Solutions That Work: Fighting Poverty in Winnipeg

Winnipeg: Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives, 2000. Paper bound, illustrated with tables and graphs, vii + Pp154pp. Includes chapter references. Highlights with a yellow marker throughout first half else a very good copy. 240 grams. From the blurb on the rear cover: ""This is a book about poverty in Winnipeg, but not just Winnipeg. It is true that poverty is higher in Winnipeg than in most Canadian cities, but the patterns of poverty identified here and the solutions that are advanced are not at all unique to Winnipeg. Winnipeg is characterized by a contradictory reality. Poverty has reached epidemic levels, and continues to rise. A wide variety of solutions to poverty have been tried in Winnipeg, as in the rest of Canada. The neoliberal response instituted in recent years by federal and provincial governments, featuring a reliance on the forces of the ""free"" market, has failed. ""Trickle-down"" economic policies and dramatic cuts to gevernment transfer payments have not reduced the level of poverty in Canada. At the same time, in Winnipeg many exciting and innovative community-based initiatives are underway. While it is true that poverty is a complex and multifaceted phenomenon for which there is no single solution, these community-based initiatives, together with adequate levels of public investment in people, constitute the basis of a longterm solution to the problem of poverty in Winnipeg. Winnipeg's experience with community-based solutions to poverty can be a model for other cities throughout Canada and beyond. The authors in this volume look at poverty from several different perspectives, producing a richly layered and textured analysis focusing on solutions to poverty.""