Cheeky music video slams BC’s shocking child poverty rate
Dyan Dunsmoor-Farley
fightchildpovertybc@gmail.com
Monday, February 1 2010
A volunteer group of concerned Gabriolans, including Steve Elder, Dyan Dunsmoor-Farley, Gail Lund, Sharon Hooton, Nathan Tinkham and many others—musicians, performers and filmmakers of all ages—has posted a satirical music video on YouTube to make people question why 1 in 5 children in British Columbia continue to live in poverty in one of the world’s richest regions. The video has been growing in popularity over the last few days, as the world focuses on Vancouver and the 2010 Winter Olympics.
First Call, BC’s child and youth advocacy coalition, recently announced that close to 20 percent of BC’s children and their families live at or below the official low income cutoff, also known as the poverty line. Most poor families across Canada’s affluent western province are scraping by far below the cutoff. This didn’t happen during the current serious economic recession. BC has had the country’s highest child poverty rate six years in a row, while simultaneously reporting budget surpluses.
When the world thinks of Canada, it doesn’t think of children going hungry, having health problems related to poverty, living in substandard conditions, or facing obstacles to their education, but many children do. The provincial government promotes BC as “the best place on earth”. This video urges people to make this true for everyone, and to ask ourselves why so many families in such a rich place can’t make ends meet.
The video’s producers encourage people to address this issue with an email to Premier Gordon Campbell at premier@gov.bc.ca.
The video also includes some Gabriolan children, Sharon Hooton’s son Sam Hooton, and Dyan’s granddaughter, Hayden Parker Farley among others.
To see the video, head to www.youtube.com/watch?v=HALzrqE7l4k. Or look it up on YouTube by typing in “The Best Place on Earth subtitles”.
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