[piano music...]
A lot of people think poverty is a problem
for other people in other neighbourhoods.
But even if you, or no one you know
is ever affected by poverty,
not doing anything about poverty
is costing us all.
It's costing money.
More and more money, every single year.
British Columbia has the highest poverty rate in Canada.
Not addressing this comes with a price.
And this is what it looks like
when we do the math:
For starters, it costs us one point two billion dollars per year
to pay for the healthcare costs related to poverty.
That's because poverty is literally bad for your physical and mental health.
You're more likely to live in
poor quality or unsafe housing,
or none at all.
You're more likely to go hungry,
have a job that exposes you to hazards,
or end up with preventable health conditions.
We've heard a lot lately
about how we need to get "tough on crime",
but some crime could be prevented by reducing poverty,
which is linked to
crimes of desperation, low literacy rates, and living in unsafe situations.
The poverty related costs of crime in BC
add up to $745million per year.
Then, there's the income that the poor might have earned from working,
if they had access to better supports and training.
Or the income that the working poor could have earned
if their jobs paid better wages.
This is also a loss to our economy
to the collective wealth of our society.
And it adds up to as much as 7 point 3 billion dollars per year.
So that's what it's costing us
to stick with the status quo
of keeping one in nine British Columbians in poverty.
All together, it works out to between
8 and 9 billion dollars every year.
This is a terrible deal.
And the worst part of this
is that it would cost us
between 3 and 4 billion dollars per year
to put an effective, poverty reduction plan in place.
That's less than half of what poverty is costing us now.
You don't have to be an economist
to see that it costs more to keep people in poverty
than it does to fix the problem.
It's just simple math.
Not for other people
in other neighbourhoods,
but for all of us.