Linking Poverty Reduction and Economic Recovery: Supporting Community Responses to Austerity in Ontario
Bibliographic record
Abstract
This paper examines how a discourse around those living in poverty has been created, and its implications on effective poverty reduction policies. We focus on this change through an examination of changes in the discourse of poverty in Ontario beginning with the Harris government (1995-2002) and in the wake of the Great Recession of 2008, we illustrate how the approach to poverty reduction has fundamentally changed. We examine Ontario’s current poverty reduction strategy and the Poverty Reduction Act, 2009, in addition to the federal policies that have been called for and where poverty reduction now stands at that level. By identifying gaps in poverty reduction strategies, we can see the importance of local action for fostering change in the discourse and advocating for increased efforts. We illustrate this through a case study chronicling the Northumberland Poverty Reduction Action Committee (NPRAC), an umbrella organization representing a coalition of community groups devoted to regional poverty reduction in Ontario. Fiscal austerity at the federal level, however, affects provincial and local capacity and action. We argue that groups such as NPRAC represent both a reaction to the gaps in effective provincial and federal government strategies and a fulfilment of government expectations for an ongoing third sector role. The implication is clear: Poverty reduction needs to be back on all political agendas. Cet article porte sur l'emergence d'un discours concernant les personnes vivant dans la pauvrete et en etudie les repercussions sur l’efficacite des politiques de reduction de la pauvrete. Nous mettons l'accent sur ce changement en examinant l'evolution du discours sur la pauvrete en Ontario, en commencant par celui du gouvernement Harris (1995-2002) et ce, jusqu’a la crise de 2008. Nous demontrons comment l'approche privilegiee en matiere de reduction de la pauvrete a fondamentalement change. Nous examinons la strategie actuelle de l'Ontario en la matiere et la Loi de 2009 sur la reduction de la pauvrete, ainsi que les politiques federales qui ont ete necessaires, et nous faisons le point sur la situation actuelle. En cernant les lacunes propres aux strategies de reduction de la pauvrete, nous soulignons l'importance de l'action locale qui permet de favoriser le changement du discours politique et d'encourager les efforts supplementaires allant dans ce sens. Nous illustrons ces propos par une etude de cas decrivant le Northumberland Poverty Reduction Action Committee (NPRAC), un organisme-cadre representant une coalition de groupes communautaires œuvrant en faveur de la reduction de la pauvrete regionale en Ontario. Cependant, la politique federale d'austerite fiscale entrave la capacite et l’action tant a l’echelon provincial que local. Selon nous, l’existence d’entites comme le NPRAC represente a la fois une reaction a l’absence de strategies provinciales et federales efficaces et la concretisation des attentes gouvernementales quant au role perenne que devrait jouer le tiers secteur. Les consequences sont claires : tous les programmes politiques doivent remettre la reduction de la pauvrete a l'ordre du jour.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.004 | 0.008 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.033 | 0.011 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.004 | 0.002 |
| Open science | 0.002 | 0.011 |
| Research integrity | 0.002 | 0.002 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.006 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".