You're comparing a single mother in Nova Scotia with the homeless and near-homeless of the Downtown Eastside. Typical of right-wing equivocators to compare apples and oranges. A homeless person - in Nova Scotia - gets $208/mo for food and sundry, plus a bed at the shelter if they want one (or if there is one). Maximum rent/utilities support is $300/mo, or if unable to work for at least a year when signing up, $535/mo. A few things can bump up the cheque, usually a transit pass for medically-needed transportation, or special food subsidies for certain health problems. You were trying to say that welfare recipients, in general, get 2500 a month.....but if you start calculating in things like housing subsidies (as if all welfare recipients were in public housing, which theyr'e not) then you should also start counting the various kinds of subsidies enjoyed by the upper and middle classes by way of tax breaks, housing grants, business grants etc etc.

Yeah, there's a baby bonus system. But there's no way a single mother is living a life of luxury on the kind of money you're talking about.

Likewise, not only welfare recipients get the HST credit......

The gravy train is HARDLY hogged by Canada's poor; it's notoriously hogged by the increasing number of ultra rich who have the money to hire accountants to make sure they not only pay no taxes at all, but who also have the money to buy politicians to make sure the public kitty has valves turned on in their direction. In British Columbia in particular, the middle classes have seen their real income and standard of living progressively fall, finding themselves ending up at the poor end of the spectrum - in no small part because of all the money-making by the banks and the rich which have seen average house prices in the Lower Mainland crest above 600,000 and the big-business-supporting papers start whining when houses worth over a million start losing value...even professional people making combined incomes of $120,000 a year are struggling in Vancouver, even losing money. Like all right-wing apologists, you're trying to blame the poor, and say they're lazy and have more than they deserve......all rank propaganda, yet very much part of the new "ethic" taught in the country's universities, which have all embraced "business principles" and turn out lots of willing corporate drones. The increasing divide between rich and the not-rich (the poor and becoming-poor, meaning the middle clas), is the backdrop to the bottom-rung poverty of East Hastings, which is only the most visible symptom of a much larger socioeconomic crisis....

the roots of poverty in the Downtown Eastside date back before WWI, to a series of economic collapses in the later '00 decade; the Sally Ann was, in fact, born there. After WWI it became the refuge for unemployed, disenfranchised veterans from across Canada; in the '20s Vancouver's role in supplying thirsty Americans with booze created lots of spectacular wealth on the one end of the city - and even more alcohol problems in the east side of downtown; again in the 1930s became a place people could go to and not freeze to death (and was right on the transcontinental rail line, which was a lot easier to "jump" then). All the SROs (single room occupancy hotels) in the area became built up to service loggers, miners and fishermen, whose seasonal work meant lots of money to spend and who needed somewhere to drink out the off-season. Hotel licenses in BC came with a liquor license (the only way to GET a liquor license was, in fact, to open a hotel), and so this meant that for each SRO there was a beer parlour attached (something like a tavern in the US) and in some hotels, also, a lounge (hard booze and quieter), leading to a heavy concentration of cheap drinking establishments in the area......which had seen similar before Canadian Prohibition in the '10s - one six-square-block area, now mostly Gastown but including part of the DTES - had 300 licensed establishments prior to Canadian Prohibition).

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Alcohol and poverty deepened progressively over time, and major stores and theatres in the area shut down, with the area's once-busy commercial life migrating uptown. But it was in the Reagan years, and the Bush I years, which in Canada were aped by the new Conservative government of Brian Mulroney, that the area's social problems deepened, and evils like crack were introduced (in connection with Iran-Contra and the War on Drugs, which were GOP policies. And while the NDP era provincially in the '90s, corresponding to the Liberal era nationally in the same period, did little to improve the area, things got a LOT worse when the GOP-clone BC Liberal government came into power in 2001, and they've gotten steadily worse ever since.

It wasn't Obama that created this poverty, is what I'm saying; yet there are linkages to GOP-ite policy stretching all the way back to the '10s and '30s...

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In any case, I don't even see why this is a choice between the Olympics and the poor. I think the real choice is between prudent spending and a waste of money. The most ironic thing about the Olympics is that we're going to have all these stupid sporting facilities, and I say stupid, because the government isn't going to continue funding amateur athletics to the degree that it was pre-these Games thus making Canada a bronze-medal (at best) Olympic power in 2012 and beyond. I think the Olympics are a waste of money because they're not going to turn a profit; the government is spending a lot more than the $580 million and $900 million (if one even believes those figures). One can't accurately measure the government spending without including all the other infrastructure programmes related to the games that we promised the IOC so that we could lure them here (such as the Sea to Sky Highway, which was over budget, the Convention Centre, which was EXTREMELY over budget and the Richmond-Airport-Vancouver rapid transit line, the only thing on budget.) Not to mention all the lost municipal revenue that City of Vancouver taxpayers are out of pocket for including, but not limited to, the lost parking revenue (that the IOC isn't reimbursing us for) and the Athlete's Village (that we've had to pay for once the private funding went bust) and will now be selling post-games at a loss.

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All in all that money could've gone to better infrastructure programmes, like even more transit, hospitals, schools, parks, cultural amenities instead of 17 day party. That in itself would help the best and brightest. Heck, Universities need more money - that's where societies "best and brightest" are. But whatever, the IOC is running a good scam here getting cities to bend over backwards to get the games to come. I for one hope future candidate cities keep this in mind. I congratulate the IOC on their cunning. They sure pulled the wool over us Vancouver taxpayers’ eyes.

It's just sports socialism.

Edgemo: "A welfare recipient in Canada, taking advantage of all available programs, can take in $2500/month in payments, subsidized housing and other benefits - all tax free."

I don't know which welfare office you're going into, Edgemo, but to get that kind of dough, you'd have to be a single mother, also disabled, and with special medical needs. BC's welfare payouts are nothing like that, at all - especially for single men, who are the main demographic of poverty on the DTES; homeless people also do not get housing support money (you have to have a rent receipt to get that), and social housing is hard to get into (drug addicts and alcoholics not welcome; preference is for single-parent families and disabilities, and seniors).

What the GOP-ite rabble spew as "facts" about Canada is always hiliariously wrong; this claim about 2500 a month is typical of the uninformed, distorted nonsense that is their stock-in-trade. And even if all welfare recipients DID get that - any corporation that has kicked into the BC Liberal party campaign funds gets anywhere from 250,000 to 2.5 million a month, or more, in returns either from policies written to favour them, or in direct cash grants/financing from the government or one of its agencies (similarly with federal money).

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