Juno News - Data shows “overwhelming majority” of poor Canadians are white

00:00:00.000 We are packing a lot into the show today, but bear with me. We're going to move right on here

00:00:12.840 because this is a fascinating one. And I actually had a conversation about this with someone the

00:00:17.840 other day. We were talking about this idea of wokeness, which is, I think, increasingly become

00:00:22.780 only a term used by people who are criticizing wokeness. But the idea itself is one that's

00:00:27.860 certainly championed by a number of institutions, incredibly by governments, by academic institutions

00:00:33.940 and many others. And the problem with it is that it is ingrained in it as this idea of identity

00:00:40.600 politics and pitting groups against each other. We start to define people by their group identity

00:00:47.000 rather than by their individual identity. And when you look at diversity, equity and inclusion

00:00:51.960 policies, you see they're trying to solve one problem and are ignoring or in some cases creating

00:00:57.380 another. Our friends over at the Aristotle Foundation did what I found to be a fascinating

00:01:02.500 study looking at poverty and race in Canada. And they found that most of the poor in Canada

00:01:08.200 are white. So how are these people being helped by so many of the pro-inclusivity measures? The 0.93

00:01:14.720 fact remains they really aren't. This study was done by Matthew Lau and David Hunt, the latter

00:01:19.520 of whom is the research director for the Aristotle Foundation and joins us now. David, good to talk

00:01:25.160 to you. Thanks for coming on today. Hey, thanks for having me, Andrew.

00:01:29.020 So let me ask you first and foremost about why you decided to look into this, because race is

00:01:33.940 obviously a bit of a landmine issue, especially when your thesis is, as it ultimately came out to be,

00:01:39.380 that we have this problem facing white Canadians that's not really being explored.

00:01:45.100 Hey, thanks for that question, Andrew. I think actually this is in part why the Aristotle Foundation

00:01:49.480 exists is, as you said, this is a topic that perhaps others don't want to cover. And I think

00:01:56.160 we're a brand new think tank and there are issues we need to talk about because they impact everyday

00:02:02.400 Canadians. And in the case of this study, it's impacting the most disadvantaged Canadians. And

00:02:07.160 it's a topic that others don't want to talk about, but we got to talk about it. And the reality is,

00:02:10.800 hey, who actually are the poor in Canada? And why do we have funding in this country that is based on

00:02:20.720 the color of your skin? And that, in this case, leaves out the overwhelming majority of those who

00:02:25.720 are poor in Canada. So we have different programs. I mean, there are anti-racism initiatives,

00:02:31.860 there are anti-Islamophobia initiatives, anti-Semitism initiatives, there are anti-poverty initiatives.

00:02:36.140 Are the anti-poverty initiatives specifically targeting diverse groups instead of the poor

00:02:43.080 whites that you're talking about? Yeah, no, no, there will be, there will be programs that are

00:02:47.600 available to many, but there are, there, the fact that there are any, and frankly, there are a number

00:02:52.300 of programs that are under the guise of anti-poverty reduction, but whether or not you qualify is not

00:03:00.980 based on a financial criterion or criteria, it's based on the color of your skin. Do you fall under

00:03:08.080 one of the minority categories? Or in some cases, it's very specific where it's, where it's for

00:03:12.380 perhaps Indigenous only, or for that matter, Black only funding. This study, frankly, we should 0.99

00:03:20.200 probably do a follow-up study where we actually go through and identify like, what are all the

00:03:23.940 programs? That was beyond the scope of the study. What we were looking at here was simply,

00:03:27.280 okay, here's the Statistics Canada data of who is poor in Canada. And the fact that so many are being

00:03:35.480 left out. Why, frankly, is there any programming that is judging people based on the color of their

00:03:42.340 skin and providing poverty relief based on skin color? We think that's, that's illiberal. And frankly, 0.96

00:03:50.060 I'm Canadian. Look, if you looked at raw numbers, Canada is a 70% white country. So if every group

00:03:56.620 was affected by poverty equally, you'd have more impoverished white Canadians than minority

00:04:02.440 Canadians. How is it proportionally though? Are minority communities more disproportionately

00:04:08.060 affected by poverty? Is that how the government justifies this imbalance?

00:04:12.200 I would assume so. Because, because yes, like, let's be real. Both, especially let's take two

00:04:17.920 groups, Indigenous Canadians and Black Canadians. They are more likely to be in poverty. And that is an

00:04:23.140 issue. But what's the root cause? What's the reason for that? Is race the reason why they're in 0.95

00:04:28.560 poverty? And we would argue just by looking at the data, we would say, no, race is not the primary

00:04:34.540 factor. Another study that we did back in October with Matthew Lau looks at income in the country. And

00:04:40.960 when it comes to income, white Canadians are actually not even in the middle. There are many 0.92

00:04:45.760 different ethnic groups or what Statistics Canada calls cohorts. There are many that make more income

00:04:51.340 than white Canadians. And what's interesting is when you control for education, for example,

00:04:57.980 just one of many things you can control for, and just compare your Indigenous Canadians with 0.53

00:05:02.960 non-Indigenous Canadians. Once education is plugged in, there's almost no differences in some areas.

00:05:09.880 Like, for example, if you have a medical degree and you're Indigenous, you're going to be making more 1.00

00:05:13.860 money on average than those who are not Indigenous. Same as if you have a PhD or a Master's. 1.00

00:05:17.720 So the causes of poverty, at least in Canada, are not based on race. Where do you live? Are you living

00:05:25.480 in a metropolitan area or do you live out in the country? That's going to affect whether or not

00:05:30.540 you're in poverty and your income. Again, what's your level of education? Are you religious or not

00:05:35.860 religious? There's so many different factors. What we're saying here is even though, yes, there are

00:05:40.760 particular groups that may be disproportionately in poverty, race is not the cause for that. So if

00:05:49.320 we're going to solve these problems, let's not be allocating resources based on race because we're

00:05:54.340 not going to get to the root issue. Yeah. And it's interesting because the left uses the term

00:05:59.280 intersectionality to talk about the way that if you're a Black, trans, Indigenous person in a

00:06:07.300 wheelchair, your experience is going to be different than if you're just a Black woman who's able-bodied 0.99

00:06:14.120 and all of this. And I think there's truth to that. I mean, life is full of disadvantages and

00:06:18.340 advantages and no person has, you know, well, few people have, you know, the best optimal thing in

00:06:25.560 every way of their life. You know, I'm a white male, but I'm also overweight. And, you know, like for

00:06:30.240 example, so it's stuff like that. And I think that what's interesting is that they don't actually look

00:06:34.760 at all of these different categories and all of these different groups. One area that's often

00:06:39.420 missing is urban rural, which as you mentioned, is hugely, hugely influential. And I think even

00:06:44.760 Indigenous, if you were to take the where they live in the country factor into that, I think you'd see 0.96

00:06:50.940 a lot of variety within Indigenous populations. And also education level, as you mentioned, is key

00:06:57.340 as well. I mean, if you're, to use the old like show that, you know, people of my age are familiar

00:07:01.600 with Fresh Prince of Bel-Air. Well, you know, that experience of that Black family in, I think,

00:07:07.040 well, in Beverly Hills, in Bel-Air is going to be a heck of a lot different than some, you know,

00:07:11.720 rural white working class family from, you know, Northern Alberta, say. And that's why it's critical

00:07:17.960 we have these conversations. And although this study is particularly provocative, right, because

00:07:22.020 we're saying, hey, there's more white people in poverty than every other ethnicity combined.

00:07:26.700 But to open up this proverbial can of worms to have these conversations in terms of, hey,

00:07:33.120 if we're seeing Canadians that are falling behind, that are disadvantaged, well, of course,

00:07:37.980 we want to do something about that. And that's right. But let's get at the root. So towards the

00:07:42.520 end of this short study, we point to what's called the success sequence. And this was not introduced,

00:07:50.360 but popularized by the Brookings Institution down in the States. And they're by no means a conservative

00:07:55.620 think tank. But they popularized this concept. And what they found is in the United States,

00:08:00.840 roughly 97% of Americans who finish high school, get a full-time job, get married, have kids,

00:08:09.380 do it in that order, 97% by the time they get to their 30s, they're not going to experience poverty

00:08:15.080 and poverty defined in the absolute sense, lacking the bare necessities of life. So that study was then

00:08:23.060 replicated by scholars at the University of Virginia, only a few years ago, looking at millennials.

00:08:27.680 So our age cohort, and same thing, they replicated the study found 97% of millennials that finished high

00:08:34.920 school, then got a full-time job and got married, had kids did it in that order. 97% in their 30s are

00:08:41.500 not in poverty. So that was then replicated in Canada. And Christopher Sarlo with the Fraser Institute

00:08:46.220 replicated the study in Canada just a few years ago and found it's not 97% in Canada,

00:08:50.900 it's over 99% that follow the success sequence are not in absolute poverty as adults. So is everyone

00:08:58.760 going to get married? No. Is everyone going to finish high school? No. Is everyone going to have

00:09:01.720 a full-time job? No. But the big takeaway there is there's certain cultural norms that are tried and

00:09:10.080 true, frankly, over the centuries. And if we put these things into practice, and from a policy

00:09:15.020 perspective, if we make it easier for more people to get on that yellow brick road, so to speak,

00:09:20.880 to get on that success sequence, we're going to alleviate much of the worst effects of poverty.

00:09:27.880 And frankly, there'll be much fewer people in Canada in poverty, if we follow things like the

00:09:32.200 success sequence, and whatever those norms are that feed into that.

00:09:35.620 Well, we had an op-ed from you over at True North about this, and people can read the study for

00:09:40.200 themselves at the Aristotle Foundation's website, aristotlefoundation.org. David Hunt, good to talk

00:09:45.900 to you. Thanks for coming on today. Hey, thank you, Andrew. Thanks for listening to the Andrew Lawton

00:09:49.980 Show. Support the program by donating to True North at www.tnc.news.

Juno News - June 22, 2024

Data shows “overwhelming majority” of poor Canadians are white

Episode Stats

Summary

Transcript