In his column "Eliminate Poverty at Home and Abroad," Ron Harpelle discusses the issue of poverty from a range of perspectives. He talks of why Canada (the newspapers from Thunder Bay, Ontario) needs to increase its development assistance around the world, and why ending global poverty can help fight poverty locally at home. Harpelle also addresses the reasons why Canada and other OECD members should continue to give development aid to countries like China and Brazil, who "appear to be wealthy," because ultimately the goal should be to eliminate poverty everywhere, not just in a few select countries. In the end of the column, he argues that governments need to change the way they speak about poverty; instead of poverty "reduction," we need to focus on "elimination," relating it to why slavery was ended, because people talked of "abolition" not just simply reduction.
All in all, Harpelle's piece is another good argument for why development assistance and global poverty elimination efforts should be increased, and are in fact beneficial to us here in the U.S. or Canada, which is always something we like to hear at The Borgen Project.
- Brock McNairy
SOURCE: The Chronicle Journal
