MAIN POINTS
(from interviews)

1. Welfare bureaucracy, bogus job training and poverty charities

2. Professionals to manage the poor, including all types of think tanks
(both anti-poor and "help" the poor)

3. Social workers, lawyers, foster parents, court costs for child apprehensions due to poverty

4. Self-help industry that blames poverty on individual shortcomings

POVERTY INDUSTRY - Quotes

[Poverty] creates money for people; it creates jobs for people. That is what I don't like about social work: I would be paid because someone is suffering. -Rachel

All the red tape would be taken away. One department would look after it instead of having 12 separate provincial /territorial governments doing their own scrutinizing. -Florence

There are job creation projects on the back of marginalized people. How many businesses are built on health, crime, courts, hospitals, mental illness, jails and hundreds of thousands employed due to poverty? You keep them poor, and these other people have work. -Mary C

The fact that foster parents get more money than the actual parents; they are making an economy on disabling parents to care for their children. -Ruth

Child apprehension is a billion-dollar business. Without child welfare, half the lawyers in this city would be put out of business. -Suzanne

Who cares about people who are poor? It is always about the other people out there that are earning incomes off of the poor. It's all about them. We could get rid of all the welfare workers and other people involved that all have jobs because of people like me and others who have disabilities, who have been mowed down by society in general. -Terry

Non-profits piss me off. It's almost as if they exist only to give themselves employment. They sell the idea that people are "A person in need." They go through the motions of helping, but implicitly they say: "You are a person in need. If you don't have us, you have nothing." It is the biggest lie of all. Very little of the money is spent on helping the poor. I don't need a social worker telling me what I need. -Gabrielle

Charities keep us segregated and perpetuate the idea of superior and inferior. -Jessy

Poverty pimping has to come into it; middle-class people get jobs to put bandaids on the poor. -Kym

The cost of administering the programs, and the one-shot deals that are highly expensive; all the buildings and the people that work in that field-that's a huge cost that wouldn't be there, and I'd love to see the statistics on those costs. -Samantha

This whole GLI, this isn't business as usual; this means rethinking everything. We will likely find we can close down jails and other harmful constructs. Given the resources, people can usually take care of themselves in a lawful manner and will likely thrive. -Valerie