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I
Poverty in Canada is attributable to several economic and political factors of the nation. Since Canada is among the largest economies in the world, its growth and development ushered in an era of continuous economic reform and social welfare triggered by public policies. In that case, it is noteworthy to state that Canada is a nation that has gone through a series of progresses and recessions , with both having deep roots on economic and political underpinnings (Raphael, 2011).
Throughout the history of Canada, providing welfare to the poor has become central to the practices of both the government and the civil society, particularly the Roman Catholic Church. Canada acquired the practice of instigating state welfare programs for the poor from the United Kingdom, with early periods reflecting the heavy involvement of the Church. In the early parts of the 20th century, much of the hospitals around Canada were under the direct control of the Church and associated organizations. The Church has espoused the early regard for health as among the key factors for improving Canadian society from poverty during the early periods of Canada as a nation. Yet, the Great Depression of the 1930s in the United States (US) also affected Canada not just due to its proximity to the former but also for the close economic ties both share with one another. With the economy plummeting, causing the loss of employment and widespread poverty of people in the US, Canada pushed through with its contingency plan to provide welfare to the poor affected by the economic crisis. It is from that point where the role of the government in interfering on economic affairs became strong in Canada. Social programs proved pivotal for many Canadians struggling to get by their daily lives as the effects of the economic crisis in the US also affected them adversely. Towards the 1960s, the visible role of government in providing social welfare became somewhat of an institution in Canada, with Ronald Bennett and William Mackenzie King serving as the chief proponents of the Canadian welfare state model. in recent years, the welfare state model Canada has employed have imposed mixed effects on the national economy, with external factors such as effects of the global recession of 2008 being instrumental to the constant rise and fall of poverty rates in Canada (Raphael, 2011; Raphael, 2012).
II
The concepts of social inequality and social exclusion, as mentioned in Chapter 4, account for the variations in degree of poverty experienced by several groups in Canada. Social inequality refers to the differences in the social privileges people enjoy, particularly through the possession of a position or undertaking that could be either socially heralded or disdained. People live according to the kind of position they have in society, and inequality arises when one person enjoys a distantly higher position compared to another person, whose low position could signal grounds for poverty. Social exclusion is another different concept that refers to segregationist measures of various social factors afforded by the kind of positions people possess in society. A basic example where social exclusion thrives is employment, where people who have gone through high-quality education usually have the privilege to obtain higher-paying jobs, depending on their skills. On the other hand, people who have little or no educational experience, mostly coming from poverty-stricken families whose resources are inadequate for sending children to schools, are the ones who do not have ready access to employment that requires high degrees of academic and professional specialization. The two concepts defined from the foregoing trigger differences in poverty rates across multiple groups in Canada. The reason why certain groups experience more poverty than others is their innate characteristics under the two concepts. For instance, if a person lacks experience in academic education, he is most likely going to experience social inequality due to lack of access to positions involving power and prestige commanded by credentials and social exclusion due to the lack of opportunities that he can afford for himself. Those affected by other consequences such as economic recessions and circumstantial attrition in employment experience poverty only to a lesser degree than those uneducated ones. The temporary decline in income experienced by those hit by economic decline and loss of employment is not as severe as the deprivation imposed unto the uneducated groups, as they could always regenerate once they enter into another professional undertaking given their academic and professional credentials (Raphael, 2011; Raphael et al., 2011).
III
Poverty affects people in several ways, with the most basic premise lying within the concept of inadequate access to resources due to lack of economic opportunities. With that, it is noteworthy to focus on the fact that poverty affects several people through the sheer loss of access to quality healthcare services. Usually, healthcare that not covered by insurance is outright expensive, given the need to compensate for the expertise of medical professionals who undertake highly specialized and crucial posts focused on helping people preserve their lives. Those insured either pay for private plans priced for people in the middle-class or high societies or have registered with the government through a national healthcare program. In that case, a series of circumstances could affect poverty-stricken people in terms of the kinds of benefits they are getting for healthcare. Generally, those living in poverty are more vulnerable to sicknesses given their lack of access to quality healthcare services. The fact that poverty-stricken people have more disadvantages in terms of lack of quality education makes them more prone to misinformation in terms of the kind of sicknesses they are suffering. Whereas people living in higher classes have more access to information and treatment on specific diseases as afforded by their advantaged positions under the phenomena of social equality and social exclusion, people living in poverty are downtrodden. In that regard, poverty-stricken people lack resources that do not entail them with enough influence to command treatment of their illnesses and lead them towards misinformation and lower-quality services for healthcare. Quality of life also lowers with higher degrees of poverty. Limited access to economic opportunities tends to urge people to go for the things that would only enable them to survive, not to survive with quality in mind. With that, people in poverty incur more tendencies to encounter health risks and lower rates of life expectancy due to their diet and lack of information on the right kind of nutrition they need. Some people living in poverty may just have enough capabilities to generate enough resources per day, but their incapacity to come up with a formidable amount for savings puts them at risk for particular kinds of disasters affecting their lives. Generally, people living in poverty thrive within an endless cycle of health risks and limited access to resources that would make their quality of living better. With that, it would seem that the government is the only institution that could help fight poverty, given that the phenomena of social inequality and social exclusion further deprives poverty-stricken people to improve their economic standing (Raphael, 2011; Mikkonen and Raphael, 2013).
IV
Several mechanisms lead to a person living in poverty to experience poor conditions in health and quality of live. The main premise that a poverty-stricken person lacks adequate resources stands for the reason why health becomes a degrading factor in the process. It is recommendable to approach such topic from the perspective of poverty-stricken people who work hard to provide resources for survival daily. Stress is a major factor that entails people of any social standing to incur certain kinds of illnesses. Usually, stress is associated with lower strength in the immune system, making the affected person more vulnerable to having various illnesses and other conditions that would lower his strength. Apart from negative physiological consequences, a person affected with stress also has the stronger tendency to suffer mental illnesses. Since stress stems from bodily efforts to push a person to his limits, mental steadfastness will not find any guarantee from protection in that aspect since weariness and repeated exposure to hardships could entail an internal burning out for the person in stress, eventually making him incapable of performing tasks with a clear mind, alongside having an already weakening body. The involvement of stress in causing mental breakdowns and other diseases could affect people in poverty due to their constant toiling for daily income that is so crucial for them. Combining the aforementioned factors with the lack of access to adequate resources, poverty becomes necessary linked with poorer health conditions and quality of life (Raphael, 2011; Mikkonen and Raphael, 2013).
Another process in which experts have to consider in linking poverty with poorer health conditions is the one involving lack of access to information. Since poverty-stricken people only have the sole objective to survive everyday life, it is noteworthy of them to have the strong tendency to abuse their body. The fact that a person in poverty has no choice but to work for menial jobs usually involving great physical strength in exchange for inadequate compensation stands as proof of the premise that poverty entails physical abuse. With that, people in poverty do not incur any form of resource – both in kind or time needed, that would entail them to have adequate access to resources that would inform them of health risks surrounding them. For instance, in the case of low-earning construction workers, they would prefer having to work all day under unholy conditions just to match the amount of income that they need for that day, leading them to have no time to consult the doctor concerning any kind of illness that may affect them in their daily physical undertaking. The fact that construction workers in the given case do not have enough money to purchase informational material, consult the doctor or any other informational mechanisms makes them more likely to suffer greater health risks. People living in urban squalor are evidence that people in poverty lack adequate information on health risks. As those people have to contend with the unhealthy conditions associated with living on dirty sidewalks, areas of informal settlers and other areas unfit for sustaining high quality of life, they are left with no choice but to continue living in those place. Many of those people do not know or choose to ignore the fact that living in squalor-infested areas could further affect their health through unsanitary conditions, as their severely limited income constrains them from knowing more about the harmful effects of living in those places inasmuch as they lack the means to get away from those kinds of settlements. Poverty, in that sense, affects the need of people to access information concerning certain kinds of illnesses with their lack of income rendering them incapable of accessing details that they need to know (Raphael, 2011; Mikkonen and Raphael, 2013; Smith-Doughty, 2012).
V
The lack of direct action of public policy towards mitigating the problem of poverty in association with poor health conditions makes poverty in Canada a highly problematic national issue. Given the aforementioned details concerning the roots of poverty and its consequences to the health of poverty-stricken people, it is thus necessary for the government to incur more knowledge on how to counter poverty effectively through formidable applications in the form of public policy. Lack of public policy initiatives entail the lack of action of the government and such could translate to the premise that the government does not know what to do to counter the situation.. With that, people in poverty do not have any choice under public policy in terms of mitigating their hapless situation, especially with their risks associated with healthcare. A compelling example that presents the negative effects of lack of public policy directives in Canada concerns the case of poverty-stricken people suffering from type 2 diabetes (T2DM). With poverty preventing the sampled T2DM patients from observing the right kind of diet preventing them to aggravate their illness, it does not come as a surprise anymore for experts to find out that 90% of the increased mortality rate from diabetes between 2009-2011 are those that suffer from such disease. Lack of public policies that enable poverty-stricken T2DM patients and those at risk of acquiring such disease makes the issue a highly compelling one in Canada. Clearly, the linkage between poverty and poor health and living conditions is highly eminent in the foregoing case, as it recommends further endeavors on the part of the Canadian government to present strong solutions that would help in mitigating rising cases of illnesses associated with poverty. Indeed, the case of T2DM patients being at risk of death due to lack of public policy assistance in introducing formidable ways for producing proper treatment and diet shows that the same could happen with other kinds of illnesses. Without the able actions of the government to create proper public policy directives for people in poverty seeking to receive proper medical consultation and treatment, poverty may escalate and may increase the number of people with illnesses. That would entail lack of economic productivity for Canada, since the combination of poverty and poor health would disable affected people from working to generate better economic conditions (Raphael, 2011; Mikkonen and Raphael, 2013).
VI
For Canada to have public policies seeking to improve poverty and health to find their way towards implementation, a combination of good governance practices and steadfast civil service activities should arise. On the part of the government, it is essential for them to conduct studies on the effects of poverty on the health of Canadians. The rich amount of literature in the study could be more than enough for them to sustain the proper knowledge they need to obtain for them to be able to implement public policies aimed at lowering down poverty rates and improving the health conditions of poverty-stricken Canadians. The government should keep in mind that sheer material deprivation experienced by Canadians in poverty makes them highly vulnerable to sicknesses, especially to those high-risk ones. Lack of information on health risks should be a subject of reform by the government, given that it has the strength to command the medical sector to cooperate with them in their desire to lower down health risks among the poverty-stricken population they are seeking to reduce through proper economic agendas. After granting poverty-stricken Canadians access to information, the government should work on introducing well-researched social welfare schemes that would encourage the observance of proper diet while giving them access to free or affordable types of diet solutions. In focusing on the fact that Canadians in poverty lack proper access to the right kind of food they need for sustaining their diet, the government could introduce schemes that gives priority to such concern. On the part of civil society, it is important for those kinds of groups to organize programs either on their own or in consortium with the government that would benefit the welfare of Canadians in poverty and their needs to have access to proper healthcare. Privately initiated programs in cooperation with representatives from within the poverty-stricken sectors in Canada could work as platforms for reforms the government could consider taking. Given that the government could not just become an almighty body that recommends all the proper methods to solving poverty in connection to health, civil society groups could serve as the most powerful and vocal complements in their cause to eliminate poverty and health problems associated with it. Without the help of civil society groups, the government could just end up as a body that practices trial and error techniques – one that is highly costly and wasteful at the same time. A government that knows the right kinds of public policies to implement for solving poverty and health problems is one that takes due consultation with civil society groups, given that those have direct exposure to the things that are happening from the ground up. In that way, such knowledge could complement the legitimate power of the Canadian government to implement solutions eradicating poverty and associated health problems (Raphael, 2011).
VII
Verily, several supports and barriers could meet the efforts of both the government and the civil society in terms of removing poverty and associated health risks off the list of national problems Canada has. One of the most compelling supporting factors is the express support of people living in poverty in Canada. Through encouraging their cooperation in the process of lowering poverty rates, they would be able to voice out their concerns on the matter, given that they are the ones who know first-hand the problem very well. Through the knowledge of poverty-stricken Canadians on the kinds of concerns and conditions they go through in relation to their situation, they would be able to contribute to the reform process spearheaded by both the government and civil society groups. Sponsorships from various corporations of interest could also help fast track the process of poverty mitigation and control of health risks. In that way, the government would be able to solve the problem in a less-costly manner while being able to raise awareness towards the problems within more privileged groups. However, a significant barrier to efforts on removing poverty lies on the clash with private interests. Introducing lower-priced medicine and medical services, for instance, might become a threat to the medical industry in that it may face increasing competition between public and private institutions providing healthcare in terms of medicine goods and services. Another barrier to that would be the political infighting on grounds of differing ideals within the government. Certain factions might find particular anti-poverty and health risk programs as implausible, therefore delaying the implementation process (Raphael, 2011).
References
Mikkonen, J., and Raphael, D. (2013). Social determinants of health: A quick guide for health professionals. Retrieved from Kids New to Canada website: http://www.kidsnewtocanada.ca/documents/Social_Determinants_of_Health.pdf
Raphael, D. (2011). Poverty in Canada: Implications for health and quality of life. Canada: Canadian Scholar’s Press.
Raphael, D. (2012). Working towards health equity-related policymaking in Ontario (Working Paper Vol. 3, No. 3). Retrieved from RRASP-PHIRN website: https://rrasp-phirn.ca/~rraspphi/images/stories/Download_937_KBl.pdf
Raphael, D., Daiski, I., Pilkington, B., Bryant, T., Dinca-Panaitescu, M., and Dinca-Panaitescu, S. (2011). A toxic combination of poor social policies and programmes, unfair economic arrangements and bad politics: The experiences of poor Canadians with Type 2 diabetes. Critical Public Health, 22(2), 127-145.
Smith-Doughty, L. (2012). Review of “Oppression: A social determinant of health” by Elizabeth McGibbon. College Quarterly, 15(4).
