to family doctors, nurse practitioners, pharmacists, etc.) for residents of remote Aboriginal communities? One foregone fighter plane would cover the entire cost of primary healthcare for men, women and children in 70 of the nation's most remote and isolated Aboriginal communities for a year, with almost $180 million left over.
It's not just doctors and new schools that rural and remote reserves are missing. Many are in need of other infrastructure from roads and bridges to basic housing. This was apparent in the media firestorm earlier this year over Attawapiskat, a First Nations reserve in northern Ontario where residents were forced to live in overcrowded makeshift tents or dilapidated, mouldy housing without plumbing. An extreme case, but poor infrastructure and overcrowded living conditions are common on reserves across the country.
As of last August, 118 First Nations reserves were on boil-water orders, and the federal government's own analysis found 73 per cent of on‑reserve water systems were at risk. The price tag for bringing safe water to every reserve is $6.578 billion.
Still the AFN estimates that $169 to $189 million more a year in federal spending would begin to retire unsafe reserve infrastructure like housing and roads.
The $475 million price of one warplane wouldn't close the infrastructure gap between reserves and non‑Aboriginal communities. But it would almost double Ottawa's 2011‑2012 commitment to its National First Nations Infrastructure Investment Plan, which puts money in schools, houses, roads, and water infrastructure for reserves, either for Ontario, Quebec and the Atlantic provinces combined, or all the prairie provinces.
Informing decision‑makers
One of the smaller news items during coverage of the 2012 federal budget was the loss in action of the National Council on Welfare. Created under a Liberal federal government in 1969, the council had a mandate to advise the Ministry of Human Resources and Skills Development Canada on the country's social development, particularly poverty and low incomes. It also provided a wealth of information to the public on provincial welfare rates, what poverty costs the rest of society, and possible solutions to poverty.
"We were the only organization that looked annually at welfare incomes province by province, and at poverty profiles: who's in poverty, why are they in poverty, and what can we do about it," the council's former chair, John Rook, told The Tyee Solutions Society. The federal government dismissed Rook's organization along with several similar advisory groups in science and the environment. On the money it will take to purchase one F‑35, the National Council on Welfare could have completed its mission well past the quincentenary of the War of 1812, sometime into the final quarter of the 25th century.
` "It was a really sad day when I heard the government wouldn't support something like [fighting] poverty, but they could do things like provide for an airplane that's going to do a lot of damage in the world," Rook lamented. If he had $475 million to deploy, Rook would not only restore the council's funding. He'd raise it, to pay for research into how ideas like those floated in New Democratic Party MP Tony Martin's bill C‑545, An Act to Eliminate Poverty in Canada, could be implemented. (The bill, unlikely to become law, would require government to create a national poverty reduction plan.)
(The above article is from the September 16-30, 2012, issue of People's Voice, Canada's leading communist newspaper. Articles can be reprinted free if the source is credited. Subscription rates in Canada: $30/year, or $15 low income rate; for U.S. readers - $45 US per year; other overseas readers - $45 US or $50 CDN per year. Send to People's Voice, c/o PV Business Manager, 706 Clark Drive, Vancouver, BC, V5L 3J1.)