It was an easy prediction. We knew Christy Clark was going to raise the homeowner’s grant ceiling – the only question was by how much.
Clark had already given young voters an election campaign present, now she’s playing to what she hopes is her base – folks who mostly sit squarely in the comfortable middle class.
Her recent announcement that the province will provide an interest-free down payment for first-time homebuyers may have been met with skepticism by political pundits and economists, but for young people who are desperately looking for a way to get into the housing market, it drew cheers.
The high price of housing in the Lower Mainland is hitting both young families and established older families. For the younger ones, they are looking to get a foothold in the market, while older folks are just trying to stay in their homes despite rising taxes and sundry other costs.
The high cost of housing has become the topic du jour at water coolers everywhere in the Lower Mainland. To not tap into the angst when you’re running to keep your premier’s seat would be political malpractice. And Clark is no amateur where politics is concerned.
So let us just consider for a moment if the topic du jour became children living in poverty. What if the fairly comfortable middle class stopped whining about paying $200 per year more in taxes, or why their side street hasn’t been plowed, and considered kids who don’t get three good meals a day in B.C., one of the richest provinces in Canada?
What if everyone simply said, like they have about housing, that something must be done about kids in poverty?
Poverty has unfortunately become labelled as an NDP supporter’s concern and one that is left to social worky activist types.
Clark understands that a campaign with promises to help poor kids might just remind people of how little the province has done. And then there’s the cold political fact that not a lot of poor kids vote.
But if we all raged on about children living in poverty as much as we rage about our taxes and snow and TransLink, perhaps Clark would act.
And, yes, we know, it’s not always so black and white.
But it’s sure worth a try, and now that the snow is gone, we really need something new to whine about, so let it be poor kids.
