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Politics : Canadian Political Free-for-All -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Cogito Ergo Sum who wrote (7647)	1/16/2006 7:35:48 PM
From: seventh_son	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 37516

>I guess I just don't see an epidemic of street begging... Well A-S, I think that the problem has been bad for enough years it might not be proper to call it a sudden epidemic, but have you walked down Yonge Street, Bloor Street, Queen Street, Front Street, or just about anywhere within many blocks of that vicinity of the Toronto downtown very much? I used to spend a lot of time walking on those streets, and the transformation from a few winos to lots of young people begging started maybe in the later 80's in my impression (in a boom period in Toronto fact) and just got worse and worse. It's been a couple of years now for me since I've been there -- maybe someone can tell me if things have improved. I haven't been to Vancouver a large number of times, so you may have a better opinion than me... maybe it has always been a magnet for aimless people prone to drug abuse. I'm not labelling welfare or single mothers as a race issue, but I think that people might find some definite race correlation when they look at Toronto's government housing. Frankly, I don't think anyone would dare gather statistics on race related to welfare and publish it in the news, although I do remember reading a left-wing publication claiming systemic discrimination against Toronto's immigrants from Ghana due to the fact that close to 80% (forget the exact figure -- I might be off) were on welfare. Their conclusions on the cause differ from my own. Coincidentally, I used to belong to a university club that hosted foreign students for work stints in Canada, many of whom came from Ghana. The club definitely had more problems with the Ghanians than people from most other countries -- one was caught trying to sneak in the US illegally, others were not doing much at their student jobs and the employers were reluctant to offer more jobs after their experience with them... maybe just too laid back a culture, I don't know, but culture certainly is a factor and one can't expect all cultures to come to Canada and thrive.