Socio-Economic Status

People with resources and privilege are often able to protect themselves through economic, political and legal means. People without resources and privilege often lack the ability to be heard when they stand up for their rights, and a disproportionate number experience intersecting forms of discrimination. In the result, when governments create flawed programs that purport to alleviate poverty, and worse still, when they cancel programs in very harmful ways to individuals who rely on them, these harms often go unchallenged or unrecognized by Canadian courts. And recently, when the COVID pandemic hit Canada, although governments across the country had been planning for this eventuality for months, their official message was: protect yourselves and others by staying home. This message not only failed to protect people experiencing homelessness, it completely failed to acknowledge their existence, let alone provide for this particularly vulnerable group.