CCAR BUDGET SPEECH JAN 8 03
This speech
was delivered by Mariam Ibrahim of CCAR:
Mister Mayor, City Councillors,
Staff, and Fellow Citizens:
I am here today on behalf of the
Community Coalition Against Racism (CCAR) to speak out against the proposed
budget.
First of all, I wish to register a
complaint about the anti-democratic measures your council has used to limit
citizen participation in the budgetary process.
At first, you made only a few copies
of the whole budget available at public libraries, most of which were closed
last weekend. Then, you gave the public only a few days to study a 1600 page
document and to submit written comments on it. And you have only allotted the
individual taxpayer five minutes to
make a presentation on a 1600 text. Though I have now heard that the input process will be slightly extended
due to negative public reaction, it is clear that, as a council, you do
not welcome public input.
Now, let me get down to our specific
criticisms.
those who can least withstand the
rampant cutting and slashing of jobs and programs that you have built into your
proposed budget. I am referring to measures like the closing of HSR bus service
at midnight, the reduction of buses to an hourly schedule after 9 pm, and the
rise in fares. I am referring also to closing of outdoor swimming pools and
wading pools and the reduction of staff and hours at other recreational
facilities. I am referring as well to the reduction in funding to arts programs
and health programs. I am referring as well
to ending support for seniors programs and to raise fees for children’s
swimming classes and for ice rentals. If I had the time properly to research
your budget document and the time to make a longer presentation, I could
probably find fifty or sixty more areas in which your council plans to cut and
slash away at the quality of life in this community.
The Community Coalition Against
Racism is an anti-racist organization that is trying to build a better
community in Hamilton by promoting
racial equality and by opposing those things that harm
people of colour and native people in our community. Your budgetary cutting and
slashing harms the poor in Hamilton. It harms them very much. Among the poorest
of the poor are generally new, non-white immigrants to Canada, as well as
native people resident in Hamilton. We are not saying that all non-white
immigrants or native people in Hamilton
are poor. On the contrary, some are very well off or have done very well for
themselves in Hamilton. However, the sad fact is that most new non-white
immigrants and native people in Hamilton have few material resources and
marketable skills. The reason they come to Hamilton is due to the cheaper
standard of living here compared to Toronto, for example, yet the relatively
equal access to community services.
Now you, as a council, are proposing severely to cut these
services. What will the cleaner, who was a teacher in Africa, and who just
arrived in Hamilton, do when she has to go home after midnight from cleaning
offices? Take a cab and use up a couple of hours pay at minimum wage? What
about the engineer from Asia who is working in a restaurant that closes at 2
pm? When the single, native mother needs help from social services and there is
no staff available to help, what does she do then? When the senior who just
arrived from South America needs the services of the health department and
can’t access that help due to job cuts, a life might be at stake.
When policies and programs adversely
affect people of colour more than other people, we call that phenomenon racism.
Now don’t get me wrong! I am not suggesting that any member of this
city council is deliberately trying to be racist against the citizens of colour
or the native people of this city. However, the practical effect of the built-in,
institutional actions and attitudes that adversely affect people of colour, more
than the general population, is called systemic racism.
What this council is proposing to do in the 2003 budget is just the same as the
well-documented worse treatment that natives and people of colour receive at
the hands of certain police services in this province, at the hands of the
provincial judicial system and at the
hands of its prison system. It’s systemic racism, and we will no longer put up
with it!
And why are we being subjected to
this worse treatment? The answers are clear. First, the federal government is not
doing its job in revitalizing older cities like Hamilton in the
same way that the US federal government has poured billions into urban renewal
in that country. Secondly, the provincial government has downloaded all kinds
of provincial responsibilities on the municipalities. We cannot do anything
about the two senior levels of government at this hearing today.
However, there are some things this
city council can do to rectify its budget process. First, it can give its
mulish fixation on building the Red Hill Expressway, which will produce no real
growth for Hamilton except a bonanza for a handful of land developers on Stoney
Creek Mountain. It will turn out to be an environmental nightmare that may
bankrupt this city. Secondly, it can stop cutting business and industrial
taxes, which force the residential rates to rise and also results in job and
program cuts. CCAR does not believe that the idea of the poor subsidizing the
rich, also known as the “trickle-down theory” will produce any real growth for
Hamilton either. The “trickle-down theory”, in which money is supposed to be
thrown at the rich so that a few crumbs will fall off their table to the poor
below in the form of jobs, has been tried in dozens of places around the world
and simply does not work, except to make the rich richer. Finally, we can do
without the hoopla of the Commonwealth Games, costing Hamiltonians as much as
$10 million a year. Experience with the Olympic Games shows that the billions
spent on hosting the Games in various cities around the world produces only
temporary benefits, lasting months, not years. These games are only a
short-term bonanza for the media and for the hospitality trade.
It is our considered opinion that
one of the chief engines of economic growth in Hamilton is the influx of new
visible minority immigrants to our city. Every time a new immigrant arrives, he
or she needs accommodation, food, clothing, tools, transportation,
entertainment, health care, and education, among other things. In turn, these
needs provide a great stimulus for employment and growth in our city. On the
other side of the coin, the new immigrants satisfy the growing needs for
labour-power in the area, especially at the lower end of the wage scale.
Right now, Hamilton is said to be
the third destination of choice for new immigrants to Canada, because the cost
of living is relatively low here and the demand for labour relatively high. The
cuts being proposed in the budget will severely erode the living standards of
new immigrants to Hamilton and may discourage prospective immigrants from
choosing to live here. In such a scenario, Hamilton would lose the strength of
this engine of economic development, which is more promising than either the
Red Hill Expressway, the Commonwealth Games, or the tax breaks for the wealthy.
I hope you will consider this advice
carefully and I thank you, on behalf of CCAR, for entertaining this brief.
